Archive: News & Press Releases

05/2007

AES Vienna: A New Compact Console with a Golden Name

SALZBRENNER STAGETEC MEDIAGROUP’s New Mixing Console is Called AURATUS

Berlin, May 2007: At this year’s AES Convention, SALZBRENNER STAGETEC MEDIAGROUP will present the latest addition to their range of mixing consoles to an international audience: the AURATUS. It is an extremely compact and responsive console designed principally for TV and broadcast use and for O. B. trucks. The AURATUS is also suitable for sound-reinforcement and production applications where the extensive configurability of the big AURUS console is not required. At last year’s Tonmeistertagung pro audio show in Germany the – then still nameless – console was on display for the first time. Now, the STAGETEC developers will arrive from Berlin bringing a significantly refined pre-production version with them. Three units of this version are already in use at the all digital WDR broadcasting service regional studios in Siegen.

The AURATUS label is no counterfeit word, unlike those used by many other manufacturers, it is simply the Latin word for ‘gilded’. “The name deliberately resembles AURUS to emphasize that the AURATUS compares favourably with our big console regarding its sound, ergonomics and quality. In particular, the principle of instant access to key parameters on the channel strip, familiar from the AURUS, will also excite AURATUS users. The AURATUS first offers many proven AURUS features in a compact and reasonably priced on-air and production console,” says Stephan Salzbrenner, managing director marketing and sales at the MEDIAGROUP, about the new product. “The AURATUS is not only the answer to our customers’ requirement for an easy-to-operate compact desk but also opens up new application fields to the MEDIAGROUP in broadcast environments,” he adds.

AURATUS includes plenty of functions for TV and broadcast, making studio operation much simpler. Those features include convenient audio-follows-video functions, extensive optical signaling, eight separately configurable N-1 buses, and two timers capable of counting down as well as up. The user interface is designed for easy and quick operation and thus ensures a shallow learning curve even for inexperienced users or programme editors on the road. All the key audio channel parameters can be set simply using the dual encoders, familiar from the AURUS, on the channel strip or from the master section. On the AURATUS, the precision meter bridge, which is also a familiar feature of its bigger brother, is enhanced by small TFT displays in the master section. Each of those displays is dedicated to a specific function, for example, an equalizer or dynamics settings. Another new and convenient feature is the so-called OLED displays located above the faders on the channel strip. These show the names of the channel’s source and the background-layer channel. OLED is the acronym for ‘Organic’ LED. This display provides excellent readability even when viewed from the side. In addition, this type of LED display is not limited to Latin characters. Their resolution is so high that even Cyrillic and Chinese characters can be displayed as graphics (software extension available soon).

AURATUS' operational simplicity, economy and compactness are further enhanced by a hardwired bus layout. This is comprised of a maximum of 32 input channels, eight groups, one stereo and one 5.1 sum, eight aux paths, and eight N-1 sums. What is more, there is a remarkable engineering tour-de-force  in the background. The complete DSP engine is accommodated on a typical NEXUS plug-in board consuming just 8 watts! This was achievable since fewer audio signals require processing than on the big AURUS and CANTUS consoles. AURATUS is also fully integrated into the NEXUS audio-routing system just like any other STAGETEC console. The single-board solution, however, avoids the cost of a NEXUS STAR, which is required, for example, for AURUS. Finally, AURATUS’ audio quality also follows excellent STAGETEC tradition. As usual, signal processing is performed using 40-bit floating-point arithmetic. Combined with the TrueMatch converters incorporated into NEXUS, this ensures that AURATUS has the same exceptional sound quality as its siblings!