Music, Sound, and Audio Technology

PAM2 Units Streamline QA Chores for 3D Capture

All Mobile Video (AMV), provider of end-to-end video and audio production services for entertainment, sports, news programming and events, has installed three TSL Professional Products Ltd.'s (PPL) PAM2 3G16 Audio Monitoring Units in its 3D-capable Epic OB truck. AMV offers a full spectrum of services, from seven Manhattan-based sound stages with full post-production capabilities to a fleet of six 53-foot extender OB trucks and eight satellite uplink transmission vehicles. AMV brought the Epic OB truck into service to meet the ever-increasing demand for 3D capture for major events. The PAM2 3G16 units, which AMV installed in its main Quality Control (QC) areas—the audio room, tape (for QC of all taped audio sources) and engineering—provide the company with top-shelf audio quality assurance.

"When we were looking for audio QC gear for the Epic truck, we focused on ease of use and good sound quality," says Lee Blanco, director of engineering at All Mobile Video.

"We have experience with menu-driven units that are not easy to use—with the engineer having to constantly dive into the menu structure to change over the input to the signal that needs monitoring. This type of operation is not easy to do quickly. Also, as we work on live events, such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions or the MTV Movie Awards, the production happens at lightning speed. If someone misses a hot-key assignment during a complex setup, fumbling with menus almost cancels out the mission of quality control. This is one area that needs to be instant and easy, or the creative team can lose the moment. The PAM2 units from TSL PPL have solved this problem."

The first things the AMV team noticed about the PAM2 units were their front panel signal-assignment buttons. Within 10 minutes of turning the units on for the first time, team members were navigating through it quickly. The design allows an operator to easily change inputs and look at different aspects of a particular audio signal from a metering standpoint.

"We work with all types of audio, analog, AES, de-embedded, stereo and 5.1. The PAM2 units can handle all sources with ease and have the ability to decode all DolbyE signals," says Blanco. "The I/O is very simple to hook up and, more important, from an operational point of view, it is very user friendly. A tape operator who needs to hear the embedded signal, the AES coming out of the tape machine or the router feeds, etc., can easily navigate the PAM2 unit to find the levels he needs, even if he's not a dedicated audio person. Hit one button and you're accessing analog, hit another and it's digital — that's all there is to it. Additionally, for a device with such a small footprint, it offers remarkably good audio from its integrated speaker system."

Recently, AMV employed the PAM2 units for the 2012 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. The production was captured to tape and posted later. "QC is very important here because while the show is running, you need to know that everything going down to tape is correct," Blanco says. "For this level of QC, we don't need to change the audio or re-mix, we just need to know that the selected audio source meets our expectations. The PAM2 units allow us to do just that quickly and easily."

Resources:

www.tsl.co.uk