TM3 Supports Loudness Monitoring For RTL F1 Coverage

RTW, a manufacturer and distributor of professional audio metering and control devices for studio recording and radio and TV broadcast applications, recently delivered three pre-production units of the new TM3 TouchMonitor to Cologne, Germany-based Wige Broadcast, prior to RTW’s official sales launch of the new product.
German Broadcaster RTL, which relied on Wige Broadcast’s technical infrastructure for this year’s Formula One coverage, employed the units during the first Formula One races in Australia and Malaysia, where they passed acid tests.
The three RTW units are part of Wige Broadcast’s extensively preconfigured mobile production system, which the company flies from race to race, setting it up on site. Despite the considerable workload the equipment must handle, Tobias Vees, executive manager for technical systems and business development at Wige Broadcast, says the units operated flawlessly.
"Even after countless transports, temperature fluctuations, and continuous assembling and disassembling, the units operated smoothly," said Vees. "In addition, our on-site users liked the extremely straightforward operating concept of the TM3, as well as the option of placing the unit horizontally or vertically, as needed."
For the Formula One broadcasts, Wige Broadcast used the TM3 TouchMonitor as a component of the on-site edit suites. The signal inputs of the TM3 are extremely flexible and provide a number of formats, including analog (balanced and unbalanced), AES3 and S/PDIF—features that Vees appreciates. "When it comes to selecting input sources, the TM3 is extremely flexible," he explained. "Fast integration of the devices into existing setups is simple and straightforward."
Vees notes that while the RTW TM3 TouchMonitor wasn’t the only metering system his company tried, it was the one Wige Broadcast liked the best.
"We had tested various options for loudness metering for this project," he added. "These also included plug-ins installed right on the edit computer. It soon became obvious, however, that a dedicated hardware solution offers many benefits compared to software metering. In addition to the display quality and speed, the accuracy of the metered values plays a key role. In my opinion, no plug-in was capable of achieving the same degree of reliability and display accuracy offered by the TM3."
www.rtw.de
(GK)