Radio World

The FCC’s current proposal on application fees would force many TV and radio broadcasters to essentially pay twice for FCC services while others reap the benefits of these services without paying their fair share, the NAB argued in recent comments.

The FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that looks to amend the scheduling of application fees. In the NPRM, the FCC proposes to increase several application fees and add new fee categories for TV and radio broadcasters based on the estimated direct labor costs to the FCC for providing these services, citing the RAY BAUM’s Act requirement of the commission recovering its costs to process applications, per NAB.

[Read: Radio Stations Get Little Relief on FCC Fees]

The commission says that the NPRM will take a “careful approach” to calculating the costs for those paying application fees that already have to pay regulatory fees so as to try and avoid doubling the costs of these services. However, the NAB argues that the proposed approach is the same whether a group pays regulatory fees, like broadcasters, or not, like big tech companies, giving the latter “a significant discount relative to costs.”

This is a continuation of the FCC’s refusal to acknowledge flaws in the regulatory fee process, according to NAB. In earlier comments regarding setting regulatory fees for FY2020, NAB and other broadcasters said the commission should account for broadcasters’ payments of application fees so as to avoid being charged twice. NAB also argued that the RAY BAUM’s Act gave the FCC the ability to expand the base of contributors to include technology companies that benefit from the FCC’s resources, including some of the largest companies in the world, with the NAB calling them “free-riders.” The FCC ignored these requests.

“As a result, broadcasters and other licensees not only pay twice for the commission’s costs of processing their own applications, but also bear the substantial costs of their competition’s fee-free participation in rulemaking and other proceedings,” NAB said in its most recent comments.

In addition to being unjust, the NAB says that this ultimately restricts broadcasters’ ability to provide free local broadcast services to the public.

The NAB therefore is calling for the FCC to ensure that its collection of regulatory fees is fair and accurately reflects the work the commission performs. However, until that time, the FCC must minimize the application fee increases in the NPRM by ensuring that only tasks involved in the review of unopposed applications are included and by excluding all levels of supervisory review. NAB also says that the commission should refrain from imposing any new application fees on broadcasters.

“The commission must take steps now to overhaul its fee collection methodologies to ensure that broadcasters are not paying twice for the same services and that the costs of the commission are recovered fairly from all of the commission’s work,” NAB concluded.

NAB’s full comments are available online.

 

The post NAB to FCC: Proposed Regulatory Fee Process Unfair to Broadcasters appeared first on Radio World.

John Bisset

The author is editor in chief of Radio World.

One of the best parts of my job is presenting the Workbench column in our pages.

Workbench was well established by the time I joined RW in 1996. Sometimes the smartest thing that the editor of a publication can do is support a good thing and get out of the way.

With this issue we celebrate 30 years of John Bisset writing Workbench, and salute the hundreds of readers who have provided the tips that are at the column’s heart.

Getting started

When RW’s founder Steve Dana sought to expand Radio World and its tech content the Workbench column was born. At the time, John was a chief engineer who had written product reviews for RW; he also taught a college-level broadcast engineering class part-time and enjoyed teaching.

Workbench quickly became popular and secured its place as a feature in every issue.

John had gotten his own start at age 12 by building what today would be considered a pirate top 40 station. (You don’t know how often I hear stories like that from people in our biz). He hooked a Lafayette mike mixer up to a couple of turntables and a reel-to-reel fed a Lafayette Wireless Mike AM transmitter. The station had about a two-block coverage.

John was always hanging around radio stations (again, sound familiar?) His first professional job was at WFAX(AM) in northern Virginia, serving the Washington area.

“Program Director Roy Martin hired me as a summer relief announcer, when I was 16. I worked there part-time through high school and college, and joined the full-time staff after graduation.” Around that time he received training in technical writing with an influential teacher, Professor Joey Horobetz.

Eventually John was promoted to WFAX chief engineer, and the same year fellow engineer Henry Stewart and he started a contract engineering business.

John, center, started in the biz at age 16 doing summer relief announcing work at WFAX. “It seems like only yesterday we were replacing stylii and aligning cart machines.” This is a 1977 holiday gathering with colleagues Roy Martin, left, and Bill Turkington.

“I got into equipment sales by learning from Joe Novak at Delta Electronics. Later stops included Harris, Dielectric, Broadcast Electronics, Nautel and Elenos.” About eight years ago he joined Telos Alliance, where he is radio product sales manager for the western U.S.

John and I both seek to make sure that the column’s content is fair and thorough and not favoring any manufacturer, including those for which he has worked. John adds a hat tip to Telos for being so supportive in providing him time and opportunity to educate engineers on topics like AoIP and studio construction, in RW as well as other platforms.

Grab the bubble wrap

The column’s relationship with its readers is crucial.

“Over these 30 years, hundreds of engineers, programmers and managers have sent in tips and photos from all over the world,” John pointed out.

“Published tips qualify for SBE recertification credit,” John reminded me. But he’s especially proud of the programming and management readership of the column.

“I try to explain the tips and subject matter in such a way that the non-technical or semi-technical reader can use them, as well as the seasoned broadcast engineer.”

Have any reader tips stood out as most useful? He laughed.

“As I’ve gotten older, something to protect your knees when you’re kneeling in the back of a rack, under a console or in a transmitter — with the power off — that’s where bubble wrap comes in handy. Keep a few sheets in your service vehicle and at each site.”

(John, this is classic Workbench stuff. MacGyver would be proud.)

“Using a cell phone camera to document things ranks a close second,” he continued.

“Use the camera to take pictures of smoked components, animals you encounter and parts. Parts photos can be shared with a service department when you are missing a manual and need to identify something.” A camera also lets you share pictures anonymously with Workbench or just with your own station staff.

“Let’s face it, other than engineers, few employees of a radio or TV station understand what the transmitter site is all about. Posting pictures of exploded parts, dead snakes or raccoons that have taken up residence are great conversation starters.”

What about strange or unexpected submissions?

“Shortly after the column started, an engineer sent in a modification to an old transmitter,” he told me.

“The tube transmitter was atop a mountain several hours away, and occasionally the plate breaker would trip, turning the rig off.”

The engineer could never identify the problem and got tired of the two-hour drive.

“Frustrated, he mounted a cart machine solenoid to the front of the transmitter, right above the tripping breaker. He drilled a hole in the end of the breaker and connected a line to the solenoid plunger. The solenoid was connected to the remote control, so that when the breaker tripped, it could be reset ‘remotely’ by energizing the solenoid,” John related.

“I could see both sides of this solution. It’s not necessarily good engineering practice to remotely switch a breaker, because you don’t know why the breaker is tripping in the first place. But repeatedly driving two hours to simply flip a breaker on had to be pretty frustrating.”

He took heat from some readers who felt this idea was reckless; but many thought it was a genius solution to a problem that a new transmitter later corrected.

Efficiency

I asked John how the column has changed.

“In the early days, there were a lot more tips on modifying or troubleshooting equipment,” he recalls.
“There were engineering staffs consisting of a chief and a couple of maintenance engineers and maybe a transmitter tech. Today, one guy does it all.” And “all” now includes multiple stations for many engineers.

With that evolution, he focuses more on improving an engineer’s efficiency.

