Radio World Buyer’s Guide articles are testimonials intended to help readers understand why their colleagues chose particular products to solve various technical situations. This month’s articles focus on codecs, STLs and content distribution.
South Carolina Public Radio’s decision to embrace HD Radio across its statewide network inspired more than a transmitter replacement project.
It also prompted a complete modernization of the broadcaster’s audio transport infrastructure, creating a more flexible, resilient and localized distribution network for its eight FM stations.
A longtime GatesAir customer, South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV), which operates South Carolina Public Radio, recently completed installation of eight new GatesAir Flexiva transmitters — seven liquid-cooled FLX models and one FAX air-cooled transmitter — to support simultaneous FM and HD Radio broadcasting.
The transmitter upgrade opened the door for a new audio-over-IP strategy centered on GatesAir’s Intraplex Ascent cloud transport platform and second-generation IP Link codecs.
“We made the decision to move to HD Radio because it gives us flexibility for future programming and new formats,” said Mark Jahnke, chief technology officer for SCETV.
“Once we started that project, it made sense to modernize the entire transport network at the same time.”
At the core of the new architecture is Intraplex Ascent, which aggregates audio from multiple studio sources and distributes multicast streams to transmitter sites across South Carolina.
Rather than relying on traditional point-to-point STL connections, Ascent enables any studio to deliver programming to any transmitter while simplifying statewide content distribution.
Each transmitter site receives programming through an Intraplex IPL-200n hardware codec, which provides local storage for station IDs, underwriting messages and other programming that can be inserted automatically at the edge.
Every Flexiva transmitter also integrates an Intraplex IPL-100e module, providing a third layer of redundancy beyond SCETV’s primary fiber and microwave transport paths.
GatesAir’s Intraplex StreamSplicing technology continuously repairs packet loss by borrowing data across both network paths, helping maintain uninterrupted audio delivery.
The manufacturer said that the new architecture also positions South Carolina Public Radio for greater regional flexibility, allowing local studios to originate programming for specific markets without routing every program through a central distribution hub.
For Jahnke, the investment continues a relationship with GatesAir that spans more than two decades.
“Reliability is number one, audio quality is number two and customer support is number three,” he said. “Those have always been the strengths of the Intraplex platform, and they’re exactly what we need for a statewide public radio network.”
Info: www.gatesair.com
