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DirectOut Prodigy.MP system deployed at Next Gen ATP Finals

When facilitating a broadcast and live sporting event like the Next Gen ATP Finals - a tennis tournament for the stars of tomorrow, held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, at the end of last year - play cannot be interrupted for any reason. DirectOut’s Prodigy.MP ensured that the event stayed on air, without the possibility of failure due to lost signal.

The Next Gen ATP Finals was broadcast in over 160 countries and with total viewing figures of over fifty million. The audio system relied on the Prodigy.MP to provide full hardware redundancy. The built-in Enhanced Automatic Redundancy Switching (EARS) provided an instantaneous automatic switch-over in the event of a failure. Considering the audio transmission and due to the internal latency-free buffer, if needed, that switch-over would happen without a single frame being lost.

“Our signals are being broadcast all over the world. When the referee speaks, it is only for a few minutes. If there is a problem in this tiny window it would be a major issue”, says Marco Galizia, Technical Director for Next Gen ATP Finals. “The Prodigy.MP is the first point of redundancy. The logic of the clock redundancy strategy, EARS, provides automated switching. If it loses clock, it will automatically switch to internal clocking and carry on. If the problems continue and you need to intervene, you can send an OSC command to the mixer and switch manually.”

Redundancy is built into the entire sound design, with back-ups at every point in the chain, from the mic inputs to the amps. “The whole system has to be fault-proof”, continues Galizia. “There is a back-up for everything and wherever possible the switch-over is fully automated. The referee wears two microphones on his body, both of which have automatically switchable frequencies in case of drop-out. There are also wired microphones on the referee’s chair and next to the net for the coin toss.”

The system includes two DiGiCo mixing consoles that work in mirror mode and an L-Acoustics PA system. The word clock is generated via the Prodigy.MP and sent to both consoles independently. The Prodigy.MPs also send audio to the broadcast and live sound networks via Dante and AVB, utilising an L-Acoustic P1 processor and Luminex switches for the arena PA. “The Prodigy.MP is not only providing redundancy”, adds Galizia. “We are managing inputs, embedding audio via Dante and finishing with the AVB cards that send audio through the Luminex switches to the L-Acoustics P1. The Prodigy.MP also converts the signal from Dante to MADI, so it can be accepted by the DiGiCo consoles.”

Whilst working on Eurovision 2022 with Luca Giaroli, Chief Solution Officer for DirectOut, Galizia realised that the Prodigy.MP was able to detect any errors or failures and self-correct seamlessly. “Having done the ATP Finals for three years in a row, I spoke to the hire company before the Next Gen Finals and explained that it could only be done with the Prodigy.MP”, he says. “It is the only system with EARS, so it’s the only machine with fully audio automated switching.”

(Photos: DirectOut GmbH/ATP)

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