Las Vegas, NV (April 25, 2023)—Mix is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Best of Show Awards. The Best of Show awards recognize innovation and excellence in new, recently introduced and pending products and services for professional TV/video, radio/audio and AV products and solutions. Winners were selected by panels of professional users and magazine and site editors.
The winning products were (in alphabetical order):
Avid Media Composer
Shure Incorporated AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager
Sound Devices A20-Nexus
The following is un-edited promotional information on each of the winning products, as provided by the manufacturers.
Avid Media Composer
“Earlier this year, Avid delivered on what is considered the workflow enabler that media production teams have been asking for to significantly speed up the post production process between picture and sound workflows – Media Composer interoperability with Pro Tools.
Collaborating with the 40,000-member global Avid Community Association to bring this new innovation to market, Media Composer now speaks the same language as Pro Tools. This interoperability makes the hand-off between editorial and audio post teams quick and easy. Postproduction teams in TV, film and education can now simply choose “Pro Tools Session” from the Media Composer “Export to File” command and select the parameters and options they want to include in their export. Pro Tools users can then just double-click the resulting session file to open it in Pro Tools along with the exported video and all edit points. That simple!
Avid is uniquely positioned to streamline the process of exporting complex sequences with video, audio and metadata down to a single step, combining everything in one export .PTX file that can be opened directly in Pro Tools. This capability enables teams to complete projects faster and eliminate costly, time-consuming mistakes, while accelerating content creation and delivery for post-production workflows. This is the first step in delivering ground-breaking collaborative workflows between Media Composer and Pro Tools, which was identified as a critical need during customer workshops and will allow Avid to introduce a differentiated set of capabilities not available in the market today.
Avid also delivered the ability to produce world-class audio within Media Composer by
offering full support for Avid’s completely reimagined MBOX Studio audio interface for both Macs and Windows. Media Composer now provides editors with a powerful solution for recording, punch-ins and multichannel monitoring of sequences in up to 7.1 surround sound. Access to the exceptional preamps and audio converters in MBOX Studio also enables users to capture every sonic nuance of every performance with low-latency monitoring.”
Shure Incorporated AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager
“In today’s fast-paced and challenging RF environments, industry professionals seek solutions that enable comprehensive management and coordination. RF environments require real-time scanning for planning and managing frequency coordination across professional audio applications. Shure introduced the Axient Digital AD600 Digital Spectrum Manager to provide industry professionals the tools they need for real-time RF control.
The Shure Axient Digital AD600 Digital Spectrum Manager helps RF coordinators and audio professionals monitor real-time RF information to plan and coordinate frequencies in the most challenging RF environments. This includes highly televised broadcast media and entertainment like Super Bowl LVI and the international Tokyo-based athletic competition held in the Summer of 2021.
The AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager is the successor to the Shure AXT600 and continues to build upon Shure’s portfolio of next-generation technology that equips the industry with powerful and comprehensive RF coordination workflow tools. The AD600 boasts faster scanning that finds available frequencies and analyzes RF spectrum in real-time, streamlining site surveys and spectrum management.
The AD600 Digital Spectrum Manager delivers wide-band spectrum scanning and monitoring from 174 MHz to 2.0 GHz, spectrum analysis, and frequency coordination in a single rack unit. Six antenna connections deliver multiple coverage options while Dante connectivity provides advanced audio monitoring of your network. Users can lean on the USB port to export, import, or save backup scans, event logs, and other important data. When used with additional Axient Digital solutions, AD600 users can benefit from interference avoidance features available with ShowLink, a feature unique to the Axient Digital ecosystem that enables real-time control and communication with all ADX transmitters.
With AD600 users can plan, scan, and deploy frequencies to their wireless network, or dive deep for complete control in challenging RF environments thanks to the guided coordination features. These features have been put to the test at major events around the world, with Steve Caldwell, RF Coordinator, trusting the AD600 and Axient Digital in some of the world’s most demanding RF situations.
Speaking of its use at the international Tokyo-based athletic competition in 2021, Caldwell said, “In my opinion, the best feature of the AD600 is its ability to sample up to six different antenna (or distribution network) sources concurrently. This allowed me to see comparable levels of four separate antenna inputs (the Axient Digital Quadversity distribution) and two localized wideband antennas. This ability to compare the six discrete antennas allowed quite accurate localization of any transmitter in the Tokyo stadium. As the six antennas were varied in both location and beamwidth direction, including two antennas on the opposite side of the stadium on an RF over Fiber (RFoF) network, the ability to locate a transmitter based purely on RSSI was remarkably accurate.”
The new AD600 Digital Spectrum Manager ensures RF coordinators and audio professionals have the most accurate RF information in the most demanding audio applications.”
Sound Devices A20-Nexus
The Sound Devices A20-Nexus is an ultra-high performance wireless microphone receiver in a compact ½-rack wide chassis. It features eight independent, true-diversity channels that can be expanded to 12 or 16 channels via software licenses available for purchase or rent from Sound Devices’ online store or certified resellers. With Sound Devices’ SpectraBand technology, the A20-Nexus receiver offers an unprecedented global tuning range of 470-1525 MHz and exceptional RF filtering capabilities that allow it to utilize legal RF frequencies everywhere.
The A20-Nexus features Sound Devices’ proprietary NexLink remote control, an innovative concept in wireless microphone receivers. With NexLink, the A20-Nexus allows full remote control of transmitters via an integrated, long distance RF link.
The A20-Nexus also features an integrated RTSA (Real Time Spectrum Analyzer, allowing spectrum visibility while decoding audio. The A20-Nexus can be mounted in a standard 19-inch rack or easily placed remotely near the microphone transmitters due to its Power-over-Ethernet + (PoE+) capability, its Dante audio-over-IP network ability, and its built-in web server for control via phone, tablet, or computer.
Additionally, the A20-Nexus can be docked to Sound Devices 833, 888, or Scorpio mixer-recorders using the A20-QuickDock accessory, which provides convenient power, audio, and timecode connections with no additional cables. This accessory allows the A20-Nexus to connect and disconnect from the 833, 888, or Scorpio in seconds with no tools, and be remote mounted when desired. The A20-Nexus receiver is perfect for productions requiring full remote operation. Its combination of features allows it to replace multiple devices in any RF professional’s wireless toolkit, its flexible power and control options make it adaptable to any workflow, and its svelte form factor makes it equally at home in a bag, on a sound cart, or taking up minimal space in a fixed install.
