VS-R264 Streaming church services online with
Tascam VS-R264 at the Church of the “Quick to Hearken” Icon of
the Mother of God in Tallinn, Estonia.
The construction of the Church of the “Quick to Hearken” Icon of the Mother of God was completed
in June 2013, and was consecrated by the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia. It serves as a centre of
Russian Orthodox religion and community for the Lasnamäe suburb of Tallinn.
Due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic the church was closed but all kind of regular services were
still happening on a daily basis.
Integrator SG Install Ltd, together with EW Sound & Light OÜ (Tascam’s distributor in
Estonia), made a proposal to the church to try a new way of holding the services through streaming technology to
a YouTube channel. The project goal was to make it possible for parishioners to take part in the church services
during the quarantine period and in the future.
SG Install had previously made all of the sound system equipment installations for this church and
EW Sound & Light proposed the Tascam VS-R264 as the streaming appliance. “The reason for selecting the
VS-R264 was that Tascam is well known for product quality and outstanding reliability” commented Stanislav
Sergejev of EW Sound & Light.
The audio system consists of four SE4 condenser microphones for choirs, plus two Shure VP83 for
the
background and the reader, connected to a separate mixer. Then there are a pair of Shure VP89M shotgun
microphones in the altar, two more Shure wireless microphones and a Crown 31 hanging microphone near the central
gates.
All signals are mixed together and routed to a BSS BLU-100 matrix DSP processor, then sent out via
a Shure PSM300 monitoring system wirelessly to the audio input of the Tascam VS-R264 video streamer, which is
installed in a rack in the choir balcony. This avoided some audio cabling which would have been tricky to
install.
The camera used was a Panasonic HC-V770 camcorder, but there is a plan to
upgrade the video systen to add a second camera and also add a small vision mixer.
Streaming to YouTube from the VS-R264 uses the RTMP protocol and is in Full HD resolution
1920 × 1080p60. Although recording is not currently used, the church does plan to use the VS-R’s
recording feature
to record some of the most important church services, so that they can be edited and posted to the YouTube
channel or the church web site later.
The project was successful and the customer was very satisfied with the quality and simplicity of
use of the VS-R264. Parishioners are delighted that they can take part in church services even while seated at
home.
Within couple days of the system going live they had collected more than 1,500 subscribers. This
has since risen to nearly 1,900.
Since 1991 EW Sound & Light OÜ offers complete professional sound and lighting equipment
solutions, being the official distributor of the world’s best-known brands such as Shure, JBL Professional,
Neutrik, Tascam, Crown and others in Estonia. We supply Estonia’s largest rental and installation companies,
theatres and concert halls, educational institutions and museums, factories and conference centres, etc.
In addition to concert and studio equipment, we also offer integrated sound system
engineering and planning for new buildings and existing venues. Thanks to state-of-the-art sound
systems, we can offer complete integration solutions without competition.
DA-6400
Tascam DA-6400 Is The Star At “Greece’s Next Top Model“ TV Show
VF Pro Media, a professional broadcast supplier based in Athens, have for over 15 years provided broadcast
services to the Greek television networks, ranging from supply and rental of broadcast equipment, to shooting
and editing for full TV productions, and providing on-site broadcast vans for live events.
For Greece’s Next Top Model, a reality TV series which aires on the Star Channel and was the
number one TV show in Greece in 2019, there was a requirement to record 32 separate audio channels together with
a multi-camera TV shoot. For this important task, VF Pro Media chose a Tascam DA-6400 64-track audio recorder
which is able to record 32 channels at 96-kHz sampling rate and 24-bit resolution. The recorder was supplied and
installed by Elina PC, the Tascam distributor in Greece, who additionally provided product training for the
audio engineers to enable them to implement the device in their setup as quickly as possible and get the maximum
benefit from its many functions in short time.
The audio is provided over a Dante network and so the IF-DA64 Dante extension card for the DA-6400 was a key
requirement. Other reasons why VF Pro Media chose the DA-6400 were for its high recording track count, its
mobility and its small “footprint” in a rack where it only takes up one height unit. Ease of use like operation
from a dedicated iPad app was also an important factor since the recorder is used by many different sound
engineers.
VF Pro Media commented “We wanted a machine that can record at once at least 32 channels via Dante and has the
option for remote control, but also to be easy to use and to be reliable. Tascam has a long history of offering
reliable solutions for recording, so we knew it was the right choice for us.”
