SOFIA, Bulgaria – Bulgaria’s leading TV station Nova TV, part of the Swedish group MTG, has transformed its audio capabilities in live news and sports applications, thanks to two Studer OnAir 3000 consoles.
According to Vesselin Todorov, president of Bulgarian music company Factor TC, Bulgarian television has always been notorious for its poor sound quality, but the installation of two Studer OnAir 3000 broadcast consoles into Nova TV has broken that conception; it is now the best-equipped TV station in Bulgaria.
More often than not, the OnAir 3000 is utilized in radio stations, but Dobromir Georgiev, systems support engineer at Nova TV, believes it to be the perfect choice for live TV broadcast. “The ‘Touch’n’Action’ user interface is what makes Studer the best, because it’s just so easy to use,� he said. “Having the touch screen there in front of you means you can access all of
the functions very quickly.�
Both consoles are configured identically: one PGM stereo output; four hybrid channels for phone hybrids (bidirectional); separate channels for the audio server (4 AES inputs and 4 AES outputs); a mic group (8 mics); a server group (4×2 AES channels); external sources (5×2 AES channels) and a VTR group (3×2 AES channels).
Each console also has an output VTR group (3×2 AES channels), an embedder group (8×2 AES channels), an external outputs group (2×2 AES channels) and 16 analog output channels; hybrid channels and mic channels are also analogue. The mic group is hard wired to eight wireless mic receivers and there is an additional group for analoge mics (12 inputs). Four AUX buses and four additional N-X busses are assigned to the hybrids.
The main frame of the mixer is a Studer Compact SCore with one D21m extension frame; 24 symmetrical digital AES inputs and 24 outputs are in the core and the extension frame comprises of 12 mic inputs, 24 line inputs and 24 outputs, which are all analogue.
They also have two sixteen channel ADAT boards installed and the console is fed with AES Sync and a separate time code signal for internal clock synchronisation; all inputs and outputs are passed through patch-pannels.
There is an OnAir 3000 in both the live newsroom and the sports centre at Nova. Next May, the station will launch brand new sports channel (Nova Sport) broadcast directly from the Nova TV sports centre.
“Nova Sport will be produced by Diema, another TV company in the MTG group, but the main live production will come from Nova’s sports centre because it’s the best facility,� says Georgiev. “People find it much easier to work here and after coming from another company myself, I found the contrast to be incredible; the Studer sound quality is outstanding.�
Nova TV has two local networks for its OnAir 3000 consoles, which are separate from each other and all other network domains. Vladimir Lazarov of Nova TV, said he’s been delighted with the scalability and flexibility of the system.
“The OnAir 3000s cover all operations in our two studios. I have been most impressed at its capability to connect several cores and consoles in one network and to use one console to control several cores,� he stated. “Being able to create presenter profiles is fantastic; every presenter has their own profile of settings, according to his or her voice and this helps us to uniform the sound, regardless of on-air personality.�
