Radio World International - March 2010 - (Page 10)
10 RadioWoRld | radioworld.com Rapid Response Radio for Haiti By Marc Maes PORt-AU-PRiNCE, hAiti — Dutch foreign-service broadcaster Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (RNW) was asked to ship a mobile radio station to Haiti to help restore communications and information-supply after the 12 January earthquake that counted several radio stations among its victims. RNW already established a solid reputation when it comes to providing temporary broadcast facilities. In 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami washed over part of Indonesia, causing the loss of several of RNW partner stations and staffers. To help those stations and listeners in the tsunami zone, RNW decided to develop mobile radio stations stuffed in containers, Ò a radio in a box,Ó and to ship them to Indonesia. March 2010 deploy the Dutch mobile radio solutions. Ò We have a very good working relationship with CBA, the BBC and Radio Canada International, and they knew we had the rapid response sets ready,Ó said Brouwer. Ò CBA has a partner network in Haiti, and they heard some 20 radio stations were damaged or destroyed due to the earthquake. Let’s face it: public or commercial radio, thereÕ s just no money to re-build them, so sending out the rapid response sets is a ?rst step. Two “radio in a boxÓ containers are standing by for a second phase.Ó The rapid response sets have evolved since their deployment in Padang; they have been tweaked to suit the modern needs of radio journalists. Each set consists of what Brouwer calls Ò back-tobasics radio:” two microphones, a Marantz 620 flash memory-based recorder, a Denon CD player, a laptop computer for recording and editing audio material, Berhinger mixer and a 100 W RVR transmitter, all K V GL DV OG RX H Q R L cm flight-case weighing just over 15 kilograms. Each set comes with a separate, fueldriven mains power supply. A ?rst rapid response set was shipped to Haiti at the end of January and arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where it was in customs clearance at press time in mid February. “The CBA will take of?cial delivery of the radio set and will investigate whether there’s suf?cient skilled radio personnel left in Haiti to operate the mobile studio,Ó Brouwer said. Brouwer explained access to information is part of RNWÕ s mission statement, and supplying material for broadcast use ?ts that goal exactly. modern needS Ò That really worked out and helped the local Indonesian partner back on FM.Ó said Marc Brouwer, technical coordinator at RNW. Ò But the transshipment of BacK on tHe air rNW contributor Marco Keehnen With a rapid response set (also in Inset) in Padang, Indonesia IP AUDIO CODECS For Studio to Transmitter & Studio to Studio Links PYKO ? PCM STL for under 1 000 C www.digigram.com/pyko IQOYA *LINK ? ? Rock-solid 2-channel IP audio codec with multiple fail-over options Multiple failover methods +24dBu audio or MP3 on standard RTP streaming ? Robust fanless hardware ? USB memory for backup audio file and playlist storage ? Digigram-grade audio quality (+18dBu and balanced I/Os) ? 8 GPIOs and RS232 for advanced features such as transmitter-side controls or RDS transport a container takes at least four weeks, and sometimes this is just too long, so we also thought of developing a rapid response set.Ó RNW shipped three containerized stations to Indonesia, but forged ahead with the development of a compact and easyto-operate radio set. In August 2009, RNW engineers had designed two mobile radio studio sets. “They were ?rst used last October, when an earthquake rocked Padang, the capital of West Sumatra (Indonesia), on 30 September. The sets did a great job,Ó continued Brouwer. 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Connectivity to Axia Livewire™ networks ? www.digigram.com/link u canada Audio Compression Algorithms PCM linear 8/16/20/24, ITU G.711/722, ISO MPEG-1/2 Layer I, II and III ? Optional algorithms: MPEG-4 AAC, MPEG-4 AAC-LD, MPEG-4 HE-AACv2, AAC-ELD ? www.digigram.com is using some 3,000 audio-technica microphones to cover the vancouver Olympics, according to audio-technica. a-t said ObSv used at4050 large diaphragm multipattern microphones and bP4025 X/Y stereo field recording microphones to create 5.1 surround sound ambience from some events, Untitled-9 1 11/3/09 4:17 PM
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