Environmental Consciousness: Keeping the Country Clean with Omnia

With installations at stations and networks around the globe, the sound of Omnia audio processing is pretty much everywhere. Plenty of big broadcasters are vocal Omnia fans, of course, but what you might not know is that you don’t have to be a huge station to have Omnia clarity. Take Tim Marini for example, who runs an Internet streaming music station out of his house in rural Utah.

Marini started his stream in 2010, and experimented with several musical formats. On January 1, 2011 he started focusing on Hot Country. Since then, he has built up the 24/7 webstream to 100,000 -120,000 total listening hours per week, and is steadily building his base of sponsors. Part of his secret is not going overboard with commercials. “I limit breaks to three 90 seconds per hour,” he adds. He streams at 48K AAC+, and 128K MP3.

Topics: broadcast audio processor

Joe Talbot - SIP Tech Update

Quadcopters? We just can’t stop talking about them! So, there’s that. And Joe Talbot joins us from the high desert in Nevada. With more and more broadcasters moving away from POTS and ISDN tech, SIP/VoIP is bringing better-sounding phone calls into hundreds of radio and TV stations. How do you get SIP into your facility? Joe Talbot explains.

Topics: Radio Technology, sip

Vintage Audio: Panasonic SA 710 Quad Receiver

Even 30 years after four-channel quadrophonic gear disappeared from the consumer electronics stores, it still has a handful of die-hard followers. There are several websites devoted to all things quad, and four-channel equipment regularly appears on eBay. This month's find however - a Panasonic SA 710 quad receiver - was found in a thrift store, still in working condition.

Compliant Loudness Should Still Move the Meters!

Regulations which aim to improve broadcast audio loudness consistency are being implemented worldwide. This is a perfect example of legislators everywhere reacting to an issue that affects all their constituents' broadcast channels with loudness variation that is annoying to viewers. Often attributed to commercials, it is often program related as well.

This is a case where the old adage “be careful what you wish for, because you may receive it” definitely applies; in some cases the fix for annoying loudness variations has produced unintended consequences.

Axia in the Townsquare or We Get Buffalo'd in New York

You may not have realized that the third-largest owner of radio stations in the U.S. is Townsquare Media, with facilities in 66 small to mid-sized markets across the country - including a cluster of four stations in Buffalo, New York, where our story takes place.

It’s here that we met up with Chief Engineer Bill Stachowiak.

Vintage Audio: HP 403B AC Voltmeter

Back in the days when analog broadcast gear was the norm, every radio and TV station was required by the FCC to perform annual proof-of-performance measurements. That meant every engineer’s work bench had to be equipped with certain tools – namely an audio signal generator and distortion analyzer.

One of the more common of these was the HP 403B AC voltmeter. We discovered a rather distressed 403B on a recent trip to the attic.

Live at NAB 2014

Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack bring some of the best of NAB 2014 live from the NAB Central Exhibit Hall. One after another, engineers and company execs answer questions and share with us what’s hot at this year’s NAB.

Mike Adams - First Response Radio

First Response Radio - on site within 72 hours of a natural disaster where other mass communications are crippled - provides needed humanitarian information at the right time.

Mike Adams, an accomplished broadcast engineer, leads the mission to design and deploy suitcase-sized broadcast studios and radio transmitters. We’re talking with Mike and learning about First Response Radio’s mission, operations, and logistics. This is radio broadcasting at the most local level - and designed to help people when and where they need help and information the most.

1985: Telos 10 Debuts DSP to NAB

The central focus of the Bradley Broadcast booth in 1985 was the Telos 10.

How we got there – and what happened during those four days – was unlike any other trade show I’ve attended.

But first, some background.

Vintage Audio: ATC-Collins P-190 Cart Machine

This visit to the attic not only reveals some great radio gear of days gone by, but a story that’s the stuff of legend.

At the 1959 NAB convention in Chicago, the ATC/Collins ‘P’ series of tape cartridge machines was the hit of the show. No one had seen anything like it before, and for the next three decades, whether for commercial spots, jingles or music, radio ran on cart machines. It can safely be said that the fast-paced 'Top 40' format of the 1960s would not have been possible without tape cartridge technology.

But did you know the premiere of the cart machine was almost a disaster? But first, some background on the technology of these fabled machines…