High Tech Down Under.
Lawo installs central router and networked mixing consoles in the Albury Radio Centre.
In the south east of Australia, in Albury, New South Wales to be more precise, Lawo equipment has been in use since January 2008. The old digital routing system at the Albury Radio Centre was replaced by a Nova73 HD router. With a scheme of technical modernization, the radio station also installed more Lawo products: three zirkon consoles, five z4 mini mixers and four touch screens for Lawo’s VisTool software, which provides an intuitive user interface. The Albury Radio Centre belongs to Macquarie Southern Cross Media, Australia’s largest regional network with about 85 radio stations. Albury provides programs for around 30 satellite-based stations across regional Australia.
All the Lawo consoles are integrated with the Nova73 HD router’s network — providing a routing capacity of up to 3,000 crosspoints for the master control room. Should there be problem with the central router, the studios can stay on air by using a manual patchbay. Each of the three main control rooms hosts one zirkon with the 2s module variant, each equipped with 12 faders; the smaller control rooms are used mainly for news, and are equipped with 4-fader z4 mini mixers. VisTool software enables convenient touch screen operation throughout.
Andrew Meachen, the Albury Radio Center’s sound engineer, states: “We chose Lawo based on the reliability, versatility and configurability of their products; the installation and changeover went relatively smoothly. We found that, once configured, the system worked extremely well in practice, and the transition for the operators was painless, with surprisingly little training needed”.
