DUBAI,
United Arab Emirates – The Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) is an independent
entertainment pan-Arab television and radio network targeting the Middle East
and North Africa audiences. MBC currently has 17 television channels, with
programming that includes 24-hour news, 24-hour movies and 24-hour music, as
well as entertainment for Arab women, children’s entertainment, and general
family entertainment. Since 2012, MBC has been upgrading the audio systems in
its Dubai and Cairo studios with HARMAN Studer Vista digital mixing consoles.
“With the increasing complexity of our
technical infrastructures and our dedication to providing the highest-quality
television programming, we knew it was crucial to stay ahead of the technology
curve,” said Raed Bacho, Broadcast Manager of MBC. “Product continuity was a
top priority, so we decided early on that settling on a single manufacturer
would be the ideal solution.”
To help
find the right solution for its particular needs, Bacho and MBC turned to
regional distributor GSL Professional, which recommended Studer’s Vista Series
consoles. “We have had a very long, solid relationship with Studer, having used
their products since 2002 when our Dubai Media Center studios opened. The
products have shown great stability along with the flexibility needed for
workflow, and console architecture was also something that set Studer apart
from the competition,” Bacho noted.
MBC’s
first step was the purchase of a 62-fader Studer Vista 9 digital console for
its Al Arabiya news channel, based in Dubai Media City. Al Arabiya is a
free-to-air channel, providing news, current affairs, business and financial
markets, sports, talk shows and documentaries.
A year
later, in 2013, MBC upgraded its control rooms at MBC 1, a free-to-air,
pan-Arab general television channel, also based in Dubai Media City. For this
location, GSL Professional supplied two Studer Vista 9 consoles. One Vista 9
has 52 faders while the other features 62 faders.
With Vista
9 consoles now in three main control rooms at MBC in Dubai Media City, and with
each control room serving long hours of news and other programming, MBC had the
confidence in Studer to continue expanding with the Vista platform. So later in
2013, MBC upgraded the Dubai Media City-based control room of its MBC 3
studios, which exclusively provide children’s programming. However, this time
MBC opted for the compact—yet powerful—32-fader Studer Vista 1.
“Our familiarity with the Vista 9, not to
mention our enjoyment in using the consoles, made the Vista 1 a great fit for
our upgrade at MBC 3,” said Basheer Saad, Sound Engineers Supervisor of MBC.
In 2014, MBC added a 32-fader Vista 1 console
to its Dubai Media City studios for Al Hadath, a free-to-air news and current
affairs satellite channel, which operates as an extension of Al Arabiya. In
addition, MBC’s news bureau in Cairo is also equipped with a 32-fader Vista 1.
Utilizing Studer D21m I/O systems, MBC has
connected each of the consoles in its Dubai Media City studios via MADI—a
worldwide standard electronic communications protocol—to share sources and
provide redundancy.
Since the Vista 9 and Vista 1 consoles are
built on the same platform switching between the studios is an effortless task.
In addition, with an upgrade to Vista software version 4.9, MBC has benefited
from the Studer VistaMix feature, which is an automated microphone mixing
algorithm based on gain sharing for simplifying the mixing task at
multi-contributor events. VistaMix
removes the need for an operator to manually adjust all the faders all the
time, leaving the microphones of talking participants open, while closing the
microphones of silent participants in order to reduce spill and background
noise.
“VistaMix is a great tool to reduce the noise
coming from the newsroom, which is an open area, in talk show programs with
multiple presenters and guests on the air,” Saad said.
MBC has also benefited from Studer’s
proprietary FaderGlow™ technology, which illuminates each fader in the color relating to
the relevant function, creating an instant overview of console status.
“FaderGlow
is so handy when we work live in our 24-hour news station,” Saad noted. “These
types of features contribute to the ease of use of the Studer consoles and
enabled our sound engineers to adapt quickly to the technology.”
The Studer Vista consoles have provided a
reliable and high-performance platform for MBC, enabling the engineers at the
network to operate efficiently and effectively while sharing information in
real time.
“The Studer consoles have definitely met our
needs so far, as evidenced by the fact that we have continued to upgrade our
studios with Vista consoles,” Bacho said. “We have had great experience with
Studer in terms of audio quality, workflow and support.
For more information on GSL Professional,
please visit www.gslprofessional.com
HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures and markets premier audio, visual,
infotainment and enterprise automation solutions for the automotive, consumer
and professional markets. With leading brands including AKG®, Harman Kardon®,
Infinity®, JBL®, Lexicon®, Mark Levinson ® and Revel®, the Company is admired
by audiophiles, musicians and the entertainment venues where they perform. More
than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio
and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of approximately 17,600 people
across the Americas, Europe, and Asia and reported sales of $5.9 billion during
the last 12 months ended December 31, 2014.
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