ACCESS Portable at Wembley in the UK - Thanks Vortex!

Here's a great story sent to us by the Comrex dealer in the UK, Vortex Communications. We love what they're doing with the ACCESS!

The childhood dream of many an Englishman is to one day play soccer on the hallowed turf of Wembley, the national stadium situated within the suburbs of London. To achieve this dream, however, is easier said than done. Unless you become one of England’s elite players and are lucky enough to be picked for the national side, your only hope of playing Wembley is to reach one of the league play-off finals. These are played at the end of each season between the teams who have topped their leagues and the winner is promoted to the next league up. Reaching the play-off final is a huge occasion, but particularly so this year because, having hosted nearly a century of soccer, the old stadium was recently demolished and a spanking new state-of-the-art replacement erected in its place. The new Wembley was ready just in time for this year’s play-offs which were all played over the May bank-holiday weekend.

One team who reached their play-off were Shrewsbury Town who booked a final with Bristol Rovers. Shrewsbury is a modest town with only 70,000 inhabitants but it seemed like pretty much all of these were trying to get to the game. For those not lucky enough to get a ticket, BBC Radio Shropshire were there to describe events before the game, interview fans and generally soak up the atmosphere. What they needed was a way for their reporter to be fully mobile but able to send good quality, low-delay live audio back to the studio and, of course, receive talkback at the same time. Cue the Access portable.

Jon Clark from our UK dealer, Vortex Communications explains the setup. “We’ve got very good 3G mobile coverage in the UK these days and most of the operators are now also upgrading their networks to the even higher speed HSDPA. This gives us 384kb/s up and 1.8Mb/s down so it’s possible to run just about every mode the Access supports, including the optional AAC codecs. In the case of the playoff, everything happened last-minute and there was no time to get an Access rackmount installed at the studio, so we used a unit already working at Birmingham instead and relayed the audio from there over ISDN G722. This meant that there was no point in using anything more than HQ1 because that already sounded better than the ISDN! Although everyone was thrilled at the quality, I was a little bit disappointed because I knew that the Access was capable of even more and that would have blown them away.”

The pre-match show was a full two hours long and the Access performed magnificently. Darren Shearer, the Broadcast Engineer taking care of proceedings sums it up nicely. “The Comrex Access was a lifesaver. It allowed us to get to places that other technologies couldn't. The portable unit was so easy to use and setup; Presenters described it to me as being as easy as "Turn it on, select connect, set your levels, then broadcast!” The Quality was amazing, so crisp and clear that you could mistake the reporter for being in a studio. The delay was hardly noticeable which allowed for talkback and phone callers to be interviewed by the reporter on the Access. This is a great piece of kit and, until now, I've only dreamed of it being on the market. Great job guys!!”

Frankly my dear...

Orlando, FL -- Frank Lovre, Chief Engineer for Florida's Radio Network, knows Comrex. Better yet, Frank LOVES Comrex. When Frank isn't working for the Network, Frank is helping out his buddies at Clear Channel Radio Orlando and making DOE Mike Sprysenski look good.

Case in point, Frank has not stopped gloating over the success of the Comrex ACCESS Rackmount since having installed it at the Magic 107.7 transmitter site. Says Frank, "When I first saw the ACCESS I was very impressed and saw great potential for it. After we had a bunch hurricanes blow through Central Flordia in 2004 we knew we needed to consider some new ways to manage STLs for our seven Clear Channel stations and radio networks. ACCESS seemed like a great solution for our operations. It was easy to install and the user interface is very user-friendly."

Adds Mike Sprysenski, "I've got to hand it to Frank. It was his idea to implement ACCESS for our backup STLs. We're currently planning on putting them at all of our transmitter sites that have DSL service."

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Impossible Remote.

Before ACCESS, a remote from the top of Mount Washington in February would have been nearly impossible (or at the least, too expensive!) But when WOKQ asked Steve Vanni of Technet about the possibility of delivering such a remote, Steve thought of ACCESS and the impossible became probable.

Not wanting WOKQ's morning team to suffer embarrassment by attempting the unknown, Steve ventured to the summit in January with ACCESS for testing. The Internet connection provided is the same link used for delivering weather information, but as this information doesn't require high bandwidth, it was unclear how reliable it would be. Since ACCESS is also not a bandwidth hog, optimism was high. The summit Internet is connected via microwave to the Mount Washington Museum in North Conway where it connects there to a Verizon DSL. It should work. And it did!

So for the actual remote, Mark Ericson (left) and the WOKQ morning team, along with Steve, who engineered the remote, made their way to the top via snowcat. Steve states, "I set up the ACCESS and it just worked. Which was really nice, since it allowed me the freedom to really enjoy the experience. We were on the summit for about 24 hours, but during that time period the entire range of available weather was experienced. It snowed. There were nearly 100 mph winds. The sun came out and it warmed up. It was clear and we could see forever. The clouds came in and we could look down into the clouds. It was amazing. As for the codec and the remote? No sweat. It went extremely well."

How cool is that!? Below zero, but who's counting!

Miraculous ACCESS!

Springfield, MO -- Corbin Campbell, Engineer for Midwest Family Broadcasting, recently sent us the following:
"Just wanted to drop you a note and thank you for letting us demo the Comrex Access for our radiothon for the Children’s Miracle Network. I already have a pair of Accesses for a weekly show that we do in Branson, MO once a week but we have never really taken the Access out on remote. I figured since this was going to be a high profile event and several of the top people from CMN were going to be here for the radiothon, I wanted to give them the a remote that they wouldn’t forget.

We basically set up a mini studio at the hospital since there was going to be lots of traffic and several interviews. We used two wireless mics and two wired mics for interviews and fed everything through a Mackie mixer. We used the Comrex IP for the primary and the dialup as a backup. The folks from CMN were extremely impressed by our remote setup and couldn’t believe the audio quality. What even got them was the fact that we were using DSL and the Internet, not ISDN or T1, to get the audio back to the studios with little or no delay.

Our General Manager was also impressed as well as several of the sales people. They are already worked up about being able to do remotes anywhere there is access to the Internet. The biggest problem was when I had to tell the talent that the Comrex was going away. I calmed them down by explaining to them that myself and the Operations Manager are working on buying several of these units for remotes.

As for CMN, they were expecting to only raise $30,000 to $40,000. The end total for the radiothon was $132,000!

A warning to any engineer that tries the Access, the hardest thing about demoing these units is having to send them back!!!

Thanks again and we are looking forward to purchasing more Comrex Accesses for Midwest Family Broadcasting."