SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Canary Islands After the successful installation and operation of a production studio at Canarias Radio facilities in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias in 2008, the technical staff of the company has again trusted in AEQ for the installation of a new turnkey production center at Canarias Radio facilities in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
Canarias Radio is the public radio broadcaster for the Canary Islands with additional coverage for southwestern Europe and the African coast.
Mirror system
The Canary Islands region is divided in two provinces with capitals in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The original idea when we started analyzing the creation of the new studios for Canarias Radio was to provide each with the same technical equipment and program production capabilities.
The Tenerife facilities were designed as a mirror installation of the production center previously executed in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. Tenerife’s installation includes two studios (control room and studio), a medium size self-operated studio, two small cabins and an unattended central master control (MCR).
The complete system is run via AEQ BC 2000 D technology — a standard compatible with AEQ digital consoles, audio routers and communications multiplexers. BC 2000 D guarantees quality, reliability and scalability that offers future growth possibilities. .
All of the studios, including the cabins, are equipped with digital AEQ Arena consoles interconnected with the AEQ BC 2000 D router/central audio matrix. Thanks to the system flexibility both control rooms have been configured so each one is capable of handling two booths simultaneously or just one by pushing a button. Control surfaces in control Rooms 1 and 2 have 25 faders in total (two Arena D10s and one Arena DM).
The self-op room has a 15-fader control surface and the cabins have units with five faders each. All of the input/output devices of the BC 2000 D system are installed in the rack room (central control) close to the BC 2000 D router. Control interconnection between the router frame and control surface is based on IP protocol, which simplified the installation greatly.
The external communications of the studios use the AEQ Systel 6000 system. Its touchscreen interfaces have a friendly graphical user interface (big buttons and rich colors) that simplify the use of the system for nontechnical users.
Another important part for us was the AEQ Mar4Suite Pro automation system. This network includes five central servers installed in the equipment room, five workstations for playout associated with the mixing consoles in the studios and six workstations for journalists in a dedicated press room.
Mar4Suite Pro includes all of the typical applications of the Mar4 suite: news ingest, text editor with optional embedded audio, audio editing, logging and the most reliable data content manager in the market.
In the central equipment room or master control, there are four 42 RU size racks where the electronic elements of the equipment resides, including Mar4Suite Pro central servers, an AEQ AM-03 audio monitor, AEQ Eagle ISDN codecs, AEQ Course multicodec, two AEQ Impact summing audio routers, two AEQ Caddy A/D-D/A converters, an AEQ Listener multireceiver for monitoring and six patch panels for digital and analogical signals.
With this installation in Tenerife, we complete the second big production center for Canarias Radio. Both centers featuring the latest in design and broadcast technology, which guarantees a long useful service life for citizens of the Canary Islands.
For information, contact AEQ at (954) 581-7999 or visitwww.aeqbroadcast.com.
Manuel Saiz Mesa is project manager for Canarias Radio.
