By Jeff Touzeau
“We’re live to tape and we don’t do second takes.”
That’s what Rob Alexander, freelance A1 for NBCUniversal Syndication Studios’ The Steve Wilkos Show and Karamo daytime talk shows, has to say about the workflow and need for a fast and efficient mixing console at NBCU’s Stamford Studios in Fairfield County, Conn.
That’s why the late 2024 installation of a Solid State Logic System T S400 broadcast audio platform on the venue’s 15th anniversary marked a breakthrough for the 46,000-square-foot production facility taking up the former Rich Forum Theater.
Having been working on an SSL C100 HDS in Stamford Studios’ control room since 2013, Alexander, a 40-year audio veteran, says he was pleasantly surprised by how quickly and easily he could operate the new System T; it boasts far fewer hardware controls than the old console. “Because the console is so dramatically different than the C100 in appearance, certainly in the layout with the touch screens, my fear was that the learning curve was going to be long,” he said. “But it really is very, very user friendly and the learning curve was relatively short.”
Alexander continued, “I’ve worked on a lot of different consoles in a lot of different places, and I’ve never seen an audio console with just one knob on the fader strip. One of the most important things for me is the speed with which I can access things like microphone trims. The shows are very dynamic and there is a lot going on, so I’m controlling levels and EQ on the fly. I’ve had no issues getting to everything at speed.”
Because Alexander often must react quickly to events on the shows, the S400 surface has been seamlessly integrated with a pair of System T Fader Tiles to the right of the master section, putting a total of 64 channel faders under his fingers. “It can go from a whisper to a scream very quickly, so having the ability to expand the fader count when required is huge,” he explained.
On a typical show, Alexander is managing 18 microphones with another 10 audience microphones hanging from the lighting grid in the studio, which seats about 120 people. “Very often we will shoot guests in the wings,” he said. “Very often someone leaves in anger, and they’ve been known to tear off their microphone and storm off to a green room. There are shotgun mics on the handheld cameras, and of course the cameras follow them. So those shotgun mics can save me sometimes, otherwise, I have no audio to play with.”
System T’s onboard dynamics processing provides an extra layer of control on such a dynamic show. “Having two channels of compression on each channel strip is wonderful,” said Alexander, “because one I use as a normal compressor to level out, and then compressor two is the drop-dead, hard limiter, which I really need. It took a little bit of tweaking in the beginning to get it how I wanted it to sound, but that is a wonderful tool to have for what we do.”
Beyond the microphone inputs, said, “We have four playback sources for rolling in tape packages, three guest remote video calls in and out, and mix minuses on those. We send feeds to the PA, there are feeds to a producer area backstage and feeds to an area where there are guests backstage.”
The new System T was delivered with SSL’s SB 32.24 SuperAnalogue Stagebox and has been integrated into the facility’s existing Dante network.
To interface with the control room’s legacy infrastructure, the new system also includes SSL’s MADI-Bridge units.
— With editing by RBR+TVBR, in Kingston, N.Y.
