Written by Andy Walters - Engineering Director
At WCR we have undertaken a project to run a student radio station for our local college using the new wave of LPAM licenses that have become available. We went on air in September last year using our ages old equipment. It soon became apparent to us that we needed more facilities as we also do programmes of our local BBC station Radio WM. When December came along and we found that we had been selected as a programme provider for the Wolverhampton and Shropshire DAB license (won by Now Digital) The need became even more apparent. I knew that we needed something that would stand up to a bashing that only Media students could give, be robust and need little maintenance, sound good and be fairly resilient to tea or anything else that the on air talent would inadvertently tip into the console. I looked around and everything seemed to be too flimsy or expensive and overly complicated. That was until I visited the BBC World Service studios and saw their continuity suites. These were Audix desks and everybody was extremely pleased with their performance even though they were over 10 years old.
We contacted Audix Broadcast and straight away they were very helpful. Some companies weren't interested because they heard the words Student Radio but Audix listened to our needs and built a console based on our specifications. We even got a nice day out in Saffron Walden on the hottest day of the year thrown into the bargain!
Typical ABS6000 12 channel audio mixer