Floating Earth uses Lawo mc²56 for live recording of BBC's 'Children in Need Rocks'

After evaluating several alternative solutions in search of a compact, scalable and flexible solution, with Ravenna connectivity and the ability to support its own stageboxes, Lawo's mc²56 mixing console has been the chosen option.

With regular clients including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Warner Music and Sony, the British location recording and production company Floating Earth operates a state-of-the-art mobile unit along with its own post-production rooms and mobile facilities.

A recent update to the mobile unit's mixing and routing facilities has meant that on this occasion it has opted for the German manufacturer's technology. Theirs.

The purchase was motivated by Floating Earth's desire to update the mobile unit to reflect the changing nature of its tasks, as the company is seeing that the number of tracks increase continuously and that the recording at 96kHz It is becoming increasingly common.

After evaluating several alternative solutions in search of a compact, scalable and flexible solution, with Ravenna connectivity and the ability to support your own stageboxes, the mc²56 mixing console with five mxDSP cards and a Nova73 Compact router arrived from Lawo in September 2018, with the installation launched in early November.

The mc²56 console is available in five different frame sizes to meet the needs of smaller outdoor broadcast vehicles, with as few as 16 faders or up to 80 faders for more complex applications. Offering 48 to 144 faders in a high-density dual-fader design, the mc²56XT models meet the needs of larger studios and theaters. For the Floating Earth truck, a 46-fader console was considered optimal.

He Nova73 Compact It has a capacity of 5120 x 5120 crosspoints, and carries up to ten I/O slots that can be equipped with MADI, ATM or Ravenna interface cards. Alternatively, the same slots can be assigned to two AES3 cards for a maximum of 64 AES channels. The preferred Floating Earth configuration required two MADI cards (4-port and 8-port), two RAVENNA, and one AES.

An additional appeal of the mc²56 was the implementation of its copy and paste functions, which Floating Earth found to be “natural and powerful.”

Floating Earth decided on a Lawo solution based on quality and flexibility, and because the operating philosophy fit naturally with the company's workflow. Since many operators will be using the desktop, it was important to offer something special that would ensure they look forward to future projects with the new console.

One of the first projects in which Floating Earth has used the new Lawo equipment has been the production of the popular BBC program, Children in Need Rocks.