AUSTRALIAN RADIO STATION TANK FM TAKES THE LEAP TO DANTE WITH AEQ TECHNOLOGY 05/06/2018

Tank FM - or 2WET - is a radio station located in Kempsey, in New South Wales, Australia. Founded in 1992, this community FM Radio station has strong ties to the local community and surrounding villages within the Macleay Valley.

At the end of 2016, the station’s Technical Management decided to upgrade their existing analogue studio equipment as part of a studio and office relocation. A functional specification was developed with Broadcast Components before starting the job: it had to be a 100% digital studio, using the latest AoIP technology (Dante) from Australian company, Audinate. proven reliability, ruggedness and simple were also essential.

The stations Technical Leader, Ross Delaforce, identified the need to introduce a future-proof, robust system that also was easily to use by presenters with varying technical capabilities.  “We needed a system that we could, through programming, mimic the operation of the existing analog console and therefore maintain the confidence levels of all presenters during both training and ongoing operations”, Mr. Delaforce said.

Tank FM were looking for excellent local customer service and support, selecting Broadcast Components as their technology partner. The success of Studio 1 and Netbox32 integration has seen Tank FM secure a 2nd DANTE enabled Forum-IP for deployment in Studio 2, which is currently scheduled for on air use by July 2018.  With the recent acquisition of a DANTE enabled Phoenix Venus 3 Codec the station is now also embarking on securing funding to purchase a Phoenix Alio portable codec, to simplify and streamline Tank FM's Outside Broadcast capabilities.

“The nature of the DANTE audio network meant that adding new services and resources was as simple as getting the device on the network and configuring the input, outputs and advanced options via software”, Mr Delaforce said.  “It was almost a plug and play deployment and a ‘no brainer’ for us to expand our DANTE network to connect other AEQ and PC devices”.

Broadcast Components, AEQ’s local partner in Australia, has tightly collaborated with Tank FM in many projects over the past years. Key equipment was demonstrated and offered for trial to ensure seamless interoperability with existing infrastructure.

Trials performed by Tank FM found the AEQ solution performed wonderfully and by late 2017, the new Tank FM digital AEQ FORUM digital studios were in operation, while the Main Control Rack (MCR) was connected to the studios using the AoIP DANTE network thanks to AEQ NETBOX interface, converting both analog and digital formats to DANTE, and vice-versa.

AEQ FORUM IP digital console can be adapted to several scenarios, such as control-booth, TV production controls, sound production, mixed configurations, integration in large installations, etc. thanks to its modular design. Simplicity and efficient control is combined in this console to ensure scalability from more basic operations through to very complex system architectures  starting with a minimum 4-fader control surface which can be expanded up to 20 freely assignable channels

The entire project has been led by Broadcast Components national sales manager, Mr. Sean Pritchard, in collaboration with AEQ central technical service in Madrid and Mr. Antonio Perez as the company’s Sales Area Manager for Asia-Pacific.