Last year, RBDG designed a brand new studio facility featuring an SSL C200 fully digital mixing console for Bicoastal Music in Ossining, New York, which has just opened for business. Searching for a sonically pure piece of audio equipment with which to control the proprietary RBDG-designed 5.1 monitor speaker system at Bicoastal, Knowles turned to SymNet. "We've previously used SymNet in several home theatres and home theatre showrooms," he says. "And now we've designed the first control room monitor system with it."The SymNet surround monitor control system at Bicoastal Music is centred on the 8x8 DSP, the audio matrix system's core hardware module, which houses four Sharc DSP chips. A DigIO 12x12 DSP and i/o device provides a digital audio interface to the system and is interconnected via CAT5 cable with a pair of HomerLink units, each capable of supporting up to eight channels of AES-3 48kHz/24-bit inputs and outputs. A BreakOut12 unit provides analog outputs from the system.
Knowles explains: "There are six inputs, and for outputs we have left, right, and centre, each having three outputs - for low frequency, mid and high. They all also have a sub output that all combine into one. There are four surround loudspeaker outputs that feed hybrid passive boxes. We're using a partial passive filtered network on the surrounds then making some corrections with SymNet, so we get the best of both worlds."
The final step in the installation involves having the SSL console communicate directly with SymNet using the RS-232 or RS-485 capabilities of the system. Knowles continues: "You don't want to control the volume digitally from the console because you're truncating the bit depth. The console will let you turn down the bit stream, but we lose resolution as we reduce the amplitude. So, we're feeding full-bore digital into SymNet, which is great, because once you have you're level set you know that you're always where you want to be. Then, you use the console's monitor level to control the monitor speakers."
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