“The maturity of software-based products has made this possible. Features can be added or bugs addressed with a simple software update. The equipment is also more reliable, and in most cases modular, so many repairs involve simply swapping a module.”

Parts may be swappable but it’s hard to imagine Workbench without him. Thank you John for your contributions and hard work.

I can’t end without sharing a little-known early career fact about John Bisset that also captures his elfish sense of humor.

“I started out with a parallel career. Intrigued by medicine, I wanted to be a doctor. To help me ace my anatomy classes, I started working as an embalmer and apprentice funeral director.

“My patients never complained!”

 Sidebar: Warm Appreciation

Among colleagues and readers I hear warm appreciation for John’s work.

Marty Sacks, EVP of sales, support and marketing at Telos Alliance, has known John for four decades and calls him an industry treasure and trusted colleague. “He’s the same gentleman I have always known. The service he has provided to so many, including me, all these years through his Workbench columns have truly been a labor of love.”

Jim Wood, founder of Inovonics, calls Workbench “a turn-to in each issue; I always come away knowing a little more.” Colleague Ben Barber, president/CEO of Inovonics, saluted John for his expertise in collating and condensing useful information succinctly.

Frank Hertel of Newman-Kees-Hertel RF Measurements & Engineering remembers attending a meet-and-greet with an FCC agent out of Chicago, at which Frank posted a question.

“As it turned out, the FCC agent did not have an answer, but John did! He nicely stepped in and saved the day for the agent. He presented the answer authoritatively, but also with a calmness that radiated a true source of knowledge. After all, John actually was involved in writing the FCC ruling pertaining to low-power toroid RF Ammeter readings.”

And Charles “Buc” Fitch — who like John is a past recipient of the SBE Educator of the Year Award — has said that industry knowledge now seems to have a “half life” of about four years, meaning half of what we learn or buy today may be useless in that amount of time.

“So how do we keep up at this aggressive pace?” Buc asks. “How do we learn?

“We teach each other.”

The post Happy 30 Years to RW’s Workbench! appeared first on Radio World.

WMGG is the 1470 signal listed in the 96.1 FM Caliente logo.

Tampa’s WMGG hopes to be broadcasting in all-digital format on the AM band by early next year.

We told you earlier about the plans by NIA Broadcasting President Neal Ardman. Now transmitter maker Nautel reports that Ardman has ordered the necessary equipment.

“The station has announced the purchase of a Nautel NX3HD with HD IBOC exciter upgrade and a Nautel HD MultiCast+ Importer/Exporter; delivery is anticipated prior to the end of 2020,” Nautel stated in a release.

The only current full-time all-digital AM station in the United States is WWFD in Frederick, Md. The Federal Communications Commission recently announced it will allow all-digital transmission for any station that wishes to use it. Analog-only AM radios will not be able to tune to the signal.

Nautel quoted Ardman saying, “Continuing with analog broadcasting in 2021 when the technology exists to provide great content with great audio, and to NOT do it, is unthinkable.”

He plans to notify listeners of the switch and encourage them to purchase an HD Radio if they don’t have one already, or listen to the station’s analog FM translator or online stream.

WMGG has an FM translator on 101.9 MHz. Both signals are part of “96.1 FM Caliente,” the radio home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Spanish-language network.

 

The post Tampa AM Station Buys Transmitter to Go All-Digital appeared first on Radio World.

The author is chief engineer of WSRQ LECOM Radio.

In 1992, WZZS, Zolfo Springs, Fla., was launched as a Class A FM on 106.9 MHz. This is approximately 40 miles inland (east) of Sarasota/Bradenton Florida.

Due to the extremely flat topography and the subtropical climate, auto reception was audible up and down the coast though the Sarasota area.

Hal Kneller

In 2007, W295BH, a 250-watt FM translator, commenced operation in the Sarasota area on the same frequency. While it has moved several times over the years, it never was a real problem for WZZS other than eliminating the fringe coverage, which was well outside the Class A FM 60 dBu contour.

The same could not be said in reverse. WZZS inflicted considerable interference on the translator, even well inside the translator’s 60 dBu contour. Motorists driving through Sarasota and Bradenton would often hear WZZS “pop through” while listening to the W295BH translator.

Areas east of Sarasota, which remained still within the W295BH 60 dBu contour, were especially inundated with interference from the co-channel Class A FM. This was due to both WZZS’s higher-power penetration into the inland Sarasota area, and the much lower power of the 106.9 translator in that same part of the market.

These unpleasant experiences lasted the better part of 10 years, until Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) entered the picture.

The college purchased WSRQ(AM) 1220 and W295BH in December 2018, along with another translator on 95.9 (W240DP) located further south of Sarasota.

The new owner desired to expand its reach into the growth areas of Sarasota and Manatee counties, and eliminate the interference caused by WZZS. LECOM accomplished both objectives by acquiring WZZS in December 2019.

The initial simulcasting efforts fell short of the intended goal. With no simple way properly to time the audio using the existing setup, along with a multipath-like (simulcast interference) sound in many important areas, it became clear that only full synchronization of the 106.9 signals would cure the problem.

With the help of Tony Gervasi, Intraplex specialist and sales manager for GatesAir, a proposal was delivered for an intelligent IP networking system with built-in synchronization. The goal was to establish a composite multiplex signal over IP to the three FM transmitter sites in a four-way simulcast with WSRQ (AM), using fiber connectivity to the public internet.

Preparations

The initial work required an evaluation of infrastructure to support the new networking strategy.

One positive was that the existing fiber connections (and related Service Level Agreements) to all FM locations were adaptable to the new system. It was also possible to retain the existing GatesAir 950 MHz HD Link feeding the AM transmitter.

Less adaptable were the existing exciters and stereo generators — together anyway — which were not matched and would be unable to achieve the required synchronization.

The initial work involved extending the existing VPN to include the Zolfo Springs transmitter site that would become WSRQ(FM). That site used a Harris (GatesAir) Z5CD transmitter that integrated an older exciter that was unable to properly match modulation components to the W295BH transmitter from a different manufacturer.

Without full matching, there was no way to properly and fully synchronize. Thus, it was proposed to replace the old Harris exciter in the Z5CD with a new GatesAir FAX-50 exciter, and install a GatesAir Flexiva FAX 1kW air-cooled transmitter/exciter at W295BH.

It was determined that the existing Wheatstone FM-55 audio processor with its integrated stereo generator could be retained, along with the SmartGen RDS encoder from Deva Broadcast. Both devices were moved from the W240DP Nokomis site to the WSRQ studio in preparation for the networking and transmission upgrades.

Meanwhile, the Flexiva FAX 1kW system replaced the translator for W295BH, and an existing BW Broadcast translator for W240DP on 95.9 FM was determined as adaptable to the new system. We were able to retain that transmitter since it lives on a different frequency, and its internal audio processor was engaged while the new system was being set up.

A single-frequency network with several transmitter sites would require matching exciters at each location to avoid synchronization issues. This is because when dealing with microseconds as it relates to the path of the radio signal, the differential delay in an unmatched signal through using different exciters will introduce unpredictable latency.

For this project, it was only required to use the same exciter on all 106.9 systems, making this a rarer kind of synchronized network than what we more typically see with a complete SFN architecture.

Connecting the Links

Next came the decision on which Intraplex IP Link codecs to use, most of which have the option to add Intraplex SynchroCast software.

