Overview

 

Radio France continues conversion of its production trucks to digital. The first, in 2002, was a converted truck based around a D950. Now there is Control Room 2 with an SSL C100 in its mixing area and an EtherSound / AD8HR / DM 1000 system in its production area.

Radio France has always fitted out its own OB production and recording trucks. The OB trucks they use for national stations such as France Inter, France Musique, FIP, or France Bleu at events such as the Tour de France, the Francofolies festival in La Rochelle, concerts at the Cité de la Musique, or the La Roque d’Anthéron piano festival, are always emblazoned with the words “Radio France.” Large vehicles are generally divided into two parts: a mixing area for live stereo mixing (and multi-track recording, if necessary) of the concert itself, which is quite separate from the hall’s sound system, and a broadcast area where the various sound sources are managed and prepared for broadcast. The program produced in the truck is then sent, via codec, to Radio France for actual broadcasting.

Web site:

http://www.radiofrance.fr 

Installed Products

Mixers:

DM1000

Interfaces:

AD8HR

Details

Yamaha Makes Mobile Digital Easy

The EtherSound rack

These 19-ton trucks used to carry analogue consoles in the 80s and 90s. One by one they have gradually been replaced with production trucks fitted out with digital equipment and digital consoles connected to stage box units via optical fiber. After Control Room 1, introduced in 2002 and based around a Studer D950, Radio France has just brought Control Room 2 on stream at the end of March 2007. Once again, a 19-ton vehicle has been chosen, but this time fitted with an SSL C100 96-channel console in the live area. For the first time a Yamaha DM1000 has been chosen for the broadcast area, along with a Yamaha AD8HR pre-amp, an Digigram EtherSound ES8out, and an AuviTran AVRed-ES comprising an EtherSound signal transfer device.

A Growing Role for the DM1000

Control Room 2, at the time of our visit it had not yet been given its Radio France stickers!

“The DM1000 is very widely used at Radio France. This model has gradually replaced all the 02Rs, 01Vs, and the other equipment used within the organization for small- scale sound engineering. We have more than a dozen of them … but in this case they are being used for something else: for broadcasting! For the truck’s first outings we planned to use a “real” broadcast console in the broadcasting booth, but this turned out to be rather complicated and a lot more expensive,” explained Michel Rangon, Systems Engineer in the Specialist Engineering Department at Radio France. “The only reasonably priced “easy” equipment we found for remotely controlling the levels of the various microphone pre-amps positioned near the stage for the presenters and their guests from the production truck was the Yamaha DM1000, with an AVY16-ES AuviTran board in the console and an AVRed-ES/EtherSound ES8out assembly connected to a Yamaha AD8HR pre-amp. We decided we would need up to five microphones for the presenters and their guests/musicians, who are usually positioned near the stage. As we have eight channels on the link, we use these to retrieve the sound if the stereo mix is broadcast over the location’s sound system. These signals therefore reach the DM1000 in the broadcast area of the truck on their own network, which is completely separate from the mixing area. If we have a problem in the truck’s mixing area, we switch to the sound system’s mixing console and we have presenters at the console all the time. We use an Elmann control information network.”

A Great Broadcast Console

And the performance of the DM1000 for broadcast, which is not its most obvious application? “Great! It can be used to automatically start playback when the fader on the corresponding channel is raised; it can turn a red ‘on air’ light on via GPI1 to let our presenters know they are on air and that their microphones are open; and the ergonomic design is excellent. It hardly takes up any space in the broadcast area and can easily control all the necessary sources!” And EtherSound? This was used for the first time at Radio France a few years ago to record the opera Carmen at the Stade de France, when all the signals were transferred using this equipment. It is a very handy system and has since become very popular. We have used it in this production truck.” We should also point out that the production booth speaker enclosures – PSI A 17-2 units from Switzerland – are both accurate and small.

The equipment we have in Control Room 2 enables us to meet 90% of the requests we receive at Radio France. We only need the D950 in Control Room 1 when events require more than 100 microphones. A few days after our visit, the truck set off for a concert at the Cité de la Musique. It was then going on to Bourges, then to Le Mans, and will be used at most of the festivals this summer.

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