Hospital Radio Reading, known as Blast 1386, have long occupied the site at Battle Hospital in West Reading. When the hospital authorities told them that they would be moving to the site of the Royal Berkshire Hospital they were delighted. However, the engineers for HRR, Charles Coultas and Jeff Pritchard, decided that the existing equipment could not be removed from the studio complex and relocated; it was too old and some pieces of equipment were built into the fabric of the building.
So, they looked around to see if it was viable to buy new equipment for the studio. Charles commented: "We decided to go for top quality equipment that would meet our budgetary requirements. I knew that Sonifex made good equipment so we asked the hospital radio committee to approve the purchase of a Sonifex S2 Solutions package together with Myriad automation system from PSquared."
The proposal was passed and they ordered the equipment from Sonifex Ltd. The Sonifex S2 Solutions radio studio package consists of the S2 digital I/O analogue mixer mounted in modular ash technical furniture and surrounded by leading brands of high quality broadcasting equipment carefully integrated to provide an easy to operate professional studio. The cabling is pre-prepared so that installation consists of simply connecting the various pieces of equipment together.
Charles estimated that when the move came it would be on a short time scale and he was right. The new studio was set up temporarily at the Battle site in order to give their members a chance to get familiar with the new equipment before the move to the Royal Berks Hospital. The actual studio move came just before Christmas 2005 and took about four days. Charles said "I was determined to make a really neat job of installing the Sonifex gear, so Jeff and I took every care. It paid off, the new studio looks great and it works beautifully, of course."
The service is distributed to the patients via the Patientline system. Stereo audio is delivered to them via a long length of cat5 cable and the return signal is monitored locally. The engineers can now feel secure that the hospital radio service is reliable and of top quality.
For further information on the Sonifex S2 Solutions radio studio package, please contact Sonifex on +44 (0)1933 650 700, or email sales@sonifex.co.uk .