The decision came down to either using AES192, with each site utilizing its own stereo generator and RBDS encoder, or some form of multiplex composite over IP, either analog MPX or digital AES192.

To function properly, the system would require one codec at the send site, and one at each of the three FM sites; for the AM transmitter, we planned to continue using the existing Intraplex HD Link 950 MHz STL.

We looked at three IP Link codecs, all of which support digital AES192 AES composite transport. After consultation with GatesAir’s Tony Gervasi, we elected to use AES192 distribution.

We selected the Intraplex IP Link MPXp codec model, which has a built-in feature set that includes GPS lock for synchronization, and optional LiveLook software for advanced network analytics. This gave us the flexibility of using both AES192 as well as the analog MPX composite using BNC connectors. We needed the analog MPX composite capability to feed our emergency backup transmitters /exciters, so the IP LINK MPXP offered the best of both worlds.

The audio chain at the studio consists of a Wheatstone WheatNet system that feeds IP audio to compatible devices on the network. The Wheatstone FM-55 processor is fed as a blade (node) on WheatNet, which has a standard analog composite multiplex output and a digital output that can be either AES/EBU (AES3) or AES192.

We chose to use the AES192 interface to the IP Link MPXp. We are told that there is a several dB of separation advantage and a slight loudness advantage by going this route.

This is not anything like the old AES3 interfaces to an exciter, where overshoots were common and perceived loudness was reduced. Performance has proven to us that the modulation control is very good over AES192. The RBDS encoder is also connected to an SCA input on the studio IP LINK MPXP codec, which means we can deliver a fully-processed stereo signal with embedded RBDS over IP.

The Intraplex codecs have some “secret sauce” not fully known to us, but one thing we learned is that AES192 as a standard is not highly efficient. The IP Link MPXp repacks the data much more tightly, and can deliver our complete signal in an uncompressed-linear mode at the astounding data rate of 1.64 Megabits per second. Conventionally, a stereo uncompressed linear AES3 signal requires about 1.5 Mbps, but here we have the entire baseband in a neat little package.

Redundancy is important, and the use of fiber and public internet for connectivity can provide for two parallel networks to move program audio. Using GatesAir’s Dynamic Stream Splicing (DSS) feature, we can run four streams across the two networks. At the present time we are installing a second ISP connection over a cable modem to back up the fiber network.

If the primary on the fiber fails or experiences packet losses on one provider, the software repairs the stream by utilizing redundant packets from the other. If there is only one connection available, two streams are sent with a slight delay on the second one (we are using 500 mS) and rarely have an audible dropout.

The system employs GPS lock at the studio and all FM sites, with the two 106.9 transmitters also utilizing the Intraplex SynchroCast feature. The Nokomis/Venice W240DP translator, on a separate frequency, receives the same composite signal with audio timed to synchronize with the 106.9 signals. This is critical since there is some overlap in coverage.

The Dynamic Stream Splicing feature is configured with between 180 and 500 microseconds of delay between the streams as they move across all FM sites to address that overlap. Since the W240DP translator operates on a different frequency, it does not require that we carrier lock the signal but the audio is synchronized.

Since going live, weeks go by before a single drop is noticed, which is a testament to the robust nature of Dynamic Stream Splicing feature. On rare occasions, ISP issues have created some problems, but the software still produces a “hitless” experience.

The Intraplex package also included Intraplex LiveLook feature for real-time network analytics. This feature also provides historical reporting on the quality of the IP connection between the different sites, including email notifications of connectivity issues. LiveLook provides insight on network behavior over time, which also delivers predictive capabilities for network troubleshooting.

Network Design Criteria

There are some compromises with our system’s design from the ideal. We cannot control the overlap areas completely, or offer precision timing over such a wide area. We also cannot pinpoint correction to all of our interference areas.

The presence of unpopulated (farmland/ranchland) areas between the sites has proven beneficial, and we were able to force most of the interference over that area. In an ideal SFN, we would use directional antennas, and perhaps even use multiple transmitter sites, to create a more robust, interference-free network. This is not a main station and booster scenario, however; this is a main station and translator situation.  The math behind this calculates the “launch delay” at W295BH, because the signal takes longer to reach the areas of interference from the Zolfo Springs site due to distance.

Our “sweet spot” from an interference standpoint was to be the licensee’s dental college in Lakewood Ranch, a suburb east of Sarasota subject to considerable interference. The distance from Zolfo Springs to that site is 63.43 km. We calculated that the signal from W295BH would reach that point 180 microseconds before the Zolfo Springs signal would arrive.

We set the launch delay from W295BH at 180 microseconds so the signals arrive in-phase and fully synchronized in every way, at our reference point. The signal can be heard at that location if either transmitter is turned off, but with very similar field strengths. Therefore, it is also an ideal test for perfect synchronization. When signal strength is nearly equal, timing is extremely critical. As the ratio of D/U increases, timing will become less critical until there is at least 20 dB difference.

The calculations proved correct: That site receives a clean signal with no multipath-type interference. With matched equipment at both the translator and the main FM station, the modulation components are identical, and in the end, we have a robust solution.

The big question: Would this timing work out for the rest of the area to the west where either signal may be heard, depending upon location?

Strong Results

As Fig. 1 below shows, the IP Link MPXp feeds a Flexiva FAX 1 kW translator at W295BH (click on the image to see it enlarged).

At the former WZZS site, ow WSRQ(FM), a FAX50 exciter feeds the legacy Harris Z5CD transmitter. At W240DP, the audio is also time-stamped and transmits in audio synchronization with the 106.9 signals, but again the carrier is not locked by GPS.

Fig. 1: System block diagram. Click to enlarge.

Fig. 2 shows the propagation paths between the translators and the Class A FM. As mentioned, LECOM operates a dental college in Lakewood Ranch, east of Sarasota. Lakewood Ranch is a “boom town” and has had huge growth over the last 10 years, which is projected to continue. It was also an area prone to extreme chronic interference, especially under certain seasonal weather conditions.

Propagation paths

We were able to have enough control to be able to lock in Lakewood Ranch and still not have any noticeable interference in the immediate Sarasota/Bradenton area from the WSRQ signal from 40 miles away.

East of Myakka State Park there is an interference zone that lasts about five miles before the WSRQ signal overrides the translator’s interference, traveling east. The good news is the interference area is programmed to be over “no-man’s land.” It is agricultural in nature and is not a heavily traveled commuter route. The timing could be adjusted either way to move this interference slightly, as needed.

The only other area of interference which could not be controlled in this scenario is south of Venice (see Fig. 1) where the signal strength of the 106.9 signals is very close to equal. However, this is right in the heart of the W240DP translator signal that simulcasts the 106.9 signals.

What is management saying about the results?

Operations & IT Manager Charlie Halley said, “I used to pull my van into my driveway inside the City of Sarasota. On one end I heard our station, and the other end I heard WZZS. Easy to tell because they were Spanish, we are Classic Hits. Now it’s seamless, end to end.” Charlie also appreciates LiveLook to keep an eye on the quality of the network.

General Manager Jim Schaffner adds, “I am very pleased with the station’s expanded reach and the sync of the two stations. And now our coverage is extended to over 60 miles inland, giving us several additional counties in our primary coverage area.”

