Euphonix Max Air Makes Headlines at Newseum

New state-of-the-art interactive “News-Museum” Grand Opening April 11th

Palo Alto, Mar 18th 2008

Euphonix, a world leader in large-format mixing consoles and control surfaces announced today that Newseum, a 250,000-square-foot state-of-the-art museum of news and news history featuring two Euphonix Max Air broadcast consoles, will celebrate its grand opening on April 11th.

The Newseum, located near the White House in Washington, DC, is one of the most technologically advanced museums in the world, and features hands-on interactive exhibits, 15 high-tech theaters and studios that detail 500 years of news history and news-gathering capabilities.

Spearheading the intense system integration of all HD production studios, control rooms, and A/V systems was Virginia-based integrator, Communications Engineering, Inc. (CEI). CEI was responsible for designing and building several production control rooms, installing audio and video equipment in the Newseum theaters and studios, installing network equipment connected to interactive areas throughout the museum, and building the sophisticated master control room.   
CEI created two high-definition production control rooms with adjoining audio control rooms. Each control room shares an identical complement of gear including a 32+8 Euphonix Max Air digital audio mixing console with fully redundant DF66 DSP SuperCore signal processing engines. Designed specifically for on-air broadcast and live-to-tape production applications, the Max Air will be used not only for in-house Newseum productions, but also for broadcasting public affairs shows and news programs by major television networks. In order to satisfy the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Max Air is mounted on a motorized table that can be raised and lowered to meet individual operator needs.

The Max Air consoles support three unique studios within the Newseum. The Newseum TV Studio, a mid-size studio accommodating a live audience; the Pennsylvania Avenue Studio, a glass-encased venue offering a spectacular view of the Capitol down Pennsylvania Avenue; and the Annenberg Theater, a large and modern presentation and film venue. Each studio is equipped with remote-controllable Euphonix Modular Mic Preamps, making access to any mic pre from either control room possible.  This is facilitated by the use of simple MADI routing and dynamic assignment of mic pre control.

An additional benefit of using MADI as the audio infrastructure is that a single coax cable can transport up to 64 channels of 48 kHz, 24-bit audio. This made interconnecting the audio control rooms as simple as running two short coax cables between the DSP SuperCores in the terminal Gear Area which then allowed sharing of sources other than Mic Preamps between rooms.
Euphonix has several broadcast clients in the greater Washington, DC area including cable giant CNN, AARP, and Henninger Media Services. Most recently CEI and Euphonix worked together integrating and outfitting Discovery Communication’s in-house post production facility located in Silver Spring, MD.