Digital Broadcasters | Zaxcom Audio at IBC 2006

Digital broadcast and professional audio equipment vendor Zaxcom has new products at IBC 2006 Amsterdam. Just weeks before the IBC exhibition, Zaxcom, a pioneering vendor of professional audio equipment for the digital TV and film industries, has just begun shipping its Deva Mix-12, a fully digital 12-fader control surface that directly manages the audio mixer embedded within the Zaxcom Deva IV and V location recorders. Combined with either the Deva IV or V, it performs all location mix and record functions, reducing production costs by eliminating the need for expensive external mixing consoles.

[Zaxcom is known for having engineered the first digital wireless microphone and the first wireless microphone to feature integrated audio recording, IFB receivers, and time code transmission.]

Glenn Sanders, founder of Zaxcom told Digital Broadcasters Vendors News Asia that simply put, the combining of the Deva Mix-12 with the Deva IV or V is really a new approach to location mixing. It combines a location recorder and an audio mixer, previously quite separate equipment and functions through new engineering design. The result is fewer input/output connections and no sample rate issues.

Other features: the Deva IV with the Deva Mix-12 features 16 inputs and 18 outputs, and the Deva V features 16 inputs and 20 outputs. | Its microphone pre-amps are studio quality, ensuring no coloration or distortion of the audio by transformers or other analog circuitry.| Only the pre-amps and A-D and D-A converters are used for analog connections to the outside world. | Mixing is performed digitally via a floating-point DSP, ensuring no distortion or channel-to- channel differences (an occurrence with traditional analog mixing consoles over time or with temperature changes. | Users will have the ability to remove hum and buzz with the two notch features on each channel, a capability that can save precious time and money on a shoot. | The Deva Mix-12 also features three-band shelving filters with level, Q, and frequency control via the Deva IV or V's graphic interface.

Pompton Plains, New Jersey-based and privately-owned Zaxcom, Inc. designs and manufactures innovative professional audio equipment for the television and film industries.