Calrec provides key audio technology for new Sky facility
Sep 24, 2010 12:06 PM, By Jack Kontney
Sky’s new HD broadcast facility in Osterley, West London, is planned to be one of the world’s most sustainable broadcast facilities.
Calrec Audio has sold five of its latest-generation Apollo consoles, each in an 88-fader configuration, along with multiple smaller consoles and Calrec Hydra2 audio networking technology and infrastructure, to Britain’s Sky satellite network. The sale forms part of the ongoing build out of Harlequin 1, Sky's new combined HD studio, post-production house and broadcast control center being built in Osterley, West London. Harlequin I is planned to be one of the world’s most sustainable broadcast facilities.
As befits its longstanding commercial relationship with Sky, Calrec Audio is actively involved in helping Sky to define infrastructure for the new Harlequin I facility. For example, Calrec's Hydra2 audio networking, the routing technology that forms the backbone of the Apollo console, was designed and developed in part to serve Sky's audio requirements.
"Calrec hasn't just sold us five consoles. Rather, we are together building many of the protocols, workflows and technologies that will drive this facility for the next few years," said Martin Black, Sky senior sound supervisor. "It's a joint effort with a new platform, Apollo, and with new requirements from our side."
These requirements are considerable. All of the planning for Harlequin 1 is designed to create a state-of-the-art, future-proof transmission center that will create and distribute Sky's HD programming over the next decade and a half. Capture, origination, post production, new media transmission and broadcast control, along with all of their requisite infrastructure, will be housed under one roof with tapeless HD video and discrete-channel surround-sound workflows throughout.
To deal with the sheer volume of required audio inputs and outputs in the new center, Sky has purchased two stand-alone Hydra2 routers from Calrec, in addition to the single router supplied as part of each Apollo console. Both of these routers have been expanded to their maximum I/O capacity from 16 to 32 fiber-optic connections, each capable of accepting and outputting 512 simultaneous channels of audio I/O.
"One of the design briefs of the Harlequin project was that any gallery would work with any floor, and Hydra2 allows that flexibility," Black said. "In fact, every port on every I/O box is available to every console, unless you choose to specify otherwise and deliberately restrict access. More importantly, all of the output buses from all the galleries can be made available to other studios, which makes for an extremely flexible system."
Calrec also worked with Sky to produce its recently launched Hydra2 modular stageboxes, a series of chassis that accept cards with a variety of I/O connectors, as well as 3G-SDI embedder and de-embedder cards.
"In combination with the versatile Hydra2 network management tools, the modular stageboxes offer us maximum flexibility, allowing any stagebox connection in almost any common physical format to be routed anywhere in the building," Black said.
In addition to the five 88-fader Apollo consoles and the Hydra2 infrastructure, Calrec is also supplying a 56-fader Artemis desk for mixing in Harlequin 1's planned international commentary area and three other submixers: one for dedicated use on sports broadcasts and two more on casters that can be used as mobile submixers in any of Harlequin 1's studios.
The 88-fader Apollos will be installed in the five studios that are set to open when Harlequin 1 first goes on-air, scheduled for the second half of 2011. There will eventually be eight HD studios in the facility, with the remaining three going to air at a later date. The first of the five new Apollo consoles has arrived at Sky and is being tested while the other consoles are built at Calrec's headquarters.
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