DirectOut has announced its hardware and audio solutions were deployed for tennis’ Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah.
DirectOut’s PRODIGY.MP delivered full hardware redundancy for the audio system. The solution provides flexible I/O, dual network audio and sample rate conversions. Its FGPA-based, low-latency processing provides Matrix Mixers, summing busses and channel processing, and can simultaneously host two different network formats, with real-time audio exchange between them both, said the company.
PRODIGY.MP’s built-in Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching (EARS) offers users an instantaneous automated switch-over in the event of failure, aimed at delivering seamless coverage without a single frame being lost, added DirectOut.
An audience of more than 50 million watched the Next Gen ATP Finals, which was broadcast in more than 160 countries across the globe. Marco Galizia, technical director for Next Gen ATP Finals, said: “When the referee speaks, it is only for a few minutes. If there is a problem in this tiny window it would be a major issue. The PRODIGY.MP is the first point of redundancy. The Logic of the clock redundancy strategy, EARS, provides automated switching. If it loses clock, it will automatically switch to internal clocking and carry on. If the problems continue and you need to intervene, you can send an OSC command to the mixer and switch manually.”
Redundancy was added throughout the sound design, with back-ups at every point. Two DiGiCo mixing consoles working in mirror mode and an L-Acoustics PA system were included. PRODIGY-MP generated the word clock which was sent to both consoles independently. Audio was sent directly to the broadcast and live sound networks via Dante and AVB.
“The PRODIGY.MP is not only providing redundancy,” said Galizia. “We are managing inputs, embedding audio via Dante and finishing with the AVB cards that send audio through the Luminex switches to the L-Acoustics P1. The PRODIGY.MP also converts the signal from Dante to MADI, so it can be accepted by the DiGiCo consoles.”
