The news studio at the ITV Wales headquarters in Cardiff has recently undergone a major upgrade, with all broadcast facilities upgraded to digital technology.
The revamped newsroom was opened by Wales First Minister Rhodri Morgan and represented the latest stage in ITV’s ongoing £40m refurbishment of its regional news services. The studio is responsible for broadcasting ITV Wales flagship evening news programme Wales Tonight, along with regional bulletins inserted into both main ITV news programmes and the three and a half hour GMTV breakfast television programme.
Yamaha AD8HR preamps were selected for the studio microphones as they have the unique combination of featuring both preamp and A/D converters, being remotely controllable and at a price that doesn’t make the purchaser’s eyes water. So the clarity of ITV Wales’s newsreaders voices will be never less than perfect, yet a significant chunk of the refurbishment budget didn’t disappear!
The control rooms for the new facility were incorporated into the newsroom itself, 150m away from the studio from which the bulletins are broadcast. This meant that installation company Television Systems Limited (TSL) of Maidenhead had to find a way to reliably control the preamps over that distance.
“The studio uses a digital Calrec Zeta as its main console and Calrec also makes a remote interface that we could have used,” says TSL system engineer Phil Cooper. “However, the studio also has a backup console and they wanted to be able to manually patch the mics into that, if necessary.”
Phil discussed the matter with Yamaha, who suggested using software produced by Audio Service GmbH of Hamburg, Germany, which is specifically designed for the remote operation of the AD8HR.
The studio equipment features a touch screen PC to control stings, etc, and the AD8HR control software runs behind the main application, allowing the touch screen to also control the microphone gain levels which the software shows on screen.
“I had to use an RS232 extender kit and unbalance the signal to cover the required distance, but the system works a treat,” says Phil. “It’s a nice simple bit of software and I’d certainly recommend it to others in a similar situation. And from what I heard when we were testing the system, the sound quality is excellent.”