Hal Kneller owned and operated radio stations from 1986 to 2014 and has served on numerous industry organizations such as NRSC and NAB technical committees. He is a member of the SBE National Certification Committee and Past Chapter Chair of SBE 90, Southwest Florida.

The post Hybrid Synchronization in the Sunshine State appeared first on Radio World.

Broadcast software developer OmniPlayer has announced that its OmniPlayer 3 automation platform has been chosen by Belgian broadcaster RTL to be used by its Radio Contact and Bel RTL stations.

RTL Information & Media Technology Project Coordination Manager Alexis Vingerhoed said, “We were looking for a robust, yet innovative solution to meet the needs of all our users. M&I [OmniPlayer’s parent] has been with us from the outset in our strategic and ambitious vision for the future of our radio stations.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

He added, “From a technical side, two points, in particular, caught our attention. As our RadioVision channels are TV channels in their own right, we cannot compromise on quality. This is why we wanted a radio playout system capable of managing audio and video simultaneously. It was also essential that the system was open to interconnect with other systems and could be remote-controlled completely.”

Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

The post OmniPlayer Chosen by RTL Belgium appeared first on Radio World.

As always, Workbench is my “first read” in every RW issue. I learn something new, confirm stuff I already know or get a chuckle.

I still fondly recall John Bisset’s presentation at SBE Chapter 22 in Liverpool many years ago. I almost wore out my hand taking notes. My favorite tip involved “black double-knit fabric”!

In reference to the column “How Michael Bolton Can Be 300 Times Worse” in the Sept. 16 issue:

That YouTube demo by “Nickd2011” of MP3 over-compression revealed the standard’s shortcomings. The artifacts were horrific!

I used to record my church services in MP3 until I heard a few “sour” organ notes, then switched to 44.1/WAV, which was noticeably-better. (Any necessary MP3 conversions from Audacity are done post-editing.)

Meanwhile your generator maintenance mentoring will yield large dividends for our “newbies” whose only experience with “backup power” is usually a UPS.

Good familiarity with “heavy tech” can save time and money; diligent recordkeeping may seem “overkill” but I’ve learned from years of transmitter work that it may reveal slow trends towards pending failure, and knowing what to tell the service person on the ‘phone can often ensure better site reliability or quicker restoration.

Again, thanks, John!

[Read recent Workbench columns.]

The post Letter: Michael Bolton and Workbench appeared first on Radio World.

Master Control studio

KING-FM had occupied its studios in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle for more than two decades when its landlord informed management that the building would be torn down for condos.

The station began looking for a new long-term home.

Meanwhile the Seattle Opera had just moved into a new nearby building on the Seattle Center campus near the Space Needle, a building with multiple performance venues and space set aside on the second floor for a future tenant. Their desired tenant would be aligned with the goals of the arts community and pay rent that would help the opera meet operational costs of its $60 million facility.

The space was a perfect fit for Seattle’s famous nonprofit, listener-supported classical music station. KING-FM.

The Seattle Opera building on Mercer Street is the station’s new home. It’s close to the Space Needle (left) and features large, highly visible performance spaces.

CEO Brenda Barnes said in 2019, “We are thrilled to be moving into this beautiful space, and to be in such close proximity to one of our most important partners.”

The station moved in February 2020.

Project team
Utter Associates was the turnkey system integrator. It is a Seattle-based engineering and consulting firm whose clients including broadcasters, corporations, educational facilities, government entities and architects.

Founder Erik Utter was design lead on the project.

“KING-FM broadcasts on 98.1 with an analog, HD1, HD2 and seasonally an HD3,” he said. “They also stream the same services to a variety of platforms. They host live concerts and events both in the building performance venues, and from remote locations such Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony.”

The technical scope of the project included broadcast studios for air, production, interview, voicetracking and editing; a technical operations center room; processing, codecs, RF distribution and related broadcast facets; all IT infrastructure; links to performance venues; and a live performance system.

“Our scope of work started with consulting to set the project operational requirements, technical requirements and developing a budget,” Utter said.

“We worked with Chief Engineer Michael Brooks — who was the SBE Chapter 16 Engineer of the Year — and Operations Manager Rachele Hales.” Other key leaders were General Manager Brenda Barnes and board member Jim Duncan.

Chief Engineer Michael Brooks works in the Technical Operations Center.

“Once the project requirements were defined, we made recommendations on technology, which culminated in a trip for the client to the NAB Show to confirm final selections and set the final budget.”

An architectural, consultant and construction team then was named by KING-FM; these included Owen Richards of ORA Architects; Basel Jurdy of Stantec for acoustics; and Sellen Construction.

“This was a wonderful team to work with,” Utter said. “In all honesty, this was the smoothest project of its type we have been involved with.

Building for change

Utter worked with that team to develop the physical layout of the studios, mechanical systems for equipment cooling and backup cooling, electrical systems including power, backup power and low-voltage pathways.

“We also worked with the acoustical consultant to work through the acoustic requirements and design details. This is a critical phase of the project.”

Through the lifetime of using the space, he said, technology will change and probably evolve in ways not yet evident.

“Correctly designing the core infrastructure to ‘get it right’ in the first place will make it easy for these changes to be implemented in the future with minimal cost and disruption.”

This hallway view gives a sense of the open feel and the treatment of walls and ceilings. Note the decorative classical music theme.

Simultaneously to the architectural work, Utter began a detailed technical design in AutoCAD. Once the final detailed designs were approved, Utter began the procurement process, completing an inventory of all items received and configuring as much of the equipment in its shop ahead of the installation as possible.

When the construction was complete and a certificate of occupancy issued, the team began the integration portion. The installation phase took about two months, followed by testing, commissioning and training.

“We place a heavy emphasis on ergonomics, modifying casework and carefully adjusting equipment placement and sightlines as needed,” Utter said.

“The changes to the RF system and microwave STL were straightforward, with new STL and receive antennas placed on the roof and only a short initial hop to the KING-TV tower of about eight city blocks. Harrington Tower completed the STL antenna work. IP circuits were provisioned for the feeds to the primary and backup transmitter sites, relegating the microwave to backup purposes. Of course, we were there for the cutover, which went flawlessly.”

Data patching in the TOC.

(On the RF side, the station’s main site is West Tiger Mountain, where a Nautel GV30 runs an HD1 and HD2. KING-FM is a Class C station operating at 68 kW ERP due to HAAT. The transmitter feeds an ERI master antenna, model ERI-1082 4CP-DA. The station runs its HDs under an experimental license allowing asymmetrical power of –10 dBc on the lower sideband and –14 dBc on the upper. An Inovonics Justin 808  keeps the HD aligned. A Continental 816 transmitter is on standby and an aux transmitter site is atop Cougar Mountain.)

Hardware choices

Wheatstone and its WheatNet-IP network were chosen as the backbone studio system, including two LXE consoles, two L8 Consoles and a series of Blades.

“We made extensive use of the technology for such things as audio processing, scripting and utility mixers for intercom, automated alarming, etc.,” Utter said. “We also used Dante for live performance mixing and venue interfacing.”

Key components also include RCS Zetta automation, Comrex Access NX Rack codecs, AKG C414 microphones, Neumann KH 310 and KH 120 audio monitors, Wheatstone furniture, Inovonics monitors for modulation and streaming, Intraplex HD Link and legacy gear for STL, and HPE/Aruba networking.

