The 1st annual Radio Innovative Product Award Winners 2004
May 1, 2005 12:00 PM
Introduced in 2004, the Radio magazine Innovative Product Awards were developed to honor excellence in new product development in the radio industry. The 2004 award winners were the finalists among the entries of several products introduced during 2004. The awards demonstrate the talent and commitment of the people in every aspect of development at each company, from concept through sales. The entrants were listed in the 2005 Radio magazine Buyers Guide that was included in the December 2004 issue.
Manufacturers submitted products in several categories, and the winners were selected by you, the Radio magazine reader, through an online form. The results were tallied at the end of February, and the winners were presented with their awards at NAB2005.
Look for expanded profiles of each of these products in upcoming issues of Radio magazine.
Facility Support
CircuitWerkes
Sicon-8
The CircuitWerkes Sicon-8 is a full-featured dial-up remote control. Based on voice recording technology, the Sicon-8 can speak in your staff’s language because you record your own messages.
All of the I/O, including eight channels of relays, are included on the main board so there is no need to buy anything else to use the product. It is easily operated from any dial-up telephone, an auto-answer cell phone or an audio port. A free Windows-based client program, the Sicontroller, offers full access to all of the programming and control functions via the Sicon-8’s serial port. Options available from its serial port include Internet access and X-10 device control. An expander chassis increases the total number of channels to 16.
Data and Audio Storage
Broadcast Electronics
The Radio Experience
This is a software suite for RBDS and HD Radio. In addition to RBDS eight-character identifiers and 64-character text of title/artists, promotional messages, advertiser IDs, traffic bulletins and Amber Alerts, the data management software suite includes support for HD Radio’s Supplemental Program Service (SPS) such as Tomorrow Radio. It also provides bandwidth provisions for navigational system data downloads to tuners. All functions and user controls for the software suite are accessible from a Web-browser content management tool.
Data and Audio Storage
Audioscience
ASI8702
The ASI8702 is a PCI card that contains eight AM/FM tuners. The audio from each tuner is presented to the computer as a mono/stereo record stream, which may be accessed through a high speed bus master interface. The AM portion of each tuner has a medium-wave tuning range of 520kHz to 1,750kHz. FM capabilities include a tuning range of 76MHz to 109MHz with software controlled stereo decoding. An RF connector on the card bracket supplies the AM/FM signal to the tuners. A DB-9 connector supplies a line-level mono version of each tuner signal. The full stereo signal is available from a 50-pin header. Driver support includes Windows 2000, Windows XP and Linux. Applications for the ASI8702 include broadcast monitoring and logging, advertising verification and content identification.
Transmission
Broadcast Electronics
4MX 50
The 50kW transmitter is based on a patent-pending modulation design. The transmitter is IBOC and DRM compatible. The PA modules are accessible from the front of the transmitter, while lift-off rear panels provide access to power supplies and all ac connections. Nighttime power capability is as low as 250W. A 15″ XGA GUI is provided for operation and diagnostics, which are also available via IP. The overall power factor is greater than 0.98.
