Know-how

Live News at RTL

Refurbishing the live control room at RTL in Cologne had already been on the agenda for quite a while. The old facilities were too small and worn out. The overloaded analog patchbay made the engineers' work stressful and confusing. Finally, RTL initiated a complete re-modeling of the video and audio systems. CANTUS is now at the heart of the new audio facilities.

Tough Specifications

An audio console in a TV station has a pretty demanding job to do. Since 8 November 1997, the CANTUS has been operating nearly 20 hours a day – most of this time live. So one factor is paramount here – reliability. Since RTL does not use a backup studio, this becomes even more vital. If any breakdown occurred, there would be no safety net. »The first thing that convinced us was that Stage Tec turned up and needed only 3 hours to set up the entire console for demonstration purposes. Other companies need at least one day to accomplish this…« says Renate Radwan, audio planner at RTL.
You have to take into account that 15 different engineers work with the desk, and all of them must be able to operate it effectively even after long breaks working elsewhere.

Full Load

Pure live operation places other demands on the equipment than a production environment. For instance, let's have a look at the automation facilities: In a live broadcast, snapshot automation is crucial, while dynamic automation will not be used.

When on air, the engineer needs direct access to all audio sources, ideally with a separate fader for each input. On the other hand, you can only take this idea so far, as the physical dimensions of the desk are a natural limiting factor. RTL needs many audio channels, so a compromise had to be found. The 90 audio channels provided by the CANTUS console are controlled on 48 Faders. This makes up a fully loaded CANTUS frame. Adding more faders would have required a second frame.

On Customer's Demand

Look at RTL's Live News with all those O.B. Trucks, ENG units, and journalists at the site etc: In terms of equipment, this translates to an awful lot of lines and channels. Predictably, all external sources require a feedback channel for communication. To be able to achieve this in a more sensible manner, RTL wanted an N–1 matrix for 48 lines. Stage Tec presented a freely configurable matrix where in addition the first 16 inputs can be used as an off-air matrix.

Today RTL typically uses 30 N–1 lines. The N–1 matrix provides for using the aux channels for what they were designed for: handling audio effects and not communication lines. RTL are not the only ones to profit from this new development: the N–1 feature has become part of the CANTUS' standard features.