Radio Riyadh switches to high-end Lawo equipment.
Radio broadcast centre completely refurbished.
The Radio Riyadh Broadcast Centre In Saudi Arabia is undergoing complete renovation, and this national broadcaster is upgrading its technology. A mix of analogue and digital equipment is now being replaced by fully digital state-of-the art solutions. The changes are so enormous that the project is being carried out in several phases.
Lawo has been selected by Radio Riyadh as the company offered to manage a step-by-step changeover while they carried on broadcasting with the old equipment.
Technically speaking, Lawo are delivering an 8192 x 8192 Nova73 HD router with 32 MADI input and output, a Nova17 matrix, 13 z4 mini mixers for editing purposes, a zirkon for monitoring, 6 zirkon on-air broadcast consoles and 10 zirkon production consoles. The zirkons are equipped with either 16 faders (on-air) or 12 or 16 or 20 faders (production), each offering full DSP capability. Additionally, 16 VisTool units extend the functionality of the zirkon by means of their freely customizable visualisation screen and control interface.
The Nova73 HD will be used as a central router with full redundancy. Every zirkon is linked to a Nova73 HD via main and redundant MADI. To further enhance the redundancy, every studio is provided with three levels of connectivity to Nova73 HD; via MADI (fiber), analog and AES. The Nova73 HD is interconnected to a Nova17 that will handle the monitoring using a zirkon as its control surface. The zirkon and z4 consoles will be networked via the Nova73 HD so that all of them have access to the signals required in the control rooms and the editing suites.
This elegant solution, put together using only standard Lawo products, will tremendously enhance the efficiency of the station workflow. Lawo will hold training sessions during the transitional phase when both old and new systems will be running in parallel. This way the changeover will be smooth, without any interruption to the programme output.
Lawo International’s Jean Michel Durand, who is supervising the project, tells us why Radio Riyadh came to Lawo: “After product presentations and after the scrutiny of our solutions, they decided for Lawo because they realised the innovative possibilities and versatility our products offer them”.
