Newly integrated automatic microphone mixing technology is being shown for the first time in audio products from three major manufacturers at IBC.
A new implementation of Dugan processing has been added to the Yamaha’s new CL Series consoles. These compact consoles support a wide range of applications and offer Dante networking for system expansion. Sixteen channels of Dugan Speech System automatic mixing will be incorporated as a standard in these products, allowing the user to quickly insert Dugan processing for automatically optimised microphone gain distribution. Along with automatically managing gain of live microphones, the system effectively reduces feedback, studio noise and comb filtering to allow operators to focus on overall system performance. Dugan integration was announced earlier this year in the company’s QL Series mixers. The Dugan technology in the CL and QL Series consoles is built-in and does not require any external hardware.
A plug-in card, the Dugan-VN16, has been developed and released in partnership with Avid. This 16-channel automatic mixing controller plugs into a slot on selected Avid digital mixers and patches into the Avid’s mic channel insert points. The VN16 uses the Dugan Speech System to detect which mics are being used and makes fast, transparent crossfades. It can be configured with 16 automixing channels or 8 automixing channels and 8 channels of ADAT I/O, and may be linked with up to seven other Dugans.
The Dugan Automixer plug-in from Waves Audio is a software emulation of the Dugan Speech System for Waves MultiRack Native and MultiRack SoundGrid systems.
Like all Dugan automatic mixing controllers, this software automatically manages the gains of multiple microphones in realtime to create fast, transparent cross-fades.
It dramatically reduces feedback, studio noise and comb filtering from adjacent mics without introducing sonic artefacts.
