Live from New Hampshire! ACCESS makes it possible.

BBC's Technical Manager Graham McHutchon with ACCESS
Manchester, NH -- Comrex recently made the quick trek up to the 2008 New Hampshire Presidential primaries and we were delighted to see several of our customers broadcasting live coverage via ACCESS. This article appears in the current issue of the BBC's in-house magazine, Ariel, submitted by Radio 4 correspondent Lee Chaundry:

"Just like Hillary Clinton, The World This Weekend came good in New Hampshire, thanks to a new piece of kit

Lee Chaundry:
Just when you think you know the routine for a radio OB, something can come along and catch you out. Most of the time we broadcast using ISDN lines installed by telecoms companies. Or we can use a satellite if it’s somewhere more remote. The costs are around £300 per ISDN line and an expensive £3 per minute for a satellite.

The technique is reliable and works well. So, imagine when BT announced that within the none too distant future it would be suspending its ISDN service in the UK. The only other data service that is available universally is the internet. But it’s not designed to carry high quality audio for live broadcasts. You can do your shopping from your armchair, but you’d be hard pushed to get Today on the air. Anyone who has ever used Skype or other voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services will know there can be delays of seconds, or the person you’re talking to suddenly sounds as though they’re speaking through a vocoder on a 90s Cher record.

Radio news operations has been trailing different technologies to overcome this for some years – with limited success. Whenever we’ve used VoIP equipment the same problems with delay and ‘glitching’ have prevented us using the internet as a means of transmission.

That is until recently when a small US company called Comrex released its Access VoIP equipment. According to production types the unit looks as though it should dispense bus tickets, but it works for live broadcasting over the internet, which is a huge breakthrough in our search for a replacement for ISDN. However, I had never used it as the main broadcast line – until the New Hampshire primaries, that is.

On arrival, with a metre of snow, I pushed past the hundreds of US TV networks camped out in minus 10 degrees and checked into my hotel. I scanned the floor for the ISDN lines I had requested. Nothing. No lines – no programme. It looked as though the Comrex was about to have a baptism of fire.

We did have a stable, pretty fast hotel WiFi connection so I unpacked and booted up the unit, which provided a high quality, low delay line back to TVC. Only this time I wasn’t testing or playing around. This time the unit was going to get The World This Weekend on air in just two days time.

The Comrex remained stable without glitching or ‘dropping out’. It actually provided a better quality line than those over ISDN. And it cost us absolutely nothing. If we’d used a satellite for the equivalent time – ie two days – it would have cost around £13,000. ISDN installations would have been around £500. Quite a saving.

So on January 6 at 1300 the pips came and The World This Weekend presenter Shaun Ley picked up without delay. More importantly he did not turn into Cher. The Comrex had proved itself. No one would have known that for Radio 4, The World This Weekend had pioneered a new way of broadcasting.

So it seems I can now do my shopping over the internet while also broadcasting Today. Who said you can’t kill two birds with one stone?"

Other ACCESS users that were on hand and transmitting to the masses included XM Satellite Radio's P.O.T.U.S. 2008 channel and KTAR-FM/Phoenix. Boston station WTTK-FM (pictured at the bottom) had ACCESS standing by for backup duties. Several other Comrex users were broadcasting from "Radio Row" sponsored by Talk Radio News Network and TALKERS Magazine.

ACCESS - Inside the Iowa Caucus with KTAR

KTAR Goes Inside An Iowa Caucus: The Phoenix News/Talker pulled off a first by broadcasting live from inside one of Iowa's caucus meetings last night. KTAR PD Russ Hill states today that a team of producers and engineers, using the Comrex ACCESS BRIC IP codec on a wireless 3G data card, provided the first opportunity for a radio station to do a live Talk show from within an actual election-night caucus.
KTAR-FM talk show host Darrell Ankarlo provided play-by-play coverage for more than two hours as delegates negotiated support for Presidential candidates. "What we did was unbelievable," says Ankarlo. "No one has ever been able to hear one of these caucus meetings unfold live on the radio. It gave our listeners a front seat to the very raw political process so they could see how bizarre this thing really is."

The Next Big Thing at Next Big Thing 7!

Tampa, FL -- 20,000 screaming fans. 15 of today's hottest bands on two stages. One day full of music. For Cox Radio Tampa Bay's 97X, Next Big Thing 7 has become an annual event, that just keeps getting bigger and better.

