Proximus is active as the premier provider of digital services and communication solutions on the Belgian and international markets. Being able to deliver high-end presentations, press conferences and live streams is becoming an important part of the innovative future of Proximus. A powerful, performant system that can handle all types of audio sources on-site, and remote inputs from OB trucks, with ease and stellar quality, was the most important requirement. Quickly, it became clear that Allen & Heath’s Avantis was the way to go for this project.

At Proximus, the Avantis has upgraded the existing mixing facilities immensely and is being used at the Proximus Brussels Towers Auditorium for presentations, press conferences, live events and live streaming.

The Avantis mixing system was programmed and ready for showtime in less than 3 days from unpacking. The team of internal AV specialists set up a complex routing scheme with multiple Matrix- and Aux-busses in no time. The console is upgraded with the Avantis dPack plugins and uses the 16T compressor on Aux-busses and the Opto compressor on the mic inputs with valve emulation. All processing sounds warm and has zero latency.

There’s a DT164-W Dante audio expander in a floor pocket on stage to accommodate floor inputs/outputs and a DT164-W in the back of the room for press I/O.

Two DT168’s Dante audio expanders are installed in the main rack for interfacing with the wireless microphones, lectern mic, and analogue audio sources. These feed the Dante network through 2 Cisco Catalyst 1 GBPS switches (primary/secondary).

All the video sources (video playout servers, Cisco videoconferencing) are coming into the system via Dante through the Analog Way Aquilon Main switcher/screen management system.

A SuperMADI card is installed in case an OB truck needs to be connected for I/O.

Future expansion is linking to the to be built broadcast studio in one of the Proximus Brussels Towers over Dante to another Allen & Heath desk and the auditorium in Evere where the process of upgrading the facility with new streaming and audio systems is in progress.

“The Allen & Heath Avantis and its paired expanders are the ideal choice for our upgrade of the mixing facilities and auditoriums. It produces great audio quality, has an easy-to-use interface with easy recall of all parameters, great expansion capabilities, custom console layouts, and provides all this in a fast workflow. Allen & Heath and XLR, our local distributor, provided us with great assistance throughout the whole build and integration process.” says Marc Bauwens, Senior Engineer and Audio-visual Project Manager at Proximus