There are 32 mics that are handled by a Yamaha QL5 digital console which communicates via
Dante with the
DA-6400. The DA-6400 is also connected via Dante with a Pro Tools system, and all connections are made with
Cat-6 cables. Sometimes the DA-6400 is the primary recorder and sometimes it is the backup recorder, depending
on the location where the TV shoot is taking place.
Conclusion
Overall, the installation was quite straightforward, and there weren’t any difficulties,
except that all machines had to be upgraded to the latest Dante software. The customer was satisfied enough with
the service and product to the extent that they ordered a second DA-6400 unit.
About VF Pro Media Broadcasting Services
VF Pro Media was established as a corporation in Greece in 2004 with offices in Athens. Soon with the rapid
pace of technology and the extensive needs for broadcasting coverage, VF Pro Media evolved and now is one of the
leading full service companies in the broadcast industry, as the company has more than 80 percent of the Greek
television shows and productions. https://www.vfpromedia.com/
About Elina PC
ELINA AVEE was established in 1970, by Anthony Mazarakis, an electronics engineer with a great passion for
Hi-Fi music reproduction and recording and started by distributing Hi-Fi equipment throughout Greece. In 1980
Elina started manufacturing a line of loudspeakers for Hi-Fi use, under the brand name Dynasonic and then
entered the professional audio market in 1995, becoming the main distributor for some top audio manufacturers,
including Tascam. Today, Elina has a solid dealer network throughout Greece, and covers the hardware and
software needs of musicians, professional studios and broadcast stations alike. https://www.elina.gr/
Lititz, PA, USA, July 2018 — The rumor is false that when prehistoric fish first crawled onto land, Clair
Global
was there to provide the sound system and technical expertise. It only seems like the legendary production
company
has been providing tour, festival, broadcast, and corporate event support for 400 million years. But should a
fish
attempt such a feat today, Clair Global may well be present to record the sound of the event with a Tascam
DA-6400
64-track digital recorder and archive the stereo mix with a Tascam SS-CDR250N CD player.
“Nowadays multitrack recording is a big deal for concert tours,” observes Clair Global Senior Director-Systems
Development Harry Witz. “Some people bring out full DAW rigs, but that’s a lot of space and weight. Some record
to
a laptop. But I prefer dedicated hardware, and using the Tascam DA-6400 is simple, convenient, and reliable.
It’s
1U rack-mount, and you’re setting up your rack and your console at a gig anyway. It’s available with Dante or
MADI
cards; I use a lot of DiGiCo products, so I got a MADI card. Hooking it up is dead easy: Connect two coaxial
cables into the input rack of a DiGiCo, and it’s up and running.”
You have to adjust a few settings on the front panel to get it to talk to the console, Witz acknowledges. “But
once you know what to do, it’s pretty simple. Then you just hit Record. That’s it; you don’t have to deal with
anything else until you’re done. You don’t have to get out cables and your converter, find a place to set your
computer so you can see the screen, make sure you have power, and boot up the computer.”
Once up and running, Witz notes, “it automatically tracks the inputs from the MADI rack. You can set up the
little metering section on the front so that it’s easy to see that you have input on everything. You can even
see
that you have live mics without looking at the board. It has a caddy with a hot swappable SSD drive, so if you
fill a drive, you swap it out and keep going.” When finished recording, Witz connects the DA-6400’s USB 3 port
to
a laptop and downloads the files. “It’s quick,” he asserts. “A two-hour show downloads in just a few minutes.”
When testing the Tascam DA-6400, Witz recorded a half-dozen bands in genres ranging from Irish folk music to
heavy rock. “The first thing I noticed is, the thing’s dead quiet,” he reports. “I’ve listened to DA-6400 tracks
in my home studio, and they’re as high quality as anything I’ve ever heard.”
For one high-profile Clair tour, Witz was preparing to mix some dates the regular engineer couldn’t make. “I
watched the show so I knew what was going on, recorded it on the DA-6400, brought the recorder back to the shop,
plugged it into a DiGiCo SD10, and used it to mix the tracks on the board,” he recollects. “It worked great for
that. How much easier could it be than a 1U rackspace recorder that does 64 tracks at 48 kHz? Another of our
engineers and I both gave the DA-6400 a thumbs up, and it’s now on Clair’s ’approved’ list.”
At Clair Global, multiple engineers are responsible for testing new equipment. Senior Director of Engineering
Howard Page assessed the Tascam SS-CDR250N two-channel networking CD/media recorder. “For worldwide concert
tours,
we always need a reliable and easy-to-use way of archiving the shows to a medium-or multiple media-that is
instantly transferrable to many situations,” explains Page. “The SS-CDR250N unit fills that need perfectly. I
use
the SS-CDR250N to record full archive recordings of all of my live shows.”
