Korea's Arirang TV installs its first Lawo system.

HD transition continues with mc²66 MKII.

In South Korea, the cable and satellite channel Arirang has made its first investment into Lawo digital console technology, choosing a mc²66 Mk II for the HD transition of one of its key news and entertainment production studios.

Arirang is "the world's window into Korea", the country’s premier domestically-produced, English-language TV network. Since debuting in 1997, the Arirang channel has expanded into every continent, and is viewed in more than 50 million households in 188 countries.

In the different studios of Arirang’s Seoul production facilities, the broadcast engineering team has installed many different brands of audio mixer, but Lawo makes its debut with the choice of a mc²66 for the latest studio to make the transition from SD to HD.

The 16+8+8 fader console in a 32-frame size is in Production Studio D, where news, live talk shows and general entertainment programmes are made. The specification includes an 8192x8192 crosspoint router and 128 channels of DSP.

According to Mr Choong-Hwan Choi, the main audio engineer on Arirang TV’s broadcast engineering team, there was considerable competition from leading manufacturers to supply the console system. “We were looking for a very reliable, high quality system, with an intuitive operational interface,” says Mr Choong-Hwan Choi, who highlights features like hyper-panning and the ISO bay control function, as well as the option for future expansion of the redundancy system. “Additionally,” he says, “we have the ability to configure the monitor section.”

“We believe that Lawo systems have the advantage when it comes to redundancy, and the powerful DSP capabilities within the console. And the Lawo mc²66 provides complete satisfaction of our criteria.”

The mc²66 was supplied by Lawo’s distributor in Korea, Soundfox International Co.Ltd.