Completing its latest expansion phase, Gravity Media’s Production Centre facility in London has extended its remote and distributed production capabilities with the addition of three Calrec Audio Argo audio consoles and ImPulse DSP cores to its existing Calrec infrastructure.
In addition to improving production efficiency, the move has the potential to further develop production capacity with more nuanced, powerful and robust control.
Since 2024 Gravity Media’s Remote Operations Centre (ROC) in White City, London, has provided production, postproduction, and live studio services for a wide range of live sports and entertainment customers. Servicing clients including Formula E, ATP Media and TNT Sports, the 30,000sq-ft ROC now has two 48-fader Calrec Argo S consoles and a 36-fader Argo M, integrated into the facility’s native ST 2110 network topology.
‘Our London Production Centre was a 2110 facility from day one, but we also knew there was going to be a lot of legacy audio feeds that we’d need to incorporate into that,’ says Gravity Media Senior Audio Engineer, Neil Ottley. ‘We needed an audio partner that was able to allow us to fully integrate all those audio streams seamlessly but also have one eye on the future because we are already part way through a phased expansion of our Production Centre. Calrec fit the bill and the fact that its IP Gateways, ImPulse cores, and Hydra2 networking products work seamlessly together really worked for us.’
This expansion means the The Production Centre now has nine dedicated sound control rooms, with the Argo consoles complementing Gravity Media’s existing Calrec Artemis surfaces. The facility also manages six flexible multi booths for off-tube commentary, voiceover and other roles. The development has enabled Gravity Media to continue to refine its workflows, simultaneously increasing its throughput while reducing both financial outlay and environmental impact.
‘Over a 24-hour period, we had 160 people at our Production Centre broadcasting live tennis from Rome, rugby from London and Formula E from Tokyo,’ says Gravity Media Chief Facility Engineer, Paul Sykes,. ‘That’s 160 people who are not taking flights to Tokyo or Rome and having to book hotels. It means we can utilise all our equipment and use it multiple times a day.’
Gravity Media’s investment in Calrec’s Argo technologies means it is already looking at how it can deliver even more control in the future with the latest iteration of Calrec’s True Control 2.0 technology. True Control 2.0 is enabling Gravity Media to not only develop the scale of its remote production at its London Production Centre, but across a new generation of outside broadcast units primed to deliver more efficiencies and even more robust redundancy.
True Control 2.0 expands remote and distributed production ecosystems by giving full operational access to any enabled cores and surfaces, wherever they are. Each controller console can access up to five other consoles simultaneously to give broadcasters much greater levels of remote control without the limitations of mirroring or parallel controlling.
‘True Control 2.0 can be utilised across the Argo range, our existing RP1 remote production units, as well as Calrec’s Type R,’ says Ottley. ‘That really expands the level of control that we’ve got across all of those devices and opens up things like dynamics, EQ, delay and any other processing that you need to produce a true remote mix from our London facility. The combination of the Argo mixers and the truck builds that are currently going on with Gravity Media means we now have the opportunity to do a true remote control of a surface onsite. It means we can use an Argo at our facility to control a console at a venue and access the full range of control that currently we can’t utilise. Having that ability really expands what we could do in the future.’
Meeting current needs by delivering agile solutions for its customers as well as adapting to emerging production demands is not the only benefit of Gravity Media’s adoption of Calrec’s remote and distributed technology. ‘Adopting True Control 2.0 across the whole ecosystem is enormously flexible,’ says Calrec Sales Manager, Anthony Harrison. ‘It’s more environmentally sustainable and gives broadcasters greater control and confidence by seamlessly integrating on-site and remote operations.’
More: https://calrec.com