Caracol Monitors Remotely During COVID-19 Crisis

Rastatt, Germany (May 22, 2020)—Lawo put its remote FAT (Factory Acceptance Testing), training and equipment demonstration procedures into play when Colombia’s Caracol private media company purchased three mixing consoles during the current coronavirus pandemic.

Recently, Bogotá-based Caracol purchased a 48-fader Lawo mc²56 mixing console with Dallis frame for its news studio, another mc²56 for a new OB van and a mc²36 console for the broadcaster’s Studio 10 facility. Caracol safety protocols during Covid-19 require that the company’s engineers be able to monitor and meter critical audio signals from home, so they contacted Lawo for a solution.

Lawo Disrupts Covid-19’s Disruption

On April 30, Lawo engineer Daniel Egea demonstrated remote monitoring solutions for Caracol engineers via two possible monitoring methods—one employing Lawo AoIP Stream Monitor software and a second using RƎLAY VPB software. Both solutions use RAVENNA/AES67 connectivity to monitor the mc² consoles. Since the demonstration of both setups met Caracol’s requirements, both software packages will be configured for long-term tests, and eventually will be a permanent part of their studio installation.

“The question for us was, how can the engineers both listen to and meter the audio signals while not on site?” says Egea. The solution was an infrastructure that allowed the mc² console core to supply its audio signals to a facility computer.

“Audio signals were supplied to the streaming network via the RAVENNA card in the core and collected from the network on a PC using AoIP Stream Monitor or RƎLAY VPB software,” says Egea. “By accessing this computer via Teamviewer or Remote Desktop through a second NIC [network interface card], Caracol engineers can now conveniently monitor the most important signals from home. This setup offers a very flexible monitoring situation and has simple, intuitive GUIs to quickly create a suitable monitoring overview.”

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