By John Davis, Wheatstone Tech Support

Sometimes, support calls are about fixing a problem that already happened; other times, they’re about asking, “How can we do this?”

A couple of months ago, we got the second type of call from the engineers at WOR. Today, as I write this, WOR 710 is broadcasting the New York City Marathon using our console and a custom road kit. They knew that a real broadcast board in the field would make intercoms easier than taking a Mackie into the field. So, we went to work. Jay Tyler put together a road case and a custom back panel so plugging in headphones and a network connection would be easier. We then discussed with iHeartMedia’s engineers how to make the broadcast work.

The console is set up this morning in Central Park, and there are three Comrex codecs there for reporters in the field: studio, Barclays Center, and at the mile 20 marker. The anchors are there in Central Park. There’s a talent station for the producer sitting about 20 feet from the board op so she can independently switch between the codecs, talk offline to the reporters in the field, and control which feed appears in each side of her headphones.

We had several calls figuring out how to give the producer exactly what she wanted. The scripts evolved after every rehearsal. I took the last call on Wednesday morning in an Uber coming from the airport, heading to another install. I explained how to change a few things to give the producer what she needed, and the iHeartMedia engineers made it happen.

I’m proud of this broadcast, even though the primary part I worked on was the backhaul and the customer did the heavy lifting. But that’s what my job is: help people understand how to use our equipment to make good radio. Photo is from last night, courtesy of iHeartMedia engineering.

Radio, you’re looking good out there. We see you on social channels, on streaming apps, and on phones everywhere. Whether it’s automating cameras in the studio for getting across video clips or running out advertiser logos and other graphics to streaming channels, visual radio is now a big part of the studio scene. Here are a few examples of how AoIP is managing some of these new workflows.

Picture this: The morning jock gets up from the board to make a quick run down the hall and the studio cameras are rolling. It’s nothing but an empty chair and maybe a few blinking lights, feeding right into your social channels during your highest billing hours of the day.

It happens.

Camera automation software typically “reads” your console’s mic tally so when the mic turns on, the camera starts to roll video. That’s good, but even better is to integrate camera automation with the IP audio network so it can catch situations like the above before they happen.

Camera automation through the WheatNet IP audio network, for example, ensures that the camera only rolls if the mic is on, the mic fader is up, and there’s actual audio coming from the mic. These logistics are already tracked by the WheatNet IP audio network and can give camera automation that little extra data point to know to turn off the cameras when, say, a jock walks away from a live mic with the fader turned up.

It’s all fed through Wheatstone’s Automation Control Interface (ACI), our control protocol that enables native IP audio communication between the camera automation and the studio elements within the WheatNet IP ecosystem. This fully automated control takes away one more thing the producer has to do during a busy show, and can be beneficial for editing packages after the show as well. That same ACI integration that you used to automate the studio cameras can be used to control lighting and can be especially useful for post-production work, such as logging, skimming and tracking audio from a specific microphone.

Automating graphics insertion. One WheatNet IP visual radio project for a station targeting “digital natives” required live-streaming the radio program in progress along with relevant graphic elements. The integrator added visual radio software, the logic of which was slaved to the mic channels on the main studio console for setting level and audio duration thresholds controlling the cameras. They also slaved the visual radio software to the VoxPro audio recorder/editor channel to cue the system whenever a caller went on-air. When the VoxPro is on, the software knows to pull up a graphic for the website and social media channels, eliminating a lot of background work by operators.

Getting audio under control. Managing audio levels from the inevitable assortment of questionable audio files that are part of social media is the perfect job for the IP audio network. For example, WheatNet IP audio network I/O Blades have audio processing built in for level adjustment of WAV or MP3 files, and streaming appliances can be added to the network at any time to get the best sound possible across any link. Streamblade and Wheatstream use audio processing techniques designed specifically for streaming to keep audio smooth from one cut to the next without overloading the streaming codec and causing distortion, yet keeps programming well within the codec’s 0 dBFS limit.

Lookin’ good. Simply moving bulky gear from the studio to the rack room or onto a software app, so it's out of the way, yet routable through a CAT6 cable, makes for a much more camera-friendly studio. “The best studios I’ve seen of late are by some very smart people who line the walls with tube all around to mount cameras or lighting or hang microphones on to make these multipurpose rooms, and they just move stuff around as they move the talent around…they can put branding on certain walls and   video feeds on opposing walls...You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get a good result,” commented Chris Penny with Agile Broadcast during February’s Radio Week panel discussion on studios in general and visual radio in particular.  Broadcasters use our custom ScreenBuilder app, for example, to replace a hardware intercom panel with a touchscreen panel. Even the hardware that remains in the studio looks better than ever before. Our TS-4 and TS-22 talent stations are a prime example of how IP audio networking can transform a wired maze of buttons and panels into a compact workstation with microphone, headphone, timer, and talkback functions, all connected to the main studio console through one cable.

As for the console itself, there’s no doubt that it is still very much the centerpiece of radio, if not more so. And that’s okay with us, because we happen to make the best-looking IP consoles on the market.

Now shipping, our new Audioarts DML. A few of the features: USB on dedicated faders for automation, RJ45 connectivity for simple wiring, SuperQuiet™ mic preamps to bring out the best in all your mics, and proven external power supply—all built to Wheatstone quality. Contact us at [email protected] or call 252-638-7000.