New Gear Has Audio Industry Listening Up

By Dan Daley
New products continue to hit the audio market, and not just for consumers hungry for holiday presents. The professional realm has seen introductions by Studer, Denon, and Audio-Technica.
Studer’s OnAir console was used extensively during the Summer Olympics but now gets an upgrade to version 3.0 software.
The upgrade, which coincides with the introduction of the smaller OnAir 2500 console, adds functions and facilities to this digital desk. It allows the OnAir 2500 to share all the common operating systems of the OnAir 3000, which permits operator continuity across both consoles as well as providing the OnAir 2500 with a proven and stable software base.
To compensate audio for video-signal offsets when the OnAir 3000 is operated in a TV environment, software V3.0 provides a delay function to all consoles based on the Score Live. During operation, delay can be activated and adjusted on input channels; master-, aux- and N-x busses; and subgroups. Delay can be set at any time between zero and five seconds to a resolution of milliseconds.
Additionally with version 3.0, the system state of an OnAir console can be optionally monitored via SNMP messaging. The Simple Network Management Protocol is a common method for monitoring and controlling networked devices independent of type and use. The way SNMP is implemented enables two methods for receiving information from a single or multiple OnAir systems in an IP network.
Meanwhile, Audio-Technica debuts three shotgun microphones. The 15.55-inch-long BP4071 ($1,169), 21.22-inch-long BP4071L ($1,299), and 9.17-inch-long BP4073 ($999) condenser shotguns offer low–self-noise, direct-coupled, balanced-output, transformer-less design for improved pickup of transients and improved resistance to RF interference. All three mics use 48V DC phantom power, feature a switchable 150-Hz high-pass filter, and will be available in next year.
From Denon Professional, the DN-C620 player can put live prerecords on cue quickly with such features as auto cue, instant start, fader-start control, and index tallying. The slot-in CD mechanism reads CD-DA audio data from CD and CD-R/RW discs, with decoding of .cda, .wav, and .mp3 files from CD-R/RW discs. The broadcast-grade drive boots up almost instantly; time to “read and ready to play” all supported media is significantly faster than with consumer CD drives. The professional playback feature set includes frame-accurate search capability, user-definable quick replay, and ±12% pitch control. Advanced playback features include a Finish-mode function, with a selectable preset option of either Stop/Cue the following track or Recue the current track when the unit is in single-play mode