Axia Element for Live TV

[Neil_G]

I was first introduced to Live Wire technology by a colleague from Sirius/XM and further intrigued by the LW enabled Telos Vx hybrid. Using nodes to bridge between the LW world of the Telos and what I have come to accept as the norm in television operations does not seem daunting at all thanks to the excellent documentation I have found here. There are several things about making a full fledged leap into an element console that concern me.

In my world, on air talent does not operate any equipment, in fact the equipment in our case is 12 stories up in an audio room and is fed via expensive E>O and O>E fiber media converters.

We frequently use as many as 8 aux sends during a show, primarily for in studio and remote talent IFB (interrupted foldback). These aux sends are either selective mixes of the in studio talent with pre recorded material and audio from remote talent,as needed or they are mix minuses going out to remote talent of our in studio talent.As our shows get more complex the need for aux outs will grow.

What has been working well for us technically is a small digital Yamaha console with motorized faders that lets our audio operator make subtle adjustment to the components of the mix on the fly. When the aux button selects a particular aux, all faders "assume the position" showing how much of each primary channel is contributing to that aux feed. It is also possible to then have the same 16 faders assume the relative position of the aux send masters (and the buss masters) so that it is possible to "solo" the aux send master to verify that the talents preference is at least leaving the console for that "folded back " audio.

The last piece of this is that audio from each of 4 talent mics also arrives at line level to the analog inputs of our intercom matrix so that the control room can essentially have a pre fade listen coming from the talent mics selectively through the intercom panels.

The other things the Yamaha board does well is allow analog and digital sources and destinations to co exist.which I know Axia also does well.

The question on my mind is: How flexible is the Element when it comes to on the fly changes, and why does your web site say nothing about television audio?

Thanks,

[clarknovak]

Hi Neil,

Thanks for writing. As you know, audio for TV is a very different animal than audio for Radio. Our Element consoles do have aux sends / returns. motorized faders, and a PC-based remote control front-end, but many functions that TV demands, such as solos, PFL, etc. are not available. That's why we don't talk about using our consoles for TV audio.

This is not to say that you won't be able to satisfactorily use an Element for your application. In fact, there are TV stations using Axia gear right now. It's just that our consoles are not specifically designed for TV applications.

I hope this answers your questions! If you want to investigate further, we'd be happy to fix you up with one of our sales engineers.

[Neil_G]

Clark,

I have found some useful "lines" which intersect these two parallel planes, specifically in the area of audio and GPI control over IP that remain intriguing, as well as of course the LW enabled Telos ISDN and Vx.

I will do a C/B analysis on using parts from your product line to configure an AES pre selector for our Yamaha audio console as we typically use AES pair 1 but some sources arrive on pair three.

In re reading my original post, I realize I neglected to mention that we primarily are doing a talk show with between two and four guests on set and a bunch of remote feeds including phoners and inbound MPEG2 over IP. We do not foresee the need for 5.1 mixes. And yes there are substantial differences between TV and Radio. One way for you to tap into that market would be as a third party developer for a Yamaha Mini YGDAI card. There are currently some other manufacturers such as Cobranet who have leapt on the band wagon. It would provide a more cost effective and cleaner solution than tying your interfaces into a board via xlr cables

[color=red]Question[/color]

When you engage mix minus from the Element console, I get that you are deleting that source from the "MIX" question is, which mix and where can that mix minus be heard. I'm guessing that you cannot have multiple simultaneous mix minuses occurring and being steered out of the ports of the mix engine, correct?

[AXIA_milos]

The mix is specific to the fader and is a copy of any of the buses.
The audio of the mix can be heard at any "destination" (output) that is assigned this mix-minus (called a backfeed in Axia parlance)

The subject was covered I believe in a previous post.
http://forums.axiaaudio.com/viewtopic.php?t=27