Westwood One is providing radio coverage of the Olympic Games from Rio de Janeiro. Of course the radio engineer asks, what equipment are they using in what must be, essentially, Remotezilla?
Well, we have your answer — along with pictures!
Here’s what Westwood One Director, Broadcast Engineering and IT, Zachary Akey, provided us:
● Four acoustically isolated rooms, two production workspaces and a technical operations center including
● One full-size control room — SAS Rubicon-SL console
● One full-size talk studio — Two SAS Rubi-T mini control surfaces
● One two-position studio with combination producer/control space
● One single-position studio with combination producer/control space
● Comrex BRIC-Link II with active Crosslock sessions providing 12 discrete bidirectional transmission paths for AoIP primary backhaul
● Three Zephyr XStream ISDN backup codecs
● Six dedicated “4-wire” style venue broadcast loops with Klark-Teknik SQ1D dynamics processing
● Two physically isolated LANs: one broadcast LAN, and one “production” LAN — all Cisco hardware
● Three roving Comrex Access Portables using local 4G/LTE
● SAS 32KD provides TOC routing and two SAS RioLinks provide decentralized routing
● Various SAS Peripherals: CP-16A to Switch Dorrough 40-A meters and Genelec 8020 monitors for test in TOC
● Six SAS ICM-32 intercom heads for dual-function monitoring and interruptible foldback
● BSI Skimmer Plus software with AudioScience soundcard hosted by Dell Precision 5810 recording on venue feeds
● Focusrite Scarlett PC audio interfaces at workstations
● Telos HX1 analog phone hybrids
● Rubi-T mini control surface with dynamic mix-minus on all four faders
● Henry Engineering Multiports at each producer workspace
● Wheatstone M-1 and Symetrix 528E mic preamps
● Furman Power 220 VAC to 110 VAC power conversion and UPS Other equipment that can be seen in the photos includes:
● Antelope Audio Orion32 A/D-D/A converter and audio interface
● ESE ES-188 master clock
● Eventide BD500 delay
● Fostex 6301B monitors
● Gold Line TS1RMX audio tester
● Henry Engineering Matchbox HD
● Henry Engineering Superelay
● PreSonus ACP88 compressor/gate
● Wohler LM53-8 meter
Compare this to the Westwood One operation at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, to see how much has changed and how much has remained the same. Here are the links to our three-part series — Meet the U.S. Radio Olympics Team; WestwoodOne Sets Up in Sochi; and WestwoodOne in Sochi — Teamwork Wins.