Studio accessories include ESE master clocks and Yellowtec mic arms and copy stands. The TOC has Middle Atlantic racks, Broadcast Tools DA, Sage EAS gear, Bittree patch bays, Burk transmitter control, a Marti system and Nielsen PPM gear.

KING-FM host Dave Beck handles the inaugural live broadcast.

The initial consulting for the project started in spring of 2019, and the cutover was in February, just prior to COVID.

“An interesting thing about that,” Utter said. “Prior to COVID the remote production capabilities of Wheatstone and Zetta were mostly novelties. Very quickly they became critical features that make operations now much easier.”

Utter related that shortly after everything shut down for the pandemic, KING-FM continued to provide live coverage of the Sunday night Compline Choir from St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle.

“The choir was singing to an empty cathedral and broadcasting live on KING-FM as a public service, providing relaxing meditative music during a time of fear and uncertainty. The lone board op at KING-FM called me on a Sunday night, four minutes to air, explaining that she couldn’t get the remote source to come up on the LXE console.

“I was able to connect with my laptop and resolve multiple issues, and finally pot up the source on the console, just in time. Something unimaginable just a short time ago.”

Planning for worst-case

“One of the reasons the project went so well is that the systems integrator was brought in very early, just after the project was conceived,” he continued.

“This allowed for a deep partnership and understanding of the client’s needs. This also allowed us to bring up design considerations with the architectural team early enough to easily address, resulting very few compromises in the facility design.”

Utter is a big fan of WheatNet, saying it simplifies future routing changes and that its distributed architecture provides robustness.

In order to keep workmanship orderly in the long term and allow for inevitable changes to wiring, Utter connects all I/O of a Wheatstone Blade to a Bittree E3 bulkhead panel, passing through that to the equipment.

“The connections on the rear of a Blade are just too dense to be making changes while keeping up the level of workmanship and neatness in a larger facility.” Future equipment additions or wiring changes can be done easily on the E3 panel.

“As an engineer, I still need to imagine and prepare for what a worst-case failure situation may look like. … All critical portions of the air chain are brought out to patch, so that if there were a massive networking failure, signal could still be quickly patched to air.”

KING-FM was founded in 1948 by Dorothy Stimson Bullitt; it is among the longest-running classical radio stations in the country.

Radio World welcomes suggestions for facility and project profiles. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post KING-FM Studios Hit the High Notes appeared first on Radio World.

Radio Guadix’s Rodrigo Poyatos at his home command center with ForumVirtual software on the laptop next to him.

AEQ’s VirtualForum software has proven a boon for Radio Guadix in Spain. Well before the coronavirus pandemic radically changed radio workflows, General Manager Rodrigo Poyatos began working remotely from home. Using the VirtualForum software he was able to control studio-based equipment such as AEQ Forum mixers, thus being able to produce radio programs and commercials.

Now with the Radio Guadix studios often empty of personnel in the pandemic, Poyatos has used the remote management aspects of VirtualForum to a greater extent. He can buzz-in show guests; turn on lights; fire up consoles, mics, codecs, etc., and produce the whole program from home. He only asks the guests to make sure the door locks on their way out.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Radio Guadix is part of Cadena SER. Its sister SER stations Radio Aracena and Radio Motril have added AEQ Capitol IP digital consoles to better fit an increasingly IP-based plant.

Another sister, Radio Rioja in Logroño, replaced an older automation system from another vendor with AEQ’s AudioPlus automation. A release says the remote control tools available in AudioPlus were attractive to Radio Rioja. In addition AEQ customized some operations to match third-party commands that were requested by Cadena SER.

Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

The post Radio Guadix Is Virtual appeared first on Radio World.

Smart speaker maker Sonos will be using the Powered by Napster digital audio platform as a service for its new Sonos Radio HD high-definition audio streaming service.

A release explains what a “platform as service” does: “[the] platform offers companies a full suite of technologies and solutions that includes licensing and rights holder management, media streaming and download infrastructure, applications, personalization, recommendations, customer billing, and royalty administration capabilities.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Powered by Napster is a service from Rhapsody International. That company’s Bill Patrizio, president and CEO, said, “Our ongoing work with Sonos signals the continued significant growth of digital music and the demand for high-definition audio streaming.”

The new Sonos Radio HD service will provide the basic free Sonos Radio stations in high-definition, CD-quality 16-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC audio. The ad-less stations provide curated stations along with thematic stations along with 60,000 local radio stations worldwide and specialty sounds such as sleep and pink noise.

Sonos smart speaker owners can subscribe to Sonos Radio HD for US$7.99/£7.99 per month after a free 30-day trial.

Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

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All across Louisiana — whether your station is behind prison walls or in a tiny village in the middle of the Pelican State — failing to file a license renewal application on time can result in a monetary forfeiture.

That is the case for the so-called Incarceration Station. KLSP(FM) is a Class A station run by the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the nation’s largest maximum-security prison. Angola Penitentiary, as this former plantation is known, was designed to function as small, self-sustaining community complete with a fire department, a dairy and a radio station — making Angola the only penitentiary in the U.S. to be issued an FCC license to operate a station.

Established in 1986, KLSP (whose call letters denote the Louisiana State Penitentiary) is 100-watt station that operates on 91.7 from inside the prison. Those broadcasts can be picked up by the 6,000 prisoners and 1,800 staff spread across Angola, a compound larger than the island of Manhattan. Interestingly, former prisoners include musicians Lead Belly and Freddy Fender.

[Read: Arizona Licensee Gets Green Light on License After Agreeing to $15K Consent Decree]

But whether inside or outside of prison, FCC rules are rules. And the Media Bureau delivered a Notice of Apparent Liability and Forfeiture to the station in mid-November for apparently violating a section of the commission’s rules that requires a licensee to renew its broadcast station license within a specific timeline. That deadline is no later than the first day of the fourth full calendar month prior to the expiration date of the license.

For the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the application for renewal should have been filed by Dec. 2, 2019. According to the Media Bureau, the application was not filed until May 29, 2020, and the licensee provided no explanation for the lateness of the filing.

In this case, the FCC chose to set a $3,000 monetary forfeiture, which is the base forfeiture amount that the FCC can set in cases like these.

The situation was similar for station KVDP(FM) in Dry Prong, La. The licensee of the station — Dry Prong Educational Broadcasting Foundation — also allegedly failed to file a license renewal application. In this case, the application should have been filed by Dec. 2, 2019, but was not filed until May 22, 2020, with no explanation for the late filing.

As a result, the FCC has notified Dry Prong Educational Broadcasting Foundation that it has an apparent liability for forfeiture in the amount of $3,000.

Both Dry Prong and the Louisiana State Penitentiary have 30 days from the delivery of the Notice of Apparently Liability to pay the forfeiture or file a statement seeking reduction or cancellation of the forfeiture.

 

The post Failure to File a Renewal Application Trips Up Two Licensees in Louisiana appeared first on Radio World.

Téa Gennaro

The National Association of Broadcasters has named Téa Gennaro as its new CFO.

President CEO Gordon Smith said Gennaro will come on board as executive vice president and chief financial officer of the organization later this month.

