Broadcast Tough
Audio mixing consoles/surfaces. IP routing and control. Audio processors. Digital editing tools.
Wheatstone's products and studio systems are designed and built specifically for the demands of broadcasting. They cover a range from smaller single-station studios to large multi-studio, multi-station complexes with a million cross-points and dozens of mixers, talent stations, and elements connected across a region.
Containerization: Alternative to Virtualization
By Scott Gerenser and Andy Calvanese
One term popping up more and more in the cloud space is "containerization." If you're paying attention to the trends in cloud computing, you've probably heard about it, or at least about the most popular container platform, Docker.
Containerization is becoming a popular alternative to virtualization for running many different applications on a single machine or cloud instance. It has many of the benefits of virtualization but without some of the downsides, which makes it useful for transitioning from a fixed-location studio to a virtual operation.
Whereas virtualization involves emulating an entire machine, including the hardware and operating system, containerization involves encapsulating one or more applications and supporting files (so called "userspace" in Linux lingo) into containers that can then run on top of a single common operating system (usually Linux).
Remembering Charlie Brown
By Rick Bidlack
I suppose that for all of us there are inflexion points in our lives where you meet someone or experience some new thing that changes your life thereafter. Charlie Brown was such a turning point for me. He was also my introduction to radio. At the time we met, Charlie had been retired from a successful thirty-three year career in broadcasting where he had worked at Seattle’s top stations as a morning man, holding court and ruling the airwaves in a Top 40 format. His love of radio and wanting to bring the best content to his listeners drove him to create VoxPro in 1992, bringing it to market in 1994 (as a Mac application). Replacing reel-to-reel machines with computer software was a hard sell, but his own and other early adapters’ use of the product made it a reality.
Wheatstone's Remote Solutions
We've always had fast and easy ways to get your show to your studio from wherever you happen to be. Our brand new ReMIX is an inexpensive solution that works with any BLADE to give you remote mixing and logic access from anywhere. Check out our wide selection. And we have more coming all the time.
Wheatstone Wins an Emmy Award for Development of Audio over IP!
Wheatstone is the proud recipient of a 2020 Emmy award, along with the AES and five technology partners, for its work in the development of AoIP, leading to the AES67 standard.
An awards ceremony was to be held at the 2020 NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV but has been postponed.
THE WHEATSTONE STORE IS OPEN!
Here you can purchase spare modules and components for your Wheatstone, Audioarts, PR&E, and VoxPro products.
Audioarts DMX WheatNet-IP Console
The DMX console’s mix engine provides direct connectivity into the WheatNet-IP audio network, a complete ecosystem of consoles, talent stations, I/O units, accessories and virtual tools used in radio stations around the globe.
The console’s mix engine includes a built-in 5-port Ethernet switch. No external switch is required to create or join an existing WheatNet-IP system, making DMX one of the more affordable entry-level IP audio networked consoles on the market.
Dear Friends,
We don’t know about you, but we’re experiencing a bit of whiplash here at the Wheatstone factory. In less than a week, we’ve gone from full-on NAB show mode and new product launches to the April show cancellation and now, restaurants and schools closing in order to contain coronavirus (COVID-19).
But we’re still here and you’re still there, and now seems as good a time as any to take a moment to update you on what we’re doing at Wheatstone:
- First, we’re continuing to talk with broadcasters, manufacture our products, and support our customers, just as we always have.
- And yes, just as we have this time every year, we’re going to be launching new products, only instead of a meet up in Las Vegas, we’ll be connecting with broadcasters through webcasts and virtual meetings.
- Which brings us to this: We are scaling our AoIP technology to adapt to unprecedented changes in how stations operate. As stations send staff home, they can continue broadcasting uninterrupted from emergency home studios.
- Our AoIP network and systems engineers are now on call to assist our customers with remote system setup, management, and troubleshooting.
- Our technicians and product specialists continue to support broadcasters from seven locations in every time zone in the U.S. and to work closely with our technical partners around the globe.
