Operating from Cologne, independent internet radio station 674FM listeners with music programming that is far from the mainstream – each month, 130 ‘programme makers’ stream upwards of 100 live programmes from the in-house studio, festivals and other public events. Demand for new content is high, and when a growing number of broadcasts dictated new radio equipment to handle the load, the non-profit association turned to radio solutions from Lawo.
‘We decided in 2016 to set up professional technical structures’ explains Karl-Heinz Müller, who is Chairman of the Board and responsible for the station’s technical expansion.
674FM needed new equipment to be flexible, reliable, easy to learn and operate, and above all, sustainable. After intensive research, Lawo’s ruby radio console became the preferred option. Now installed with an adjacent touchscreen, ruby provides programme makers with the ability to control various features of the mixer using Lawo VisTool, an advanced vector-graphic GUI that gives easy access to mixing, EQ and dynamics controls, and other software features via intuitive graphical controls. The ruby mixer controls a Lawo Power Core mixing engine, a 1U-high DSP mixing engine with the ability to handle large amounts of analogue, digital and AES67 networked sources.
Lawo products also help integrate 674FM’s playout solutions – the station’s server and playout PCs are integrated into a Ravenna/AES67 network using Lawo’s innovative Rǝlay VSC virtual sound card software, and controlled with Rǝlay VPB (Virtual Patch Bay).
‘This initial expansion has significantly improved and facilitated work in the studio within a short period of time,’ says Müller. ‘Now our presenters can quickly hand the studio over to the next person using console snapshots that quickly load custom workflows. Remote switching, using codecs and VPN, ensures delivery of feeds into the ongoing broadcast program, so that even despite restrictions made necessary by the coronavirus regulations, broadcasting operations can be maintained by switching between home studios.’
The station has no shortage of future plans.: ‘First, we will equip another room for audio and video editing. And since we are very well connected to the music and cultural scene and regularly broadcast small radio concerts as well as talk shows from the studio, a concert and event space would be a logical step. And because Lawo’s systems are easily scalable, we know that upcoming investments can be seamlessly combined with our existing hardware and software,’ Müller notes. ‘And besides all of this, we are very impressed by the sound of the console.’
More than 130 Cologne DJs, artists and radio producers present ‘their music’ on 674FM. During the day, this draws on an extensive music pool, with carefully selected mixes and tunes. In the evening, hosts take over the music selection with ‘the greatest possible creative freedom’. Being commercially independent allows the station to offer an individual programme and to develop according to its own ideas.
More: www.lawo.com
