This Week In Radio Tech (TWiRT)

A penny saved really is a penny earned! Ask Jim Gray who runs Optimized Media Group. Jim and his team do normal broadcast engineering; they also help stations by demonstrating Return on Investment with newer technologies, and sometimes with older equipment. Jim joins Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack on TWiRT.

How many of us broadcast engineers learned by on-the-job training? Have you had a mentor or did you learn by doing it yourself? Chris Wygal is the engineer and ops manager for a network of stations in Virginia and shares with us his tricks for on-location sports production and broadcast studios.

Move 4 radio studios across town. You’ve got two weeks. Go! Oh, and scrounge some equipment to make the STL systems work with an old T-1 circuit. And, find some time to replace seven FM transmitters with new, solid-state units and full HD Radio. That’s the world of engineer, Robbie Green. Robbie joins Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack on This Week in Radio Tech.

More hackers, more breaches, more ways for broadcast engineers to have a really bad day! Chris Tobin relates what can happen and the steps you need to take to patch your IT security holes. Plus, Les Kutasi joins us with news from Kathrein and the world of broadband antennas.

Cassette tapes. 8-Track. Digital Cassettes. FM-QUAD. AM Stereo. Reel-to-reel. Audio standards come and go, but Multiplex FM Stereo lives on and is nearly 60 years old! Richard Burden extensively tested our FM Stereo system when it was just a proposal. Dick joins me to chat about that and more on TWiRT!

How many times have you bought headphones or earbuds, only to be disappointed with their audio quality? Or maybe you were pleasantly surprised! Sean Olive is the Acoustic Research Fellow at HARMAN International. He’s doing headphone qualitative measurements that mean something, both for consumers and for manufacturers, toward better audio from our wearables.

Perhaps you’ve heard of AES67 for IP-Audio. It allows cross-connection of different, competing AoIP standards like Ravenna, Dante, and Livewire+. But until you actually try connecting audio devices together, AES67 is just a standard on paper. IP-Audio expert, Patrick Killianey from Yamaha Pro Audio is here to explain real-world AES67 from our recent technology demo.

There are hundreds of microphones on the market - a huge selection. What does Bob Heil know about mics that others have missed? Why do Heil mics sound great - on Ham Radio and in high-end studios? And what is Bob’s secret piece of test equipment for mic development? Bob Heil joins Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack on this episode of TWiRT!

Radio engineers began making the switch to Audio over IP infrastructure around 2005. Now with thousands of radio stations using this technology, TV stations are looking at Video over IP as their core infrastructure. Video requires a lot more bandwidth, and there are a few more technical challenges being solved right now. Erling Hedkvist from Lawo joins Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack to talk about it.

One of the best ways a thoughtful engineer can improve a broadcast facility is to make workflows, well, flow. What design choices are slowing down your talents’ daily work? What can an engineer do to help talent be more self-sufficient? Chris Tobin reveals some interesting scenarios where the engineer made a big difference in on-air operations.