Previously, Page used Tascam CD-RW901 CD recorder/players. “My custom CueController program for Windows PC was
rewritten to take advantage of the complete RS232 remote-control capabilities of the CD-RW901,” he recalls.
“Artists and band members really appreciated the results, as they could get a CD disc of a show with not only
the
venue and date of recording but also fully named and ID’d tracks.”
The SS-CDR250N enabled Page to take advantage of the latest advances in technology. “Bands and artists want a
more flexible format to instantly download into their computers,” he observes. “Like the CD-RW901, the
SS-CDR250N
offers RS232 control, and it has exciting new features, like backup recording, the ability to upload files to a
server, and many more great features that make it ideal for our purposes. Initially the SS-CDR250N firmware was
not fully compatible with what the CD-RW901 was able to do but thanks to outstanding firmware development by the
technical guys at TASCAM in Japan, the SS-CDR250N now interfaces perfectly with my CueController control
software.”
Page’s show control software has too many elements to detail here. Suffice it to say that, used with the TASCAM
SS-CDR250N, the end result includes a full archive recording with all tracks ID’d, including song titles, where
it
was recorded, and on what date. Page records simultaneously on both a USB memory stick and an SD card for an
extra
level of security. Touring pressures have precluded him from using the SS-CDR250N’s FTP features to upload files
to a server, “but,” he states, “I am certainly excited to get to those functions in the future.”
While features and sound quality are crucial for Witz and Page, it’s imperative that gear holds up under the
stresses of touring. “The DA-6400 has been absolutely reliable,” states Witz. “The SS-CDR250N has performed
flawlessly so far,” Page adds. And that’s no fish story.
DA-6400 DA-6400 used at 34th Chaos Communication Congress
The Chaos Communication
Congress is an annual conference between Christmas and New Year,
where interested and committed people meet to discuss computer security and social and technological
developments.
The event is organised by the German Chaos Computer Club. The interest has
been
international for a long time and attracted 15,000 participants to the Leipzig exhibition halls in December
2017.
Since 2005, a team from the Technical University of Ilmenau has been streaming the lectures at the congress for
many thousands of spectators. In the meantime, an independent team, the Video Operation Center (VOC), has grown
out of it in which pros and committed helpers volunteer to make many events freely available on the Internet
throughout the year. As the largest event of the VOC, the Congress always sets new quality standards and
promotes
internal development. This year’s focus was on sound. For the first time, a separate mix was created for
streaming
and recording and the entire production chain was switched to stereo.
At the 34th congress
(34C3) in December 2017, there were four lecture halls, each with over 12 hours of lectures per day. The almost
170 lectures were streamed live and then published on media.ccc.de.
Volunteers
took over the live mixing of the lectures. In addition to the picture direction, each hall had its own audio
mixing console and a Tascam DA-6400 with Dante interface cards. The mixing consoles
were remotely controlled from a central audio control room. Remote control was chosen since no suitable space
was
available to ensure insulation against ambient noise. This also made it possible to provide better support for
volunteers in the event of questions or problems. It was very important to easily secure a complete multi-track
recording of all presentations in order to be able to repair the mix for later publication in case of an error.
Since a Dante network was already available, the use of the DA-6400 with Dante interface cards was the logical
choice. By placing the recorders in the hall, the recording was independent of the network connection between
the
halls and the central control room. To monitor the remaining recording time, the technicians used the network
control functions of the recorder. The remaining capacity of the SSDs was automatically queried at regular
intervals via Telnet and displayed with an existing monitoring tool.
Due to the short set-up time, the simple commissioning and uncomplicated operation was very helpful to the
team.
The recordings could be started in no time at all. At the end all recordings were faultless and could be used
successfully for the quick repair of some lectures.
DR-70D Fritzsche uses the DR-70D with his Sony
FS7 camera
Creative
producer Bruno Fritzsche from Stuttgart, Germany, has
successfully used the Tascam DR-70D for a commercial video production at “Green
Innovation and Investment Forum 2017” in Stuttgart. The DR-70D had been rigged to the camera and connected via a
wireless filmmaker kit to feed further recording equipment. Using this setup, it was easy to combine and
synchronise the high-resolution audio recording with the video in a later step.
