WASHINGTON
Of all the institutions here, the Newseum is the only one committed to opening a conversation about the First Amendment. It's a 250,000-square-foot museum of news located on Pennsylvania Avenue adjacent to the Smithsonian museums. The Newseum is dedicated to examining the five freedoms—religion, speech, press, assembly and petition—and to exploring five centuries of news history with interactive exhibits and the latest technology. Its seven-level architectural design reflects the ideals of openness and transparency, and the Newseum also serves as a forum for the press and the people it serves.
MONITORING ENSURES QUALITY AUDIO AND VIDEO
Audio and video clearly are vital elements of the visitor experience at the Newseum and we selected Wohler Technologies' monitoring equipment to help us maintain a high standard of quality. We'd worked with the company's audio monitoring products in the first Newseum in Arlington, Va., and were able to repurpose many of those decade-old systems in our new building, along with a range of new Wohler systems for digital video and audio monitoring.
We chose Wohler in the current Newseum, as the company offers a broad product line characterized by compact form factors and a high-quality level. The majority of our Wohler gear, totaling more than 100 units, is installed in the Newseum master control room, which is in the museum space, separated from visitors by a large glass wall.
Dozens of Wohler MON2-3W/HR dual 7-inch high-resolution color monitors are installed in the Newseum's master control facility. The Wohler monitoring systems support a variety of exhibits that explore the history of news, the flow of news information and coverage of such events in history as the fall of the Berlin Wall and Sept. 11. Interactive exhibits allow visitors to experience the pressure of putting together a story in a virtual newsroom. A 40-foot-wide LED screen in the Newseum's Great Hall of News displays video during museum hours, and may be moved to floor-level or raised out of the way for special events.
The Newseum features two fully operational HD broadcast control rooms and studios and we chose Wohler systems for monitoring operations such as digital DDR playback and monitoring signals from our routing switcher. We're very comfortable with the consistent monitoring quality we get from Wohler.
The company's 1 RU AMP1-S8DA units and a 2 RU AMP2-S8DA serve as conveniently sized solutions for quality audio monitoring, as they support eight-channel analog and AES/EBU digital multichannel audio monitoring and conversion. We also installed Wohler's 1 RU VMQ-4 audio monitor in the master control room to provide simultaneous monitoring of up to four audio sources with voice-quality fidelity.
WIDE-ANGLE VIEW FROM CONFIDENCE MONITORS
Dozens of Wohler MON2-3W/HR dual 7-inch high-resolution color monitors are installed in our master control area for observing both SD-SDI and HD-SDI signals in either a widescreen or a 4:3 format. Virtually every person in the control room has his or her own monitoring system, and it's a Wohler. The compact units are a good fit for confidence monitoring and their wide viewing angle makes it easy to see that the right feed is there.
Since we opened the Newseum doors to the public on April 11, we've received a great deal of attention for the quality and creativity of our A/V exhibits. During this time we've found that the Wohler equipment is great for monitoring audio and video within our technologically advanced master and broadcast control rooms.
For additional information, contact Wohler Technologies Inc. at 510-870-0820 or visit www.wohler.com.