Chevelle onstage at NBT7

More than just a concert or a radio station event, NBT has become a multimedia event.In addition to broadcasting the 12-hour event live, the station also provided a live video web stream, gave the bands with their own video camera's to give a "band's eye view" from backstage, posted blogs about the event and did live interviews with the bands throughout the day. But for those that weren't lucky enough to get a ticket, 97X went out of it's way to make sure that it's listener's were able to get the full experience over the airwaves.

Hayley Williams of Paramore sings to 20,000

97X Program Director and Afternoon host, Shark, was psyched when he found out that ACCESS would add a completely new dimension to NBT7. Says Shark, "When Comrex told me that their internal code name for ACCESS was "the Next Big Thing" I got it right away. This thing is BIG -- I was live, on the air, in places I could never have gone with regular old technology."

By using the ACCESS Portable with a wireless 3G Aircard, Shark and the airstaff of 97X were able to get live interviews with the bands backstage. If you've ever been at a live concert event, you know that the wired mics on stage often compete for frequencies with other devices. And trying to get a wired mic into a dressing room from an ISDN drop...not always easy or possible. "We sent our jocks out into the crowd and were able to give our listeners a feel for what was happening live at the show. This thing is very cool," says Shark.








"The Crowd" at Ford Amphitheatre

Shark interviews Bert McCracken from The Used

For more sights and sounds from 97X's Next Big Thing 7 you can link to their web site www.97xonline.com/ads/nextbigthing7.html

ACCESS Holds Court at the US Open

Flushing, Queens, NY--

12 September 2007

Andy Taylor – KTTS-FM

2330 West Grand

Springfield, MO 65802

Thank you COMREX!

Thanks to a stroke of luck, for the past six-years - on top of screwing around from 5a to 10a on KTTS-FM in Springfield, Missouri - I've also been known as "The Voice" of the U.S. Open, the final Grand Slam tennis tournament of the year. Each year, from my perch in Lower Broadcast from Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, I curse the antiquated gear we've used for daily broadcast...[curses deleted by Comrex!] :-)

Can you tell I'm anything but technologically savvy?

Anyway...for awhile now, I've been reading about the assortment of clean-sounding, high-bandwidth technology soon-to-be available for broadcast over the internet, and when I heard about the Comrex ACCESS, I was dying for a test-run. Thanks to COMREX's generosity, my wish came true during the 2007 U.S. Open...

...and what a GREAT piece of gear - and easy to operate!

I am an idiot. Ask anyone who knows me. Thankfully, my engineer in Springfield set-up the ACCESS Receiver in the studio, and I checked the light-weight, compact ACCESS Portable onto my Laguardia-bound flight.

Upon arrival, I simply connected the ACCESS Portable to an I.T. approved United States Tennis Association T1-line, added a new remote, typed in the destination I.P. address for the ACCESS receiver - and BLAM, I was instantaneously connected to the KTTS-studio with high-bandwidth, crystal-clear sounding audio...Needless to say, it was a little alarming for those who had no idea I was test-driving the ACCESS Portable, because it sounded like I was IN THE STUDIO.

Not only does the ACCESS audio sound clear, broadcasting through an I.P. address - but it also freed-up the studio's phone line, so that I could record phone calls with the crew in the studio, without having to endure the steps of conferencing lines. I'm not kidding when I say - listeners who had no idea I was two-thousand miles away, also had no clue that I wasn't even in the studio each weekday morning...to them, it sounded like I was right there in Springfield. What a plus!

With the ACCESS Portable Mixer, I was able to use multiple microphones for guests, and I was able to pre-produce audio for the show, so I could play it cleanly, real-time while we were on the air - all while remaining "miced-up" with the show. Could you have made this any easier for me?

Thank you again, Comrex - for the ACCESS technology, the multiple profile audio options, flexibility of set-up (this thing even works well with Wi-Fi when it's receiving a strong-signal), ease of use (for idiots like myself), but most importantly, for granting my wish of clean-sounding audio during the 3-weeks that the U.S. Open dominates my existence.

I'm loving me the Comrex ACCESS!

- Andy Taylor / KTTS-FM in Springfield, MO / USTA P.A. Guy at the U.S. Open