TSL Provides Safety Net for Shanghai Media Group

“The solution that SMG were looking for  represented a significant engineering challenge for us, but one that enabled us to deliver very positive results,” explains Martin Dyster, head of audio for TSL Professional Products Ltd. “SMG wanted to combine the standard rack-mount Touchmix unit and the desktop Touchmix Pilot remote into a system where, in the event that they lost the main audio console, its sound operator could keep the show live via the simple Pilot system with the tech manager providing configuration support via the rackmount unit if required. Our R&D team paired the units in a master/slave configuration and wrote new code to satisfy SMG’s requirement, resulting in an entirely viable solution that is relevant to many other applications/environments. In time honored fashion mimicking the evolution of many TSL audio monitoring products, the Touchmix Combo was born from a customer’s vision.”

SMG will use the Touchmix combo systems as a safety net for its 24-hour news operations. Each of its production studios is outfitted with a high-end digital audio console, with an associated audio engineer. The rack-mount Touchmix’s are located in the production room, where the technical manager can make configuration changes, freeing the audio engineer to use the desktop Touchmix Pilot to send the audio to air in the event of a main console crash. In the event that the primary audio console fails for some reason, the parallel configured Touchmix combo systems can take over the audio tasks for the program in production within seconds.

“While the Touchmix system always had mixing capabilities, the master/slave T-Mix/T-Mix Pilot combination is certainly unique”, concludes Dyster.

With the Touchmix Combo’s ability to adjust individual channel mix levels, control balance and pan whilst providing dual operator individual monitoring and dedicated program outputs, the new system is a truly capable audio mixing solution.

The main ‘host’ Touchmix unit (AVM-T-MIX) comprises two 20-channel audio mixers, each configurable as a combination of assignable stereo, mono or even surround input channels per mixer. The 22:9 aspect ratio touchscreen front panel provides volume control, a dual-function gain/balance encoder, headphone socket, USB port, home preset save/recall switch and loudspeakers. The Touchmix Pilot (AVM-T-MIX Pilot) comprises a desktop remote touchscreen panel with a rack-mount host unit. The two-unit combination packages for SMG are interconnected via Ethernet.

About TSL Professional Products Ltd.
TSL Professional Products Ltd. designs, manufactures and markets a range of hardware and software solutions that serve to simplify operations within the television broadcast, cable, satellite, IPTV and IT industries. Specializing in audio monitoring, surround microphones and processors, tally solutions and power management tools, TSL PPL products satisfy and exceed the commercial, technical and operational requirements that exist in IT-based and traditional workflows, helping its customers to lower costs, generate revenue and streamline operations. TSL PPL’s dedicated products team has many years of combined personal, hands-on experience, having worked for broadcasters, post-production facilities, information technology companies and outside broadcast operators worldwide.