Game Creek Video Expands Its Fleet with Two Calrec Apollo Consoles

Game Creek will deploy identical 72 dual-fader Apollo consoles in Victory and Justice, 53-foot-long expandable trucks that will cover large live sporting events mainly for ESPN and ABC. Many of the events require audio feeds in excess of 300 channels to accommodate stereo and multichannel surround. Victory, the first of the trucks to hit the road, has among its tasks the mission to broadcast ESPN Saturday Night Football on ABC. Justice will also cover a variety of events, including NBA games for ESPN later this year.

“We need consoles that are dependable, easy-to-use, and flexible enough to meet the evolving demands of a live show. Calrec gives us all of that and more,” said Paul Bonar, vice president of engineering at Game Creek Video. “Calrec is the accepted standard in remote audio broadcasting in the U.S., so we have no problem booking our trucks or finding operators who are comfortable behind the consoles. As for the Apollo, one major benefit for us is the number of faders we can get in the small space inside a mobile TV truck. That’s something we’ve wanted for 10 years and haven’t been able to get from any manufacturer until now.”

Apollo is Calrec’s top-of-the-line audio console, relying on Bluefin2 high-density signal processing to provide unrivalled resources. Bluefin2 gives Apollo up to 1,020 channel processing paths, 128 program busses, 96 IFB/track outputs, and 48 auxiliaries. Apollo provides unsurpassed processing power and a control surface with OLED displays, touch screens, and light-emitting knobs that detail function and status.

Apollo’s 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.