NMT adds Calrec consoles to HD trucks

National Mobile Television (NMT) has selected Calrec audio mixers for three of its HD production trucks. A 72-fader Alpha audio console has been installed in HD-11, NMT’s latest HD production truck. A 64-fader Alpha will be installed in the HD-1, and the HD-12, a new three-unit truck currently under construction, will feature both an Alpha and a Sigma.

NMT will use the consoles to cover a variety of sporting events.
All of the Alpha consoles feature Calrec’s new Bluefin high-density signal processing system, which provides 480 channels of processing power on just one DSP card.

“NMT chose the Calrec Alphas and Sigma largely because of demand from the freelance community,” said John Kemps, vice president of engineering, NMT. “Operators are familiar with Calrec consoles, find them simple to operate, and the I/O routing makes it easy to design and scale the control surface to fit our needs. Overall, it makes designing the audio room a straightforward process.”

NMT will use the consoles to cover a variety of sporting events. The Alpha in HD-11 will be used for ESPN-televised games, the NBA finals, and a variety of entertainment events, while the Alpha in HD-1 will cover games from Madison Square Garden and CBS NFL events. HD-12 will primarily cover golf and NFL for CBS Sports.

As with most large sporting and entertainment events, the Alphas and the Sigma will need to mix more than 100 incoming audio sources simultaneously, and the fact that the consoles can handle this in real time with no compromise of channel facilities or busses is one of the reasons NMT chose Calrec’s consoles. Kemps also appreciates the extra channels and processing power that Bluefin provides in the same amount of space as previous-generation consoles.