New Radio Studio
Steve Ahern, Director of Radio at AFTRS elaborates on the NEW state of the art Radio studios at AFTRS
AFTRS has used the opportunity provided by its Moore Park move to build three state-of-the-art radio studios that will set up the organisation for years to come with one of the most progressive radio training facilities in the Australia.
The radio studios are built around a large control room, which doubles as a teaching space, and also has direct line of sight to the facility’s rack room. The radio studios are interconnected with the new building’s Video Post Production control room, a suite of sound recording studios, computer editing rooms, and a range of tv studios, all in other parts of the building. Audio file transfers are possible from one area to another.
Total connectivity in the building allows the radio students to work with other specialists to experiment with multi-platform broadcasting such as audio and video streaming and digital radio feeds. The 2008 radio classes were the first to use these using these facilities to stream their Next FM broadcast on the internet.
The radio studios sit above the main atrium, overlooking visitors coming and going in the building, with a full view of the outside world. Radio broadcasters can also see colleagues preparing other shows in the work area above them, and have direct line of site across the atrium to the Video Post control room.
As Director of Radio I came up with the design for the new studios, wanting them to be visible to all, because too often radio studios are poked in the back of a building with little light or connection to the outside environment. We wanted to change that.
I got together with my team, Kim Rigby, Jen Oldershaw, Byron Webb, Melanie Withnall and Rebecca Ritchie, and we all contributed ideas. It was Kim’s idea for the main studio to protrude into the central building core, and Byron picked microphones that would suit the acoustics of the new studios.
Then we got our team of AFTRS Engineering and IT staff to think-tank with us, and more ideas were generated, like having two high quality studio cameras and graphics mixing for vision streaming. When you get a group of radio professionals of this calibre together and pool all their good ideas, great outcomes are possible.
Once the design was formulated, the Radio team consulted with architects Cox Richardson to integrate the radio facility into the larger building. Once the physical structure was built, the project team engaged Richard Fleming from Radio Support Services to execute the equipment fitout.
AFTRS Radio Division wanted to replicate many different kinds of studios so that it can train broadcasters from all sectors in facilities similar to their home stations. The brief included a range of small and large desks (Klotz, Elan and Logitek), plus a range of playout and news systems including RCS, NexGen, Netia, NewsBoss, Voxpro and others.
It was a difficult brief according to Richard Fleming: “Steve Ahern asked a lot of us… it’s different from most other stations we build because they usually want equipment that is all the same. For AFTRS we had to source many different systems to Steve’s brief, and make sure each they would talk to each other.”
The large main studio, which has equipment similar to the ARN, Austereo and Nova studios, has step-like seating in it to accommodate student practical lectures. Studio two is set up similar to many regional studios, and the third studio is for voiceovers and news bulletins. All studios can voicetrack into multiple systems and are digital radio ready.
According to Fleming, one of the most difficult parts of the brief was to achieve equipment switchability across all the studios:
“Steve wanted to be able to reconfigure the studios to best replicate each client’s needs. If the ABC books a training course for regional presenters, they need to be trained on a Logitek desk linked to a Netia playout system for instance. But at other times, Steve wanted to be able to play the RCS and NexGen systems via that Logitek desk as they do in commercial stations. It was a big ask, but we were able to make it happen thanks to the cooperation of all the equipment suppliers.”
It took a lot of planning to convince all parties to embrace the complex brief, but once they understood the priorities of Australia’s elite media training school they delivered the goods. The proof is in the pudding! We now have an amazing studio facility that is invigorating for the students to work in and can deliver feeds to many broadcast and online platforms at the same time.
Fleming describes it as “a great challenge meeting the many and varying requirements of the school… what we achieved I believe will work very well for both the school and the students.”
The equipment list includes:
- DESKS:
Klotz DCII console and Vadis Frame,
Klotz Xenon console,
Logitek console and engine,
Elan Hawk analog console
- PLAYOUT & EDITING SYSTEMS:
NexGen
RCS Master Control
Netia
Voxpro
Protools Digi002
The Comrex STAC multiline phone system was used for the main on air studio with Comrex DH20 single line hybrids in each of the other three areas.
Go to the AFTRS Image Gallery and scroll down to the bottom of the page to view some pics of our new studios >