She joins at a time when the NAB, and associations in general, have been challenged financially by the business impact of the pandemic and the dramatic reduction in major in-person events.

According to a recent communication to its members, NAB this year has instituted cuts to executive compensation, “significant” budget reductions and a hiring freeze.

Its board recently approved a one-time assessment on members “intended to make up for lost revenue due to the cancellation of NAB Show, which accounted for 70% of NAB’s operating budget, as well as the expected decline in future convention revenues as the result of COVID-19.”

Gennaro is former chief financial officer of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC National) in Washington. She has also worked as a controller in the Outsourced Accounting Client Service branch of Tate & Tryon, a CPA firm.

“As EVP of Finance and CFO, Gennaro will lead NAB’s financial operations, including internal and external reporting, audit, tax, financial systems and the budget process,” the association stated.

She succeeds Trish Johnson, whom NAB said has transitioned into a consulting role.

 

 

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GatesAir has promoted Mark Goins to vice president of North American sales.

This follows the recent announcement that Joe Mack has taken the new role of chief revenue officer and that Rich Redmond has left the company. Goins reports to Mack, who in turn answers to CEO Bruce Swail.

“Mark will lead an experienced team of North American representatives across regional sales management, key accounts and inside sales, and work with GatesAir executives to develop annual strategic initiatives for improved growth and support,” the company stated in an announcement.

[Read: GatesAir Names Joe Mack as CRO]

Goins joined predecessor Harris Corp. 19 years ago.

“He has gradually worked his way up the ladder, beginning with an inside sales position and becoming senior director, North America sales upon transitioning to the GatesAir team,” it stated.

“In between, he served as strategic account manager and regional sales manager, which provides him the diverse experience required to successfully lead the current North American sales team.”

It said areas of focus for Goins will include NextGen TV, HD Radio adoption, single-frequency networks (SFNs) and also GatesAir’s Intraplex range, “as business models and networking opportunities expand with the Audio over IP transition.”

 

The post GatesAir Promotes Goins to VP Position appeared first on Radio World.

This commentary appeared on the Inside Music Media website on Nov. 12 under the headline “iHeart Moves to Eliminate Engineers.” Because of its relevance to engineering readers we reproduce it with permission. Radio World has invited comment or reply from iHeart and will share any we receive.

Eventually it had to come to this — elimination and for now at least a major reduction in the number of engineers it takes to keep iHeart stations on the air.

This promises to be a major RIF in addition to the firings of last week and the ones I have written about this week that will constitute “The Big One.”

Spread over the entire chain of stations and their clusters, eliminating engineers — long a goal of iHeart management — could get them closer to their 5,000 total employee number from an estimated 12,000 at the start of 2020.

The engineering firings are risky, more widespread than originally thought and, in a sense, creative.

For anyone who has ever worked in a radio station, the details about to be shared are, to say the least, scary.

• Start with a standardized digital studio console – It will reportedly be networked to the transmitter site and the new remote consoles that they are installing will allow more remote control of the transmitter by the emergency operations center.
• Emergencies will be referred to “The Tiger Team,” which is a group of engineers in the company that can jump on a flight at a m oment’s notice to go fix the engineering issues at the station. Keep in mind that the “Tiger Team” as they are called will only be able to respond to problems that don’t threaten to knock a station off the air.
• A list of local contract engineers will be kept close by – Part of the reason will be to make things look safer in case of devastating engineering issues that either keep a station off the air, force a reduction of power or have to deal with a massive issue such as fire.
• Major markets will retain an iHeart-employed chief engineer – This says a lot about how iHeart views its platform. Some 35% of all their revenue comes from 10 or fewer major markets and apparently iHeart does not want to jeopardize operations there. Expect a chief engineer to be retained and perhaps even an assistant if the chief is lucky.
• The MO is to have complete remote control of the station’s transmitter and air chain without a local engineer – just a contract engineer or “Tiger Team” replacement. This also reinforces rumors that iHeart wants to standardize their studios so that this skeleton system makes sense.

While this economy of scale is dangerous and ill-advised, iHeart is one of the most debt-ridden groups with revenue problems some but not all of which are caused by the coronavirus economy.

If the remote-control operator cannot verify that the transmitter shut down due to an issue with the antenna and they try to switch to a backup and put it on the “bad antenna” they can cause a higher problem.

Or if the transmitter did a safety shutdown due to a power supply or tube issue, they can make the problem worse by tinkering with it remotely and not having boots on the ground to confirm the issue.

Jerry Del Colliano is a professor at NYU Steinhardt Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions Music Business Program. This commentary originally appeared at Inside Music Media and is republished with permission.

[Related: “How Will iHeart’s ‘Centers of Excellence’ Strategy Play Out?”]

The post Commentary: iHeart’s Plans for Engineers appeared first on Radio World.

Angry Audio Bluetooth Gadget Front Quarter View

It’s more than likely that a broadcast engineer or multimedia tech professional will be called on at some time to connect a smartphone into a broadcast plant or multimedia studio.

The Angry Audio Bluetooth Gadget makes that process much less stressful while providing great capabilities for the reception and transmission of audio, whether that audio is basic cellphone grade, or from a codec app like Cleanfeed, Luci Live Lite, etc.

Making connections

The Bluetooth Gadget uses Bluetooth 3.0 to receive and transmit audio. The device will select from one of three codecs (AAC, aptX or SBC) to optimize the connection’s audio quality.

Connections for a mix-minus analog input and the left and right channel analog outputs are balanced +4 dBu XLR on the rear panel. There’s another XLR output on that rear panel. It’s a transformer balanced XLR male digital audio connection that can feed an AES digital device.

On the front along with the lights and switches there’s a TRRS jack wired to the CTIA standard for connecting a smartphone directly, so a hot switch between a Bluetooth paired smartphone, and a wired smartphone connection can be made without reconfiguring connections.

Rear view

Audio from the TRRS jack is unbalanced, with RFI filters on each input. Angry Audio provides an adapter for phones that use the OMTP standard for wiring. The device has a small antenna to help with reception; stated range for the device was 50 feet.

Versions for North America (115 VAC) and export (230 VAC) are available along with plugs for Europe, Australia and the United Kingdom.

The Bluetooth Gadget is AoIP-friendly. Angry Audio includes a StudioHub XLR to RJ-45 adapter pair for the left and right outputs, and an XLR-to-RJ45 adapter that can be used for the mix-minus input.

Simple operation

I tested the Bluetooth Gadget analog style with my Allen+Heath ZED 10 studio mixer and my Samsung Galaxy A6 smartphone. The balanced, mix-minus audio came from the ZED 10’s FX send bus’s TRS jack; the balanced audio connected to an input channel via analog XLR.

Pairing the Gadget to the phone involved flipping a switch on the front panel, and selecting the device on my smartphone. Once levels were set, making calls and recording them was simple.

Basically, if the smartphone has service, a standard cell call can be recorded or broadcast.

Angry Audio’s Michael “Catfish” Dosch said other applications besides putting calls on the air were considered when developing the Bluetooth Gadget.

“Most Bluetooth audio devices are receivers (sinks) only, useful for playback, but we thought a bidirectional interface would let you use your smartphone as a phone and put calls on the air. Plus, you could use other communications apps such as Skype, FaceTime, SIP clients, Zoom and even some social media apps like LINE and Facebook Messenger.

