Maryland’s Sharing Broadcast Station!
Maryland Public Television has installed a Calrec Hydra network into their state-of-the-art broadcast facility in Owings Mill, Maryland.
MPT are currently in the process of upgrading from an analog production core to a digital facility and the adoption of the Hydra system further enhances station’s flexibility.
"We are striving to keep our audio in the digital domain, from the mic XLR to transmission," says MPT Audio Supervisor Jim Bigwood.
"The Hydra eliminates long analog runs from our studios to our production core where our Calrec Alpha 100 I/O’s are located, thus reducing the possibility of noise being introduced into the system.
"In addition, since the Hydra boxes connect to the Alpha 100 racks with only a single CAT5E cable we saved a lot in effort and expense on running multiple mic and line cables to each studio."
MPT installed two 56 channel Alpha 100 consoles in 2002, and will use the Hydra network to share studio resources across both boards.
"At the completion of our digital upgrade MPT will have three studios and two control rooms (CR1 and CR2), each equipped with an identical Alpha 100.
"We wanted to be able to run any studio from either of the two control rooms and the Hydra system gives us that flexibility. Our system will have one Hydra box in each studio connected to a gigabyte switch in the production core.
"Hydra makes it easy to route resources to and from multiple studios via a single control room so that a show may have an interview set in one studio and a performance area in another. It sure beats the way we used to patch audio signals through multiple tie lines!"
MPT produces live to air or live to tape programming most days of the week and also provides live studio facilities to clients such as PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, BBC, Fox News, Fox Sports and ESPN.
