Radio 8ccc in Australia uses digital consoles AEQ

The community station has headquarters in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek, serving a large and unpopulated area in the isolated lands of the north.

Radio 8CCC, a community station created in 1981 with a schedule focused on the territory of northern Australia, which emits through 102.1fm and online worldwide, has adopted the technology of AEQ.

This region of Australia has an area of almost 1.5 million km² with just 240,000 inhabitants, which gives an idea of the immensity of the area, as well as the dispersed and isolated that can become the localities that are found there.

At the end of 2020, the 8CCC radio address decided to renew the technical equipment of broadcasting studies with two vital parameters in their idea of technology: robust and easy to use.

Radio 8ccC have their main studies in Alice Springs with secondary studies in the town of Tennant Creek More than 500 kilometers further north. In both cases the two locations are very far from any other population core in the area, so that any technical problem has very difficult solution, being mandatory to have especially robust and failure proof material.

In addition, it produces many of its programs with voluntary staff without specific radio training, being necessary that the equipment and systems that are used are extremely simple to manipulate.

With these conditions in Radio 8CCC decided to install a new console Forum ip AEQ in Alice Spring and a console AEQ Capitol IP in the main study of Tennant Creek.

The Capitol IP console installed in Tennant Creek is an 8 -channel fixed configuration digital audio mixture console. One of the main qualities of AEQ Capitol IP is the wide range of inputs available: 4 micro/line, 12 analog, 4 ESTEREO AES/EBU DIGITALS (AES3), 2 USB stereo digital, 2 optional telephone lines, and optional digital multichannel audio links; 16 AOIP channels on two Ethernet connectors or 64 MADI channels in entrance by fiber optic.

Also its exits is surprising: 8 analog, 4 Digital Stereo AES/EBU (AES3), 2 USB Stereal digital, 2 optional telephone lines, optional digital multichannel audio links; 16 AOIP channels on two Ethernet connectors or 64 MADI channels in entrance by fiber optic, control headphones, primary and secondary locutory headphones, control monitor, locutory and special exit for Cue speakers couple.

Forum ip an Alice Springs

The Forum IP console installed in Alice Springs is based on the same technology, but has two fundamental differences because this station is the main one. On the one hand, greater capacity for entry, exit and control, with 12 faders and 4 program buses with direct allocation key, so that it is easier to simultaneously handle several programs or recordings. On the other, greater security against possible breakdowns and that its modular composition makes it unlikely to have to send the console to repair Sydney, on the opposite side of the Australian continent. It is easy to identify the module and ask them to send it, being able to replace the station staff.

The installation, configuration, commissioning and training of the entire project was carried out Broadcast Components Local partner of AEQ in the country, located in Nueva Gales del Sur, in direct communication with the central technical services of AEQ in Madrid.