Italian state
broadcaster, RAI, has taken delivery of its first four Studer Vista 9 digital
mixing consoles from Italian distributors Leading Technologies (LT) — including
a production console for the control room at the famous La Scala Theatre in Milan
(Teatro alla Scala). All formed part of a single tender resulting from a
unilateral decision to move up to Studer’s Vista 9 platform.
The
new console has been installed in the RAI control room at the theatre,
replacing the previous Vista 8, and will be used for live broadcasting for
radio and TV, as well as recording of operas and classical concerts. This will
meet the venue’s wish for upgraded facilities within the Vista
architecture, with the emphasis on 5.1 production.
According
to LT’s Studer product manager, Mauro Bucchia, the RAI sound engineers were
keen to maintain working with the Vistonics interface. “The TFT based metering in the Vista 9 has
provided additional facilities but a further advantage for them was the SCore
Live engine, which doubles the DSP capacity, and which the existing Vista 8 doesn’t have.”
The desk is configured with 64 Mic
inputs from the stage plus Line and AES I/O for local effects and machines and
two MADI interfaces for multitrack recorders.
This
is one of four Vista 9s supplied by the Studer distributors, who over the years
have provided Studer solutions for all four RAI production centres — in Milan,
Rome, Turin and Naples.
A further Vista 9 has
been installed in the RAI auditorium in Turin, supplied along with a Vista
Compact Remote Bay to work in parallel. Replacing the venue’s previous digital
console, this will be used for live broadcasting or the recording of classical
music, since Turin is the base of the RAI
National Symphony Orchestra.
The state broadcaster
took the decision based on the success they had enjoyed with earlier Vistas,
and their familiarity with the desk ergonomics.
The other stand-out
features which defined this decision were the TFT metering and the HISTORY mode, which records events such as
overloads in the audio path of each channel, and highlights them in red on the
channel waveform. This enables the operator to review which channel had such an
event, up to 30 seconds after the event has occurred.
The Vista 9 is configured with 88 Mic inputs plus Line and AES I/O
for local effects and machines and two MADI interface for multitrack recorders.
At their Rome
broadcast facilities, RAI has similarly upgraded its former digital desk to a Vista 9
in the radio production centre of a general purpose
studio, which is predominantly used for live music, talk shows and drama. Once again, the HISTORY mode and TFT metering
features will future proof the studio’s needs.
This Summer, another studio, identical to the first one, will be
upgraded with the second Vista 9 assigned to Rome. Both Vista 9 consoles have the same
configuration, with 48 Mic inputs plus Line and AES I/O for local effects, and
MADI link to the studio’s monitor mixer.
This is the latest in a
long list of Studer desks supplied by LT to Italy’s state broadcaster. Aside
from the four Vista 9s, this includes two Vista 7 and a Vista 5 (for radio), as
well as two Vista 8s and three Vista 5s for television broadcast.
