Todd Kilponen, audio mixer for The Colbert Report
NEP Studio 54, the five year-old home of "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, recently also became home to a new 48-fader C100 HD console from Solid State Logic.
The primary purpose of the new console will be to handle all the audio needs of the nightly faux newscast starring comedian Stephen Colbert.
NEP, which owns and runs seven studios throughout midtown Manhattan, recently upgraded two of its studios for all-HD production — Studio 54 for Colbert, as well as Studio 52, the home studio of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. (Studio 52 already was using a SSL C100 HD console, which led to the second C100 being installed at Studio 54.)
Although it's not yet available on too many local cable systems, Stewart's program transitioned to HD several months ago.
George Hoover, NEP chief technology officer, said his crew is especially pleased with the audio console's handling of both programs' music segments and 5.1 surround sound mixing capabilities. In the past, he said, the C100 HD has interfaced with NEP's Pro Tools system, "So we can go back and forth to do fairly sophisticated audio posting on the segments for DVD release. Now we have this capability for 'The Colbert Report.'"
The video and audio control rooms for Colbert are located three floors above the production studio. The C100 HD is interfaced directly into the console's pre-amps to pick up mics from the studio floor. The console also interfaces to the rest of the studio system for playback elements and multi-tracks.