“Once we started development, we added some new ideas like the high-fidelity audio codecs, the split analog and digital outputs and the wired smartphone connection.”

The Bluetooth Gadget gives great flexibility, for instance, if a program is being transmitted to one source on a wired connection, and a second, studio quality feed (backup or second destination) becomes necessary. Connection through an app like Cleanfeed or Luci Live Lite, etc. makes that possible. So mission-critical audio transmission becomes less stressful.

The Bluetooth Gadget has a suggested retail price of $349. An optional rack mount is $39. Online documentation from https://angryaudio.com is straightforward and answers the questions engineers and technologists ask when installing devices.

Paul Kaminski, CBT, is host of msrpk.com’s “Radio-Road-Test,” and has been a Radio World contributor since 1997. Reach him on Twitter: msrpk_com. Facebook: PKaminski2468

The post Angry Audio’s Bluetooth Gadget Brings a Smile appeared first on Radio World.

The recently formed Independent Broadcasters Association said it is taking note of the “massive terminations” in radio recently and has a new program to help.

IBA is partnering with Vipology in what they described as a rapid response opportunity for radio people losing their jobs.

[Read: New Association Tackles the Needs of Independent Radio Stations]

President and Executive Director Ron Stone was quoted in a press release: “We are living in the most challenging economic times since the great depression 100 years ago, literally since radio began. To see so many broadcast professionals terminated during the worst of times is hard to digest.”

IBA did not mention iHeartMedia. Recent headlines have focused on staff reductions at that company.

Vipology is the company that manages IBA’s website. Stone said the site is being tweaked “to provide opportunities for those impacted to ‘meet up’ with potential broadcasters that may either be searching for new talent or perhaps be interested in engaging these folks for tracking positions.”

Look for the Talent Available page on the site. The service is free and is not limited to IBA’s 1,300 members.

As we have reported, IBA launched recently with a focus on independent broadcasters that Stone feels tend to get left behind by large-scale industry initiatives and events that target large publicly held companies.

 

The post IBA Launches “Talent Available” Page appeared first on Radio World.

Baby steps at this time but early December may bring an early Christmas for college basketball fans if AdLarge and the National Sports Network have their way.

AdLarge signed a deal to be the exclusive sales partner for NCAA college basketball games appearing on the National Sports Network for the 2020–2021 season.

 

The first game, Dec. 8, is a high-profile contest between the Creighton Bluejays and the perennial power Kansas Jayhawks.

Other teams scheduled to play through the season, depending on COVID pandemic interference are Duke, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas and UCLA.

The post AdLarge and NSN Prep for College Basketball Season appeared first on Radio World.

StreamGuy SGplayer coding

Radio broadcasters that also stream audio are one of the business segments targeted by an alliance of StreamS and StreamGuys.

They said they’re working together to provide “next-generation, high-performance live audio streaming using fully compliant standards-based CMAF HLS for low-latency, adaptive-bitrate HTTP Live Streaming (HLS).”

They said they can offer a reliable and scalable streaming solution with remarkable audio quality, noting that CMAF HLS is the technology used by video providers for OTT and other direct-to-consumer services. StreamS provides encoder software, systems and pro audio processing. StreamGuys provides server infrastructure for content delivery as well as business analytics; reporting software for logging, compliance and audience measurement; and eventual ad insertion options.

[Read: WWOZ Used StreamGuys CDN for “Jazz Festing in Place”]

They said that the standardized container of the Common Media Application Format (CMAF) allows content providers to reach more types of devices with a single file set. This, they say, results in more efficient content delivery, reduces streaming costs and increases audience. They said they’re partnering to bring these benefits to audio providers including radio broadcasters that want to expand their streaming presence.

They said that CMAF HLS allows users to scale with greater strength and cost efficiency than with older protocols and “leverage the latest high-efficiency codecs, such as xHE-AAC and the broader AAC family, to cover everything from high-quality voice to high-quality 7.1 surround. The ability to stream real-time extensible metadata alongside pristine audio adds greater value for content providers and audiences.”

Kiriki Delany, president of StreamGuys, was quoted in the announcement saying, “HLS is getting a whole lot better with CMAF. We are excited to support ultra-low latency and simplify deploying HLS.” (The press release contains more detailed comments from Delany on the technical benefits.)

Greg Ogonowski is president of StreamS-Modulation Index.

 

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A slew of historic radio programs from a well-known public radio station in New York City are now available to stream.

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) has released a collection of historic radio programs from WRVR(FM), the public radio station once owned by The Riverside Church in New York. This collection includes speeches by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, award-winning documentary coverage of the civil rights movement in Birmingham in 1963, coverage of the Cold War, and material from leaders like Pres. John. F. Kennedy and Indira Gandhi.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: Be Thankful for Community Radio]

“Making the Riverside Church/WRVR collection accessible through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting website will aid students, teachers, scholars and everyday citizens in exploring contemporaneous perspectives from religious leaders, political figures, artists and thinkers of the day, especially those trying to inform and influence the politics of the period,” said Alan Gevinson, Ph.D., AAPB project director at the Library of Congress.

The archive is searchable by genre, topic, date, asset type as well as contributing/producing organization. A search of the performance subcategory, for example, brings up a 1966 recording of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of Red Death,” while a search of event coverage pulls up a 1962 speech by FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow.

It was 1961 when The Riverside Church first put WRVR on the air, playing religious programming and coverage of cultural and higher-education events. The station shifted to an all-news format — along with a single jazz program called “Just Jazz with Ed Beach” — from September 1971 until 1976, when the station was sold.

The station was known for its role as a center of activism and social justice. In 2018, a grant was bestowed by the Council on Library and Information Resources to The Riverside Church and the AAPB to begin the process of digitizing the broadcasts of WRVR. Additional assistance came from the New York City and the AAPB, which is a collaboration between Boston public media producer GBH (formerly WGBH) and the Library of Congress. The project involves the digitization of more than 3,500 audio tapes from the WRVR collection.

The station was awarded a Peabody Award for its entire scope of programming, due in part to its documentary coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Materials in the collection are in a variety of languages including English, Spanish, Hebrew, French, Indonesian, German and Gaelic.

More items are expected to be added to the AAPB archive over the next year as items are digitized.

 

The post Glimpsing History Through New Digitized Radio Programs appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page:

Calrec said that South African community  station Bosveld Stereo is using its Type R for Radio IP audio system.

The installation was done by the manufacturer’s  partner Wild and Marr.

Bosveld Stereo broadcasts in Afrikaans in the North West Province.

The company said it is the first station in South Africa to use the Type R.

The system consists of a core, two hardware fader panels and one large soft panel. Dante AoIP carries the audio to the RF site.

Wild and Marr Technical Director Anton van Wyk and Broadcast Systems Engineer Dwaine Schreuder pre-commissioned the system off-site.

Send info for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

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Project schematic (click to enlarge in PDF)

Our recent contribution to the Workbench column in Radio World about our home-brew construction of an XLR-3 cable tester produced a notable, positive reader reaction.

It seems almost all of us in the profession possess that “maker instinct.”

Although I’d promised in our next article to jump cold into a complex follow-up project of a step oscillator, our distinguished editors thought something as useful as the cable tester but slightly more complicated might be a better next step … sort of an organic progression.

