RADIO GAUCHA TRUSTS IN AEQ TECHNOLOGY 22/11/2013
AEQ DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TO EQUIP THE TOTALITY OF RBS-RADIO GAUCHA CENTRAL STUDIOS IN BRAZIL
RBS Group is a Brazilian regional mass media group founded in 1957 that operates mainly in the south of Brazil. RBS Group includes eight newspapers, four Internet portal, 23 local television channels (is the major TV regional network of Latin America), and 25 radio stations with a network of over 150 affiliated in nine Brazilian states.
Radio Gaucha is a radio station with headquarters in Porto Alegre, founded in 1927, that traditionally broadcasts in the range of 600 kHz AM, being this channel exclusive of the station in the south hemisphere. In 2008, Radio Gaucha starts to broadcast also in Radio FM, using the 93.7 MHz frequency.
Recently technical direction of the company has decided to renew their central studios facilities and has chosen AEQ as main contractor, on the base of AEQ digital technology BC2000D. The totality of the project equips new 4 ONAIR radio studios and one new central control room (MCR).
Two radio studios have been created over AEQ ARENA digital audio mixers with 35 motorized faders control surface and redundant power supply, offering 24 analogical inputs/outputs, 24 digital AES inputs/outputs, and 8 microphones. The third ONAIR studio uses another AEQ ARENA digital mixer of 15 faders, and the last radio studio works over the new digital compact AEQ FORUM console that over a self-contained design includes a 12faders control surface for 16 analogical inputs and 5mics. There is a fifth digital AEQ ARENA mixer in the project like general backup for the totality of the studios during maintenance works or even emergency cases.
Radio Gaucha Master Control Room has been designed over AEQ BC2000D digital central router that includes in this configuration 7 chassis interconnected using multi-channel dedicated optical fiber links, to obtain a final size of 260 analogical in/out, 96 digital AES in/out, and 12 microphones. All the radio audio signals in the central facilities of Radio Gaucha are managed by this new central digital router, so AEQ equipped this system as 100 % redundant including double control modules in all the nodes, double power supplies for all the chassis and numerous DSP for backup. Control of the router AEQ BC2000D is decentralized from PC distributed in the diverse radio studios, as well as from 14 dedicated XY panels AEQ NCB100 for quick-operations, always controlled by passwords associated with different users profiles and their proper limited access levels.
The totality of the connections between new digital ONAIR radio studios and the central control router have been designed using MADI (AES10) links over dedicated optical fibers, allowing each of them to transport up to 64 independent audio channels (with digital AES3 quality): so whatever of the audio signals generated by Radio Gaucha in any of the studios can be sent for analysis, operation, processing or distribution to practically any place/room/studio of this central facilities building.
AEQ completed this important project shipment with all the ONAIR signalling material for doors (model AEQ-L) and studios (AEQ SCR03), and all the auxiliary equipments for audio signals monitoring locally with AEQ AM03 and AEQ AM04 monitors, or remotely with the AM/FM receiver AEQ LISTENER. Additionally AEQ to simplify the final installation and to reduce wiring work, time and cost, prepared several complete cabling kits specifics for each studio, as well as AEQ RC01 generic connection points of studio headphones and microphones.
This ambitious project has been coordinated by RBS Radio Brazil Technical Manager Mr. Jean Pierre Vandresen, who in collaboration with the technical services of AEQ-Madrid and the technical staff displaced to Porto Alegre, led the tasks of installation, configuration and start-up of these complete digital supplied material and systems.
