Copyright ©1997, RF Specialties Group.
Stations now can generate audio from
CDs or hard disk drives, process it digitally, and send it to a digital FM exciter
over a digital STL system without ever breaking the digital path. Not so just
a few months ago, when analog consoles literally stopped digital in its tracks
and digitally-mastered audio passed through a D/A converter and through the
old analog console, picking up RFI and noise along the way.
"As an industry, we’ll take a CD and dump that into a hard drive system, which is fully capable of putting it out in digital format. Then, the first thing we do is shove it into an analog board to control the levels," remarked David Strode with Fidelipac. That used to make sense, he said, but it doesn’t anymore, especially now that linear storage is just over the horizon and the affordable digital console is here.
Clean specifications are the obvious benefits of a digital control board, but there is also another factor at play here: the console’s new role. "Ten years ago it made sense to have everything in the console because your turntables, your CD players, your cart machines, all the audio elements were there. Nowadays, the hard disk system is basically the source, so what we’ve said is let us bring the audio routing switcher back into the studio. Basically, it’s in that rack next to the system, next to the network feeds, so that we are moving toward the era where everything will be rack engineering, with the exception of the microphone," observed Richard Byrne, the marketing manager for Logitek. Logitek’s digital "surface" or console comes with a rack-mount 64x64 audio switcher, which can feed several Logitek digital consoles in a studio. "It’s a system,not just a console," clarified John Schneider with RF Specialties in Washington. Software based, the new digital console system can be configured for individual announcers’ preset mixer layout, for example. And, because multiple consoles can share one audio switcher, one news source can feed several consoles with only one cable strung to the rack-mount switcher. It’s a feature that is intended for the plethora of station consolidations going on in the business today. "The fact that CBS is now a 100 radio station group on the surface doesn’t seem to have much to do with the console," said Byrne. "But the operation of a station, and consequently that of the console, changes when you put several stations under one roof."
Fidelipac too recognizes the changing role of the console in the studio today, and designed its new digital console with interchangeable input modules that can be augmented or reconfigured with ease. Mixing, switching and audio signal processing are performed in a single 24-bit data stream.
Both makers' consoles are scaled down in size to fit the new computer-dominated studio. Commented Byrne, "Studios look more like a television control room than a radio control room because there are these huge monitors. They’re huge because the old traditional consoles are very deep and have a very high bridge." Not so these new digital consoles. The Logitek’s bridge is low, the depth narrow, so that computer screens - what many now view to be the centerpiece of the studio today - can now be 18" or less from the operator.
All of the above are good reasons to make the upgrade to a digital console, but the most obvious reason is better audio quality. Whereas analog consoles offer signal-to-noise specs of 75dB to 80dB, Fidelipac’s new Dynamax MX/D digital console and Logitek’s new ROC-10 offer over 90dB S/N – with RF immunity. Both use a 24-bit internal processing rate, with selectable sample rates from 44.1k to 48k, and accept AES/EBU and SPDIF digital formats. You know who to call for details.
