The Association of Public Radio Engineers has released the preliminary schedule for its upcoming Public Radio Engineering Conference, or PREC. Held April 3–4, just prior to the NAB Show, the 2025 conference will take place at Tuscany Suites Hotel in Las Vegas.
According to the APRE, PREC offers a variety of presentations based upon peer knowledge and experiences, as well as manufacturer solutions and educational papers that will benefit the public radio broadcast engineering community. The conference serves as a professional development opportunity as well as a place to honor engineers for their service.
The first day will feature sessions like “Learning on the Fly: Troubleshooting Techniques” by Nautel’s Jeff Welton and “Engineering and the Los Angeles Wildfires,” hosted by Lance Harper, chief engineer at Southern California Public Radio. Other sessions of note incude a talk given by Orban Senior VP of Sales Mike Pappas on “what we have learned about cloud delivery to transmitters” and a “Radio 101” talk given by Minnesota Public’s Radio’s Bill Dahlstrom. Per the agenda, Dahlstrom will speak to technical basics for the developing engineer — an ongoing PREC theme.
Day One concludes with an evening session discussing where new engineers are coming from.
“Our ever-popular Night Owl will be a wide-ranging session on ways to find, develop and support the next generation of engineers and media technology folks,” APRE President Scott Hanley told Radio World.
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Day Two opens with a session on using software-based distributed mixers to create dynamic media infrastructures, given by Lawo’s Al Reynolds. Other sessions of interest include an interactive talk titled “Smarter, Not Harder: How to Work Efficiently” and “AI: The (Many Concurrent Translated) Voices In Your Head,” given by Bill Bennett of ENCO.
Other topics to be discussed during the conference include FM processing, non-traditional STLs, broadcast telephony and PRSS future tech.
The two-day event will conclude with APRE’s Engineering Achievement Awards Dinner on April 4 at Lawry’s The Prime Rib in Las Vegas, where the 2025 Engineering Achievement Award winner will be announced. Last year’s honoree was Michael Beach, former vice president of distribution at NPR.
For those who can’t make it to Las Vegas, full virtual attendance is available with the ability to interact with presenters. This year, PREC virtual access is available at half price.
According to an APRE press release, “Since returning from COVID-19 lockdowns, APRE has added substantial energy and resources to make the conference valuable as an online experience, with live sessions, multiple cameras, access to live questions and answers and more.”
The discount is made possible by PREC sponsors “and their commitment to help gather public radio technology experts from stations, networks, vendors and producers large and small for an informative and collegial couple of days,” said organizers.
Online registration is $175 for APRE members and $190 for non-members. In-person registration is $350 for APRE members and $380 for non-members.
APRE says 2025 PREC registrants who already paid the full fee for online-only attendance will be refunded the balance for this year.
