The author is general manager of CNC Medios.
CNC Medios is the leading communications company in northern Chile, headquartered in the city of Antofagasta. It includes two television channels and three radio stations: Canal95, FM Plus and FM Quiero. We are also members of ARCHI, the Chilean Radio Association, where we are very active with new ideas and projects.
For a long time CNC Medios has been a daring company, unafraid to bet on the latest technologies available on the market to improve the way we create our content.
A few years ago we purchased several AEQ Capitol IP digital consoles. Their digital technology offers us a significant improvement in the audio quality of our broadcasts, and their IP technology allows remote control that we had never been able to enjoy until now.
Great Timing
In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic situation forced broadcasters like us to look at new ways of working remotely, we already had that path in place thanks to the IP connectivity. But we realized that we needed to strengthen our ability to generate dynamic, quality programs, even if the constraints of teleworking didn’t make it particularly easy.
That’s when AEQ launched its Talent portable audio codec, at the perfect time for our plans.
CNC Medios already had AEQ audio codecs such as the Mercury or Venus units in our studios, but they were not the ideal solution for a journalist to operate from home, but the new Talent seemed to offer the optimum solution: small, easy to use, digital quality with IP connection and robust.
In addition, AEQ technicians remotely helped us during the first days to discover all the options and to set them up in the most suitable way for our particular operation.
Currently all of our top journalists have one in their homes, and they have been connecting to the central studio for some time now thanks to them. The control surface of the Talent is simple, and with just a couple of button pushes our journalists, even the less experienced ones, can easily connect.
In addition, Pilot mobile phone app gives them the option to operate the Talent directly from their own smartphones. What’s even better is that the journalist can carry out live interviews with guests or contributors using Skype or WhatsApp, for example. AEQ’s Talent is a gem — such a small thing can do so much.
Finally, at the CNC Medios group’s technical center we have a PC where we have installed the AEQ Control Phoenix Multi application. This allows our technicians to supervise the status of all our AEQ audio codecs in real time and, if necessary, intervene to modify any configuration or solve connectivity issues.
This application displays images of all the devices that are switched on and, even better, the exact connection status, including VU meters monitoring the audio signals that are being transmitted through them.
All the AEQ audio codecs we work with include Opus encoding algorithms and also free registration on AEQ’s SIP server. This is great since it saves us from having to complicate the deployment of these great codecs and having to set up our own SIP Server.
Info: In the U.S., contact AEQ at 1-800-728-0536 or visit www.aeqbroadcast.com. For international queries, +34-916-861-300 or visit www.aeq.eu.
Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.
