Big Bang Opts To Tango

Bristol-based post-production facility Big Bang Post has installed a Smart AV Tango control surface for use with its Merging Technologies Pyramix DAWs.
The system was supplied by eMerging, the London-based distributor of both Merging and Smart AV products in the UK.
Big Bang has used Pyramix systems in two of its five dubbing suites for audio post-production for two years, and for much of that time, the technical staff have been looking for a control surface to use with the Merging system. Big Bang's Chief Dubbing Mixer Neil Hipkiss said: "We investigated many possible systems for use with Pyramix, but they were all many tens of thousands of pounds.
"In the current economic climate, we would have found it hard to justify that kind of expense. However, we were in regular touch with the guys at eMergin for Pyramix support, and when they started looking after Smart AV in the UK, they showed us Tango."
The demonstration was timely, as Big Bang had just won the contract to dub audio onto thousands of wildlife clips being archived on-line at: www.arkive.org.
This charity project aims to provide free access via the internet to some of the world's best wildlife video and audio footage for educational purposes - 'an on-line vault for video and audio of many endangered species', as the Arkive web site puts it. However, nearly all of the footage is mute, and Neil Hipkiss and the team at Big Bang are now spending a lot of their time marrying archive audio recordings of some of the world's rarest creatures to short video clips of them in their natural habitats.
Examples of this fascinating project can be seen at: www.arkive.org.
Neil Hipkiss said: "For a job that size, with so many files to tracklay, we knew we would need a better control surface for Pyramix than a computer keyboard and mouse. Fortunately, it was just then that eMerging came down with the Tango."
Smart AV's Tango offers many of the features of these expensive digital mixing and control surfaces, such as intuitive, touch-screen-driven assignable controls, a touch-sensitive jog wheel and 'hot keys' to which user-definable macros can be assigned - but for a fraction of the price. Neil Hipkiss was immediately impressed. He admitted: "It won me over straight away. Until I saw Tango, I thought you had to pay five or six times the price for these kinds of features. Fundamentally, of course, it's a remote control for the Pyramix, but for a user like me that's used to a mixing desk or an Audiofile-type interface, it does provide a more natural way of working. If I want to tweak an EQ, I can now do it with some knobs rather than by dragging a mouse around on a screen, and I love the user-definable keys and the proper job wheel.
"Strangely enough, using Tango has also opened up Pyramix for me. I've been a bit of a dyed-in-the-wool AudioFile user for years and had left the Pyramix to some of the other guys at Big Bang, but I was so taken with the Tango that I began using Pyramix again.
"They make a very user-friendly combination that's fast to use, which is essential while we're working on something like the Arkive project."
Richard Bowen, eMerging co-founder, said: "Like many other post-production houses and freelancers, Big Bang Post are discovering what an efficient, ergonomic front-end the Tango can be for a digital audio workstation. Put simply, Tango offers an unbeatable combination of features at its price point."
Further information is available at: www.emerging.com.
(KMcA/BMcC)