RADIO WEEK: THE HIGHS, LOWS AND WHOAS OF STUDIOS

It was an entire week dedicated to radio, much like any week at the Wheat factory, except Radio Week gave us a chance to talk studios with a few of our favorite experts. Here are highlights taken from our session on Smart Budgeting for Modern Broadcast Studios, moderated by our Jay Tyler with our studio experts Marcus Bekker (Southern Broadcast, New Zealand), Shaun Dolan (Inrush Broadcast Services, U.S.), Brian King (King Audio Services, Australia), and Kelly Parker (Wheatstone). Radio Week was held by Redtech the first week in February. 

ON NETWORK CABLE:

Cabling tends not to be a simple "it’s good” or “it’s not good.” Cabling is the thing that frequently will come up and bite you in the butt, and it’s going to cause strange network problems [and]…about the time you hear about it, it’s usually 4 in the morning.” – Marcus Bekker
“When we rewired studios…if it required two cables, we ran three. We always run a backup.” – Brian King
“A continuity test is not a cable certification.” – Kelly Parker

ON NETWORK SWITCHES:

“Use Cisco switches. Full stop. The main thing is to make sure if you can’t do it yourself, you have an IT professional program them.”- Brian King

ON STUDIO MUST-HAVES:

"The USB, that’s like the poor man’s driver… Things like Adobe Audition, the internet, or the remote laptop you want to bring in… Being able to get audio in and out of, say, an M4 USB port is good, and again you can get a USB cable for anybody’s phone, iPad, whatever.” – Jay Tyler

ON AoIP AND BRINGING IN AUDIO FROM VIDEO FEEDS:

“The ability to log into the machine for Google Meet or whatever … It’s a bit magical compared to the old days of having to find another mix minus on the console and wire it up.” – Shaun Dolan

The hour-long panel discussion Smart Budgeting for Modern Broadcast Studios is available for replay. You can also download our Studio Project Planning ebook for additional project planning tips and tools.

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