Mix Kitchen or how to control Lawo consoles from anywhere

Mix Kitchen only transports monitoring and control data, keeping mission-critical TX audio within the facility infrastructure and avoiding bandwidth-intensive multi-channel audio transport.

The audio production consoles of the serie mc², as well as their surfaceless systems, including the mc² Micro Core, can now be controlled remotely from anywhere in the world with a stable Internet connection, even using a smartphone as a personal 4G hotspot.

In a demonstration within his weekly seminar series Lao Lounge, Lawo's audio production equipment has demonstrated the ease and flexibility with which sound engineers can control a broadcaster's Lawo audio production environment from almost anywhere.

Inspired by Lawo's desire to help audio engineers during lockdown the new solution Mix Kitchen will allow working remotely as if the operator were physically at the station. The most important ingredient of the proposed configuration is the remote control of the faders using a Mackie HUI compatible fader panel. Mix Kitchen requires only slight configuration adaptations (using the supplied templates) to allow the Nova73 console core at the broadcaster's premises to be controlled remotely.

Additionally, Lawo's new offering allows on-site access to any Mac or Windows-based computer in the broadcaster's data center and can be complemented by an integrated vsmPanel that provides complete remote control over hundreds of third-party broadcast studio devices. Mix Kitchen includes capabilities of LiveView video monitoring in combination with the IP video solutions of Lawo.

No additional hardware required de Lawo: solo las herramientas disponibles en el mercado, un ordenador portátil y el software mxGUI de Lawo (incluido en todas las mesas de mezclas de la serie mc²) permiten al ingeniero encargado tomar el control del hardware de Lawo en el centro de emisión o en el hub, con la misma calidad de audio y fiabilidad. Mix Kitchen sólo transporta datos de monitoreo y control, manteniendo el audio TX de misión crítica dentro de la infraestructura de la instalación y evitando el transporte de audio multicanal que consume mucho ancho de banda.

Christian Struck, director de Producto Senior de Lawo Audio Production, señala que “basándonos en nuestra experiencia en control remoto, recogida en recientes proyectos de IP, queríamos que estos beneficios estuvieran disponibles para todos los ingenieros de audio que tienen que hacer frente a las actuales medidas de distanciamiento social en todo el mundo. La configuración de la cocina mixta funciona casi fuera de la caja: no se requiere ningún hardware adicional de Lawo, ni actualizaciones o mejoras. Los ingenieros de audio pueden trabajar con un económico panel de faders que soporta Mackie HUI (por ejemplo Icon Platform X, Behringer X-Touch), su portátil, un ratón y una tableta”.