Serving South Florida with a blend of jazz, Latin jazz, salsa, reggae, blues and culturally-related programming, WDNA 88.9FM operates as both a traditional FM radio station and a live performance venue, hosting local institutions, including Florida International University and the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.
The Miami-based public radio station is known for its diverse programming and connection to the region’s music and culture. In support of evolving production needs, the station recently installed KRK Kreate 5 and Kreate 8 studio monitors in three of its production and broadcast spaces. The Kreate 5s are installed in one of the station’s production studios, where hosts and producers create recorded programming, edit shows,and develop promotional content. Kreate 8 monitors are now also used in WDNA’s primary production studio and its live-to-air studio to support content creation, mixing and live broadcast operations.
‘As an all-purpose audio engineer here, I’m involved in recording shows, conducting interviews, producing spots, and maintaining our audio systems,’ says Daniel Collazo, Audio Engineer at WDNA. ‘One of the biggest improvements with KRK has been the consistency.
‘Preaviiously, each studio had different speaker brands and moving projects between rooms made it difficult to know whether changes were coming from the mix or the monitors. Now that we’re standardised across the station, the transition from room to room is minimal.’
Collazo, who has worked at WDNA for three years and oversees a wide range of audio production responsibilities, says the station prioritized both audio quality and reliability during the upgrade process: ‘The KRKs have noticeably better fidelity across the entire frequency spectrum, especially in the low end. Even the 5-inch monitors have strong bass response and clear highs. A lot of monitors in that size range tend to sound more mid-focused, but these feel balanced throughout.’
The Kreate 8 monitors installed at WDNA provide additional output and detail for critical listening applications and live operations, giving hosts flexibility to monitor content through speakers or headphones, depending on preference. ‘In the live studio, a lot of hosts prefer monitoring through speakers while they’re cueing content and running shows,’ Collazo says. ‘The Kreate 8s provide the fidelity and output needed in that environment.’
The benefits extend beyond the studio itself, according to Collazo: ‘When I mix on these KRK monitors and then listen somewhere else, whether that’s in a car or another environment, the audio still reflects what I intended. That’s what you want from a reference monitor.’
By adopting a unified monitoring platform throughout its studios, WDNA has created a more streamlined production environment while maintaining the audio quality expected from one of Miami’s most distinctive public radio voices.
More: www.krkmusic.com