The Nine Network has enhanced its Olympics coverage through a technology upgrade with Calrec and D2N – Technology Solutions. The network, which has been using Calrec's analogue products and solutions for many years in Australia, has been gradually shifting towards Calrec’s digital solutions such as the Omega and Sigma series, and eventually their Apollo range connected to IP driven Impulse Cores.

For the Olympics upgrade, Nine Network turned to Calrec’s Australian distributor and reseller, D2N – Technology Solutions. The network purchased two Calrec Brio audio mixing consoles from D2N to add to their existing Calrec ecosystem. These consoles were specifically bought to handle the Olympics' broadcast coverage by managing 82 DX (distribution feeds) and facilitating the creation of 24 CX (contribution feeds) by adding Nine’s own commentary from 13 commentary booths across Paris and five commentary booths in-house from their HQ at ODS.

"Nine's philosophy is all about interconnectivity. This not only applies broadly to the connectivity that we have between our eight bureaus across Australia and our LA branch; but also goes down to infrastructure level whereby we require our devices and systems to interconnect between one another with great flexibility, ease and reliability. The Calrec approach of providing connected audio signals and pathways across multiple studios and control rooms allows for that methodology that Nine desires to be ensured and maintained to the finest detail and highest level. As such and to complement this, D2N were the right technology partner to help us with our recent Calrec upgrade," said Shaun Zuccolotto, Nine Broadcast Tech Support Engineer - Communication and Audio specialist.

The Nine Network operates three control rooms, seven studios and six off-tube booths within their Calrec ecosystem. Calrec stage-boxes carry the audio signals to and from various handoff points across their studios on multiple floors and their data centre. The audio is then processed at any of their five Calrec consoles and passed to air or to their ISO record units for broadcast purposes.

"Between the two Apollo worksurfaces, VP2 headless mix engine and two recently purchased Brios our facility was able to successfully keep our news channel on air whilst adding two continuous broadcast channels and our 9Now online digital broadcast platform that ran for the duration of the Olympics' coverage. Thanks to D2N and Calrec we successfully and comfortably handled this major event in and amongst our BAU and existing facility," Zuccolotto added.

The Nine Network is a fully compliant 2110 IP facility and has the capability to route audio to any floor in their multi-story building across IP domains using Layer 3 routing. D2N Technology Solutions, founded in 2005 by Jason Owen, offers a range of options in terms of moving content, communicating and the very best in video and audio products.

"With D2N being in the country and more specifically Sydney, we have a partner who is in our own time-zone that is able to react to our wants and needs in a timely manner and they are always happy to respond with swift professionalism. As a customer, we know that D2N will be able to deal with any issue or request that we have and that gives us the peace of mind that a 24/7 broadcast facility requires," Zuccolotto concluded.