Super Hi-Vision Trials: The Audio Setup
Post categories: Audio,ÌýProduction,Ìýevents
| 12:00 UK time, Monday, 8 November 2010
The SHV trials required audio set ups as complex and sophisticated as the video.Ìý In this short post, Andrew Mason of our audio team outlines how we put together the infrastructure to support a 6 Music live recording session, and local and international 5.1 channel listening.
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The audio team made available and helped set up the monitoring area in TC0's old drum room, now our audio research space, with the 103" plasma screen and 5.1-channel surround sound. We used NHK's loudspeakers for the front three and a pair of ours for the surround channels.
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Mixing desk in the new Radio Outside Broadcast truck used in our sessions.CC Ella Chambers
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The audio rig of the studio was all part of the Radio OB's work: they provided us with a 5.1 mix and a stereo mix of the sound from the shiny new OB truck, OB2, as 4 AES3 feeds.Ìý This new vehicle has an SSL C200sound desk.Ìý We set up an AES47 link using Glensound ATM boxes to get the audio feeds from the room where the OB truck multi-way ended to the opposite corner of the suite, in the gallery where our audio equipment is set up.
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³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Outside Broadcast's new OB2 truck.
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The audio feeds were distributed via one of our 16x16 routers and our Yamaha O2R digital console to the NHK SHV recorder and our own audio recording systems. The return feeds from the NHK SHV kit were again fed through the console for level control and then routed to a 6-channel digital-to-analogue converter and thence to the loudspeakers in the listening room.
The O2R was also used to introduce compensatory audio delays to get the sound and pictures in sync in the listening room. NHK recorded the 5.1 and stereo audio, together with the compressed SHV video, on their recorder, and we recorded the same audio on a Tascam DA88 and on an Apple Mac Pro via an Apogee Rosetta 800.
The Glensound units were also used to provide an audio wordclock signal from the NHK SHV recorder to provide master clock to the OB truck. The stereo sound mix was also distributed to the 3D video recording kit for Danny Popkin using the Glensound ATM boxes.
Talkback units were set up in the gallery, the listening room, and the studio - with assistance from Stephen Anderson and Alastair Bruce - one of the most important uses being for the lighting controllers to get a low-delay version of the studio sound so that they could control the lighting in time to the performance.
We also used the Tascam DA88 to generate analogue timecode at 29.97 Hz for the NHK kit, but, on the day, it was not needed.
Particular thanks also go to David Marston who helped set up the audio kit.... and not to forget that it would not have been possible without the audio tie-lines that Tony Richardson installed in very short order, that carried the audio from the gallery to the listening room, and the talkback.
Comment number 1.
At 8th Nov 2010, Trev wrote:I thought that super hi vision supported 22 channels of audio not 5.1. Not a very realistic test in my view.
³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ transmits very little in 5.1 on the HD channels.
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Comment number 2.
At 8th Nov 2010, Ant Miller wrote:SHV in it's full blown native format does indeed support a whopping 22.2 channels of sound. However, for a one off demonstration in a limited space a certain pragmatism comes into play, and we decided that a 5.1 set up sufficed to support the exceptional video in this instance.
As I think we have made clear on a number of occasions, elements of this event were a test (the networking architecture for instance) and elements were a demonstration (such as the audio). Absolute recreation of every single system element was not felt to be the most effective use of the time, technology and people available.
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Comment number 3.
At 8th Nov 2010, U14679933 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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