Bruno Fritzsche is working as a creative producer and director since 2010 and has already received several
awards
for his creative work.
DR-100MKII Mercedes with her DR-100MKII in
an interview in Havana
A concert with Addys Mercedes is a journey
between moon and sun, yesterday and today, depth and ease. The great voice liberates the music of her homeland
from antiquated clichés of thick cigars, singing grandpas and ladies of easy virtue and takes us into a world of
exuberant cheerfulness and deep melancholy – here at the interview in Havana and at the beginning of the new
year
on her Germany tour from 7 January to 17 June 2017.
DR-60DMKII Mare Nostrum use DR-60DMKII for
scientific documentaries
"Only
few people have heard and talked about the sound that the heart of every volcano emits. In every single lava
stone and basalts we find on volcano summits and flanks there is a fragment of our history of Earth and
Mankind. We have to tell this in a different way to internet users who can participate on the web in our
initiative which is unique in its kind." -- VFF Marenostrum e. V.
A Tascam DR-60DMKII is currently being used to help create scientific documentaries
of
active volcanoes. The VFF Research Institute Marenostrum e.V., registered in Austria, started their research
project in 2014 and decided to use a Tascam DR-60DMKII to archive the sounds of those volcanoes and
publish
the results to the world. First recordings have been made at the Stromboli in Italy. The project is planned to
be
completed by 2018.
Two US-16x08 interfaces have been introduced into the home studio of Masayuki
Muraishi, a leading drummer in Japan. His studio is used for pre-production and recording of artists he
produces.
Mr. Muraishi also teaches drums in the studio and is working on a recording curriculum for his students. The
US-16x08s were introduced to meet a demand for drum recording in the studio.
US-16x08 US-16x08 Application Example: Hirotaka
Mori Live Recording
Three Tascam US-16x08 were used together with Tascam X-48MKII and Tascam DR-44WL on the multitrack recording of
the “Masayuki Muraishi meets Hirotaka Mori ‘LIVE ON PLANET EARTH’” DVD, which features
the
work of the widely popular singer-songwriter Hirotaka Mori.
On the day of the event, a monitor console was not
used, so the monitor console lines were directly connected to three US-16x08 used in mic-pre mode. The X-48MKII
had the IF-AN24X analogue expansion card installed, and its connection to the US-16x08 was made using three
XLR/D-Sub multi-conductor cables. In order to utilize all the inputs used on the stage, a 24-channel recording
was
done.
The DR-44WL was used to record the ambient sound of the venue as a whole, and was placed at the front-of-house
mix position. A boom stand was installed in the PA booth, and the DR-44WL was remote-controlled via Wi-Fi with
level-monitoring active.
The post-recording mixing and mastering were both done using Sonar Platinum, using only the standard plug-ins
and
functions of Sonar Platinum. The mix recall function of Sonar Platinum was used, and distinct mixing was done
for
each song within this project. For effects, extensive use was made of the Sonar ProChannel effects features.
Note: Since this was a multi-angle DVD, the video data volume was large, and the audio was recorded in a
compressed state.
Equipment Used
TASCAM US-16x08
TASCAM X-48MK2
TASCAM DR-44WL
TEAC AV-P250LUV
SONAR Platinum Software
Recording Venue: SHIMOKITAZAWA GARDEN
About Hirotaka Mori
Born March 9, 1976, Hirotaka Mori is a singer songwriter originally from Kagoshima Prefecture. He made his
major
debut with Warner Music Japan in October 2001. While there, he released six works – including the single
“Zero Chiten” and the album “Coexisting Concepts.” Subsequently, he shifted to indies,
releasing the album “planetblue” in 2009 and the album “Ii’n desu” in 2013. He is
also actively involved in producing, arranging, and distributing music under the name Coa.
Csaba Toth Bagi, Production Manager: “They work great! They are very practical
too. We’re recording all of the shows now with two lines and the two built-in mics!“
Dirk Schulz, Mando Diao FOH engineer: “As the band asked me for a live Autotune
effect, the TA-1VP was instantly my first choice to go for. The open and transparent sound is very convincing
and
without a loss of quality comparing to the main vocal signal.“
On the day of the event, a monitor console was not
used, so the monitor console lines were directly connected to three US-16x08 used in mic-pre mode. The X-48MKII
had the IF-AN24X analogue expansion card installed, and its connection to the US-16x08 was made using three
XLR/D-Sub multi-conductor cables. In order to utilize all the inputs used on the stage, a 24-channel recording
was
done.
Equipment Used