Advancing somewhat by inculcating some simple active circuitry would also be apropos. Staying in the universe of audio, our project in these pages is an elegantly straightforward unbalanced-to-balanced audio converter.

As is often said, the beauty and joy of technical standards is that there are so many to choose from!

This dilemma holds true for the world of audio as well. We often need to make a marriage in our stations between the near-universal broadcast impedances and signal levels with the ubiquitous “consumer” output levels.

Handheld digital recorders, air tuners, computer sound cards etc. need to be taken into the broadcast plant. The situation is complicated by differences in impedances between devices, not to mention the unique characteristics of odd sources such as “pro” audio signals with their slightly higher levels.

On With the Show

We’ve attempted to accomplish several goals here. In our example unit, we’ll use a similar enclosure to the one from our cable tester article so that, at least on our workbench, our new tools will have that matching look.

We’ll provide some flexibility in uses and setup. We’ll keep complexity and fabrication to a minimum and consequently, minimize the cost, especially as we may be making many of these.

We’ll provide enough design description and suggestions for changes and customization so you can make the project truly your own and as you need the device to work in your plant

Let’s get oriented. A parts list for this project is at the bottom of the story.

First take a look at the schematic at top.

Addressing just levels, consumer audio from something like a CD player is expected to peak at 0.447 volts with an RMS (Root Mean Square) value of 0.316 volts, which is well within the handling capability of an operational amplifier (op-amp).

If our audio is headed to a typical 600-ohm standard broadcast mixer input of +4 dBm, the level at that point will need to be a peak of 1.736 volts or 1.228 volts RMS. As such, the RMS voltage gain will need to be about 3.9, or 11.8 dBV.

Circuit Details

Like most electronic circuits, one can generally divide the beast into main activity and support sections. The main in this case is the signal flow area; the support is essentially the power supply, connectors and enclosure.

Start with main. In our circuit, the unbalanced signal enters the converter and encounters a 10k ohm shunt resistor to ground, which is included as the industry-suggested load impedance that provides the flattest signal response transfer. The 220 uF series capacitor isolates the audio, stabilizing the gain of the first active stage to follow.

The op-amp sections in this device are configured in the inverting format, providing great flexibility and stability.

Breadboarding the circuit.

Many readers will remember that most of my previous audio processing work in these pages used the classic 1458 op-amp, as I had been given and used over 100 of them. Now that I’ve been given an even larger number of the similar but higher performing 5532 op-amps, we’ll start using this new group to a similar depletion.

The 5532 is a self-compensated, dual-section unit. The first op-amp section provides two functions for us. The first is gain, and with that in mind, our required gain might be that voltage gain of 4 noted above to achieve line level output, but could also be a negative gain to help us get down to mic level.

To Invert or Not to Invert

A fundamental facet of a non-inverting op-amp (the alternative arrangement of the inverting circuit configuration used herein) is that one cannot achieve negative gain, which is gain less than 1. The inverting configuration, used here, can accomplish negative gain similar to an attenuator.

The second purpose of this stage is to create one of the two output lines of our active balanced output. As our op-amp is inverting the input signal, the AC audio voltage here would be the inverse polarity of the input. So, we have marked the line – (negative).

The complimentary output line (+) is generated by the second of the IC sections configured once again as an inverter.

We need the mirror imagine of the other line, so we invert with a gain of one. A gain of one is achieved by using the same value of resistors in all positions. Incidentally, the value annotated on our schematic of three 3.3k was determined by the circumstance of being given over 100 3.3k resistors via the largess of a generous friend and that these 3.3k’s were 1% tolerance. This close resistance matching is quite helpful in achieving that perfect gain of one if you’re a real op-amp purist.

One can use three of just about any value, but something between 1k and 10k, at least in my experience, seems to work best.

As noted, we have created a very usable balanced output with the two op-amp sections.

A fundamental characteristic of all op-amps is a very low output impedance such that these active devices approach being a perfect current source.

Coming together …

The author has been blessed with a great number of knowledgeable and generous instructors, and I’ve honored them often in these pages. From the wisdom of my mentors has come a world of wise words. One of my favorite quips, on this very subject, is: “Because of that low impedance, an op-amp can almost drive anything right down to a short … if there is even a little bit of resistance in that short.”

With this in mind, to create a source impedance for best and flattest power transfer, we insert resistors in each of the output of these op-amps to match the impedance of the input to follow, hence, the 300 ohm resistors in the + and – sides, which provide a 600 ohm source. Shunting these individual resistors with 100 ohms results in 75 ohms on each side, dropping the source impedance to 150 ohms and mimicking a mic output.

Flexibility

The changing of the output resistance between these two choices is accomplished by a DIP switch on each resistor. Another DIP switch changes the gain from a nominal 10 dB to –40 dB, bringing the output level down to about microphone level.

The gain of an inverting op-amp is set by the relationship of the input and feedback resistors. The 10k 20-turn trimmer fine adjusts this relationship, pretty much allowing you to land the gain (and maybe even the fader position) exactly where you want it.

Final assembly.

Bench testing indicates that my finished version has a remarkably flat frequency response. The value of the input cap was chosen to improve/maximize low frequency coupling. THD was excellent with the worst case no higher than 0.4%.

The abundance of 0.01 uF caps are just good engineering practice and, once again, enabled by being given a big bag of beautiful 50-volt mylars. (Buc, don’t you ever have to buy anything?)

If full isolation of the output is needed, a transformer can be connected to this balanced output, and a typical transformer with nominal 600 ohm impedance on each side is listed at the end of the parts list.

Power Supply and Other Support Items

Most audio sources in one’s radio station in 2020 are stereo, and so for that reason, our constructed box has two channels.

We’ve chosen to use a wall-wart from the salvaged/harvested box of about 8 volts DC output as our power source. Anything between 8 and 24 volts should work. This DC could be applied directly to the 5-volt three-terminal regulator, but since the power might come from an AC or reverse polarity source in the future, a bridge rectifier was included. If away from hard power, one could even use the DC from a 9-volt battery as a power source. Using this scheme, one has infinite options.

Power supply schematic. Click to enlarge in PDF.

If you’re permanentizing your converters, a transformer with simple regulator circuit is located in an isolation box at the lower corner of the schematic as an alternative to the above concept.

A DC to DC converter follows and that takes the regulated 5 volts in and converts this to + and – 15 volts for use by the op-amps. The particular converter chosen has 33 mA capability for each rail, which is more than adequate. In development, the worst-case current demand noted was about 8 mA for each 5532.

The + and – 15-volt operating point is a foible of the author as it seems to me to produce a slight but measurable improvement in S/N. Further, this 30-volt differential easily allows a +10 output if needed.

The abundance of 0.01 caps are for RF elimination. They also reduce any penchant for oscillation along the power supply rails.

RCA (phono) connectors were used on the unbalanced side as this is the industry standard. XLR-3 males were used on the output in anticipation that we will be using high-level broadcast inputs primarily.

The finished product.

The parts list is below; click on it to download in a Word doc.

Now that you have the “big picture,” it’s up to you to build one that is flexible, custom, useful and reflective of your own genius.

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

Parts List for Unbalanced to Balanced Converter Project (click for text version)

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