ZEBULON, GA. — WEKS(FM)/The Bear 92.5 started using Arrakis Digilink-Xtreme when the station was purchased more than a decade ago. We did this for a number of reasons. First and foremost, after much research, and test driving the software, we found the system to be the most user-friendly. And having mostly young talent, we felt we had a perfect fit with Digilink-Xtreme.
Years have gone by, and we have appreciated the Xtreme and what it has been capable of doing for us. We are a country music format, with live shows, and its live show interface has worked great. It has a simple playlist that we are able to schedule, as well as easy access hot keys, which our DJs use often.
In addition to its live screen, we also do satellite broadcast of NASCAR, which Xtreme handles well. These satellite broadcasts are simple to set up and schedule. Another thing we have enjoyed about Xtreme is that it works with our Natural Log traffic and billing software and is easy to pair.
As we have grown and expanded and started needing more bells and whistles we had to, again, search for a system to fill our growing needs. So we started looking again at automation systems this year. Logically, since we have had a good experience with Digilink-Xtreme, we first looked at Arrakis for options.
The next step up from Xtreme in the Arrakis automation family, is Digilink-HD. It costs a little more and has some more features than the Xtreme. And it was the most cost-efficient choice for us and had everything we were looking for to help us grow.
The biggest feature we sought was the ability to voice track from remote locations and duck the tracks. Xtreme was limited in its voice tracking, and had become too limited for our growing needs. With Xtreme, you could create a voice track, which overlapped the end of the outgoing track and the intro of the incoming song, but you couldn’t make any adjustments. That’s fine and good if you want to do a quick voice track, but we wanted something more.
From our research, we found that Digilink-HD didn’t have this issue with voice tracks. We saw that Digilink-HD allows you to create the voice track quickly like the Xtreme, but if you’d like, you could then adjust the overlap times as well as duck the incoming track, add a music bed, etc. This is what we needed, and we love being able to cut our tracks quickly and edit on the fly with the DHD voice track editor.
As with any new setup for automation, it is a bit intimidating making a switch. Even having used Arrakis software before, it’s added work to make a switch like this. But our minds are put at ease knowing we have their support staff to help. With their monthly program, they include customer support, and they are certainly top notch.
We have just recently made the decision and signed up to transition from the Xtreme to Digilink-HD. The sales staff explained that it will be a matter of swapping out the switcher hardware and running the new software.
For those who have the Digilink-Xtreme and would like a little more out of it, we highly recommend programmers contact the Arrakis Systems sales staff to learn how easy the transformation is to Digilink-HD. Operating just one station in the current market is unique but The Bear 92.5 has taken the challenge and used Arrakis to our fullest advantage.
I have been buying studio equipment for 40 years and in my experience, Arrakis equipment and software is first class. As a veteran I am also pleased when we can buy “Made in the USA.”
For information, contact Ben Palmer at Arrakis Systems in Colorado at (970) 461-0730 or visit www.arrakis-systems.com.
