Rogers Media Purchases Calrec Artemis Audio Consoles

Rogers Media, owner of several Citytv, OMNI, and SportsNet stations throughout western Canada, has purchased a set of Calrec Artemis audio consoles for its Vancouver, British Columbia, facility, which is home to the Citytv Vancouver, OMNI BC, and SportsNet Pacific channels.

The purchase includes a 40-fader Artemis Beam console for the larger of the facility’s two control rooms and a 16-fader Artemis Light for the smaller room. The Vancouver plant is upgrading to HD, and the new Artemis consoles will enable the three stations to produce local shows in 5.1 audio to match its new HD video setup.

The ability to broadcast in 5.1 audio is a feature that helps Citytv Vancouver, OMNI BC, and SportsNet Pacific stay competitive with other local stations. Additionally, the two Artemis consoles will be linked via Calrec’s Hydra2 audio routing system, giving the stations the ability to share any resource across their networks.

“Because the desks are networked together, we can share microphones, IFBs, remote feeds — everything — via the MADI interface,” said Myles Morse, engineering coordinator for Rogers Media Vancouver. “With a networked audio system, it takes a lot less effort to get a piece of content from one place to another, which will make our daily local productions easier. We’ll be much more flexible and able to handle larger, more complex productions, which could translate to more revenue.”

Artemis Beam and Artemis Light are based on the award-winning Apollo platform. Also available in a larger Artemis Shine version, the consoles use the same Bluefin2 HDSP technology as Apollo, and have an enormous routing and processing capacity. Bluefin2 affords 340-channel processing paths on an Artemis Beam and 240 paths on an Artemis Light, with up to 128 program busses, 64 IFB/Track outputs and 32 auxiliaries. Artemis’ I/O functions are performed by Calrec’s Hydra2 audio routing system, which uses high-capacity 8192² crosspoint routers and a variety of I/O units.

The Rogers Media purchase represents Calrec’s first sale of its Apollo technology platform in the Canadian market. The consoles will go live at the Vancouver facility around the end of April.