- We continue to add inventory items to our online parts store, so essential spare cards, subassemblies, modules and other Wheatstone backup components are immediately available as needed.
- We are fully adhering to federal, local and state health and safety guidelines related to the containment of COVID-19.
- We are protecting the health and well-being of our staff and their families. Those who can are working from home. We are maintaining a small crew at the factory to ship products and provide support services as needed.
- We are diligently monitoring component availability across the globe to keep our inventories at satisfactory levels in order to maintain a steady supply of essential products.
Finally, we’d like to say that we recognize you are on the frontlines of these uncertain times.
And we want you to know that Wheatstone is fully committed and prepared to do whatever it takes to keep you on the air doing what you do best. Our entire staff wishes you and yours good health and all the best during this time.
Sincerely,
Your Friends at Wheatstone
AOIP. FROM HERE TO THE CLOUD.
Virtualization or cloud access is a very good example of what can happen when we combine AoIP with enterprise technology.
Currently, there are a number of cloud service providers, each with unique APIs, service level agreements and cost structures. The critical components of cloud systems include IP connectivity and supervisory software to manage access to virtual machines, which is fairly mature and in use by enterprises today.
But for broadcast purposes, we need to add two other critical components to that list:
• Audio encoding for bandwidth optimization
• AoIP control for system operation and management
Wheatstone has AoIP appliances for the WheatNet-IP audio network that include these critical components. With these additions, broadcasters can transport high-quality programming as well as the routing and control critical for full studio operation between sites.
VIRTUALIZATION BEGINS HERE
Virtualization began when we replaced sound cards with audio drivers, which effectively let us network audio with control functions together. Inside every WheatNet-IP audio driver are virtual general-purpose logic I/Os that can be queried by automation scripts and routed along with audio signals to perform control functions.
At the same time, we put mixing as a service on the network.
I/O BLADE units that make up the WheatNet-IP audio network have two stereo 8x2 internal mixers, each of which can be used as a source or input to the system and therefore are very useful for grouping several mics to a single output, talkback, or other purpose.
These and other AoIP developments led the way to virtual mixers and an assortment of UIs now hanging off the network. Some WheatNet-IP audio network interfaces are simple standalone virtual consoles, others are tapthrough screens on a tablet, and still others are physical consoles with soft buttons that can be changed as easily as any virtual UI. Wheatstone offers them all, and what we haven’t created yet, broadcasters can create themselves using our ScreenBuilder app.
Video Spotlight: 365 days of studios from around the world
Customer appreciation tour 2018/19, put together by our Jay (Ken Burns) Tyler when he was perusing his photo collection and discovered just how prolific Wheatstone is in the broadcast world. See yourself in this video? If not, there's still time to get Wheatstone installed and be in next year's!
Cool Wheat
These are some of our coolest, latest products. Click below to learn about each.
Adding an FM Translator?
Click here. We've got some cool ideas for you.
Where Scripters Meet
Are you a ScreenBuilder or ConsoleBuilder power user? Register and log onto our Scripters Forum. This is a new meeting place for anyone interested in developing new screens and workflows for our WheatNet-IP audio network. Share scripts, screen shots and ideas with others also developing virtual news desks, control panels, and signal monitors.
You’ll find documents, starter scripts and a whole knowledge base available to you for making customized screens like those pictured.
RADIO AUDIO CONSOLES
Wheatstone is all about radio. Cool consoles and mixers. Intelligent audio IP studio networking and routing. PR&E Consoles. VoxPro recording and editing. AM and FM on-air processors that rock both loud AND clean.
TV AUDIO CONSOLES
When you think of TV audio, you think of Wheatstone. Our consoles are the control centers for the finest facilities in the world. WheatNet-IP audio networking is becoming THE standard for interconnect.
AUDIO PROCESSING
Only Wheatstone offers processors with the surgical precision of 31-band processing! Sound shaping for FM, AM, HD, television, webcasting, podcasting, mastering or live audio.
VOXPRO AUDIO RECORDER & EDITOR
For live, on-air recording and real-time editing, there's no better solution than VoxPro.
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