News

Z-Systems Connects the Galaxy

Mol, Belgium (October 23, 2003)--Owners Wilfried and Guido Van Baelen have chosen some of the best analog and digital equipment for their Galaxy Studios complex in Belgium. Their surround-capable production and mastering rooms are equipped with a number of mission-critical Z-Systems digital routers and processors.

At the heart of the facility's multichannel Reference Mastering room, Galaxy has installed a Z-Systems z-64.64.r Detangler Pro router, which ties together all of the digital systems in the room, including a Z-Systems z.Q6 digital 6-channel mastering equalizer and a z.CL6 digital 6-channel compressor/limiter. To interconnect the digital processing and playback devices in two of the production studios, they have chosen smaller Z-Systems Detangler Pro digital routers. Staff engineer/producer Ronald Prent explains, "The z.64.64 router is the heart of our mastering studio. It takes care of all the digital routing for four workstations, and all the dCS and Meitner converters, and anything that's digital. We all use them with either PC or Macintosh remote control software, which is pretty handy, as you can store all the settings."

Prent joined Galaxy four years ago after nearly 20 years as an engineer/producer with a long list of credits that includes Elton John, The Police and David Bowie. Z-Sys digital processors are also central to the mastering room, he reports. "Anything that is EQ'd digitally or compressed digitally is done with the Z-Sys units. And when PCM material comes in, we go through the Z-Sys to up-sample it. So they're probably in use every day. They are really beautiful boxes, especially because they do 96 kHz."

The Z-Sys processors complement the room's SPL MMC1, an analog, mastering console co-developed by Prent that handles the studio's steady DVD and SACD output. The 8-channel console features an exceptional 150 dB dynamic range. Prent continues, "Buying equipment in the digital domain for a mastering facility and being able to do surround, which is a key issue here in the room, is expensive. We decided to choose one system, and everybody chose the Z-Sys Q6 equalizer because of its superb high-end treatment. If you use the EQ on high frequencies, it stays very warm and doesn't 'digitize' the sound, as some people say, like some other EQs."

Prent adds, "The second reason is that Z-Sys is the only company that makes a sensible equalizer, and compressor, that is controllable over six channels. It's in one unit, so you don't have problems with latency and clocking."

Z-Sys Detanglers handle routing of digital equipment in two other rooms at Galaxy Studios. "In my studio, where I just installed an API console, I use a 16x16 router," Prent reveals. "In the VR studio we use an 8x8 router." Like the z-64.64.r, the Z-Sys z-8.8.r and z-16.16.r are fully asynchronous, allowing them to handle multiple sample rates of AES/EBU digital audio at the same time.

The two production rooms and the mastering room are interconnected. Prent explains, "The routers don't speak to each other, but we do have digital connections between the rooms. Each router has a row of eight patches, four in and four out, where we can connect from one router to the other, if we want to." Z-Systems www.z-sys.com