KWVA General Manager Charlotte Nisser and Chief Engineer Ali Abdul-Sater with their new Lawo crystal console.
KWVA(FM)’s recently rebuilt broadcasting facilities now feature Lawo consoles and routing infrastructure.
The University of Oregon-licensed station chose new equipment for its four studios and the technical operations center.
“Being part of an educational system and also providing community access, KWVA needed mixers flexible enough to accommodate, and built to stand up to, a wide variety of operators,” Bill Bennett, Lawo radio sales engineer for North America, said in the announcement.
According to the release, the studios were equipped with two 16-fader and two eight-fader Lawo crystal consoles, powered by Lawo Compact Engines, and the TOC was outfitted with a Nova17 digital router.
Lawo customized the console GUIs to allow for switching control of the transmitter feed between studios by building in an on-screen switch using Lawo’s VisTool screen-building software.
“The Lawo crystal and Nova17 system fit the KWVA workflow because they can be customized to do anything,” said Chief Engineer Ali Abdul-Sater. “In a facility with over 150 volunteers, with a mix of sports, news and music programming, we really needed that ability.”
Abdul-Sater also noted the slim form factor of the Crystal consoles as a selling point, a sentiment echoed by KWVA General Manager Charlotte Nisser, who said “they look clean, and have such a minimal footprint — just power and network cables.”
