The fabulous Frank Gehry-designed New World Center at Miami Beach has been extensively supplied with recording equipment from Merging Technologies. The 756-seat Performance Hall and the smaller Sun Trust Pavilion at the home of the New World Symphony are fully equipped for live performance and recording, and share two multi-track surround capable control rooms. HD video recording and projection is also available for those hiring the spaces.
The Merging system comprises three Horus, two Hapi and Pyramix MassCore 256 Master Packs with three Quintessense Turnkey PC chassis Eucon connected to Avid S6 and S3 consoles. It has been delivered but not finally installed, although it is hoped that recording can start before the end of 2015 with a temporary cabling solution. The full RAVENNA/AES67 installation is currently planned for summer 2016 with an official start date of next September.
While the venue was originally set up to record 64 tracks at 24-bit/48kHz, it became apparent to the Symphony team, led by Roberto Toledo, director of audio services, that the majority of the major opera and concert venues had installed Pyramix and Horus/Hapi networked audio facilities to achieve high track counts at much higher sampling rates – and that a large proportion of major orchestral organisations primarily use Pyramix.
Toledo’s first encounter with Merging’s DSD recording system was through recordings, and a demonstration at NWS by Independent Audio’s Dennis Gaines and Parsons Audio. Toledo summarised his decision-making process: “With regards to the hardware, sonic quality was an important part in the decision. Having heard the hardware, it was clear that choosing the Horus and Hapi for our new system would be the right direction. In addition, the ability to do higher resolution recordings, DXD and DSD to be specific, was of great importance to us… I feel that Horus and Hapi will produce the transparency and clarity I am looking for.”
Moving to Merging hardware means that audio over IP was now part of the package: how does Toledo feel about that? “RAVENNA and AES67 also played a huge part in our decision to go with the Merging hardware. The ability to connect a large system, like the one we purchased, with only a few network cables is truly amazing. Future expansion is very easy, and it is something we hope to do soon.”
“I am very excited to begin using this new system as I have some high expectations for it. I have a feeling it will definitely meet and more than likely, exceed my demands and expectations,” concluded Toledo.
Photo: Rui Dias-Aidos
