Radio Marca Selects DHD Audio Mixers

Radio Marca has chosen DHD audio mixers and routing as the heart of recently expanded production facilities at its Madrid headquarters.

Supervised by audio and video systems specialist Agrupación de Servicios y Productos de Audio (ASPA), based in the same city, the project includes the planning and equipping of a main radio studio, two secondary studios, three audio production booths and the master control room.

The system recommended and installed by ASPA's project management team includes six DHD digital mixing consoles plus a complete DHD routing matrix. Three RX2 mixers with 18 physical faders have been integrated into the main studio and secondary studios plus three DX2 consoles with four physical faders in the audio production booths. Both models allow layered operation by extending the number of channels of each console.

The new master control room is equipped with a complete routing system centred on the state-of-the-art XD3 Core digital signal processor. The XD3 can handle up to 96 summing buses and is configured to match Radio Marca’s workflow, including fully redundant operation. Options selected include Dante audio over IP, MADI, AES3/EBU, APC and analogue connectivity.

This is the most recent of many DHD systems ASPA has integrated over the years, here in Europe and overseas. They are consistently liked for their reliability, ease of operation and excellent sound quality. From a systems integration perspective, they integrate easily with third party hardware and software including radio automation and comms.

Marca started in 1938 as a sports newspaper, becoming a national reference for its quality and diversity of information. In 2001 it launched Radio Marca, the first Spanish channel dedicated exclusively to sport. The channel focuses on football and also covers sports such as basketball, handball, motorcycling, motor racing, tennis, athletics and cycling. In addition to its sports broadcasts, Radio Marca produces local programming such as Radio Marca Barcelona, which has been broadcasting since 2004. It operates a total of 52 stations, including Albacete, Barcelona, Córdoba, La Coruña, Madrid, Málaga, Murcia, Seville and Valencia.

DHD's RX2 is based on central and fader which combine and scale from small production units with 6 or 12 faders to large consoles with up to 96 faders. Each module has a dedicated high brightness 10.1 inch touchscreen. Supported character sets include West European, Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tamil and Thai. The central module provides the most important audio I/Os plus a direct microphone input and a stereo headphone output. Loudspeakers can also be driven directly from this module. Assignable hardware buttons are provided in the central section. With adaptive labels in the 7 inch vertical touch display, these allow fast and tactile access to important mixer functions such as monitoring and talkback. RX2 modules are designed for easy maintenance and economic power consumption (25 watts maximum each). An included chaining kit allows physical connection of fader modules.

The DX2 is a compact mixer based on a four-fader central module plus a six-fader expansion unit. Both DX2 modules are equipped with a user-configurable 7.8 inch multi-touch screen for viewing fader and central control parameters. The maximum number of faders is determined by the capabilities of the connected core. Four faders plus a dedicated section for setup, monitoring, talkback are incorporated in the central module. Connectivity features include a broadcast quality XLR microphone input, right and left line outputs to feed active loudspeakers, a 6.3 mm jack stereo headphone output plus a 3.5 mm mini jack input port which allows direct audio insertion from a smartphone for live telephone interviews. The fader module has six professional grade 100 mm motorised faders with dust-protection. Each channel incorporates 100 mm motorised faders, two control buttons, a UTF8-supported channel identifier, adjustable gain settings, an input channel meter, plus programme/off-air selection. Each fader can support a second layer. Dedicated potentiometers are provided for headphone and loudspeaker level. The DX2 can be connected to all DHD XC3, XS3 and XD3 cores.

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