In June 2006, Westcountry Broadcast completed the installation of the radio studios for Atlantic FM, the new licence holders for Cornwall in the far South West of England. Atlantic FM is a partnership between Tindle Radio Group and Cornwall-based Camel Media. As part of their installation, they selected the Sonifex S2 analogue and digital mixer to form the heart of the station's operations.
Atlantic FM are transmitting on 107 & 105.1MHz across the whole county, like their commercial rivals Pirate FM and BBC Radio Cornwall. The new station is based in a newly constructed building on the site of a former tin mine on the cliffs near St Agnes in Cornwall, overlooking the North Atlantic ocean.
Nick Beer, Company Principal of Westcountry Broadcast, said: "We received an initial enquiry from Atlantic Broadcasting, the client, about installing studio equipment for Atlantic FM. After many discussions with them, lots of hard work and persistence, we ended up being appointed as the principal contractor for the whole building project including management, as well as the studio build."
Two identical studios were constructed based around a Sonifex S2-30 channel mixer. Each mixer was fully populated with input channels: 4 mics, 2 telco, 1 mix minus/isdn, 5 stereo automation, 1 stereo news and 2 stereo CD including a custom 10 channel width script tray. The ensemble was housed in custom studio furniture designed and manufactured by Westcountry Broadcast.
Westcountry also linked the playout system to the on-air routing system in a unique way. Nick Beer commented: "The playout system was RCS Master Control 15, run with RCS Selector. With RCS we ensured integrated control of the routing system from the software. RCS previously worked predominantly with another console and used the remote channel switching to switch in IRN during automated periods. We designed an alternative and more elegant solution using a Sonifex RB-SS10 GPI controlled mixer/switcher which provides a pre-mix prior to the automation input of the Sonifex Station Master, which is the main station router. This means that both studios are offline and available for production, training or maintenance during automated periods."
All distribution and amplification was by Sonifex, telephone call handling utilized Broadcast Bionics Phonebox 2 system and a Sonifex telephone balance unit was used in the news editing and production area.
The whole project involved Westcountry Broadcast in bespoke and custom engineering and construction and the client had very particular demands of the end product. Nick Beer added: "When we were deciding on which mixer to use for this installation, we clearly needed a desk with the necessary features but also considered cost effectiveness, good looks and whether it was easy to install. The Sonifex S2 ticked the most boxes for us. Additionally though, using the Sonifex S2 we were also able to achieve the detailed customer requirements for the mixer because of our excellent relationship with Sonifex who were able to provide the modifications required, such as an extra wide script tray, and do so for reasonable cost within the required timescale."
Test transmissions started on 7th June and Atlantic FM went on-air on 6th July 2006.
Further information on the S2 mixer:
The S2 is a small format, modular digital I/O analogue mixer which uses the latest technology components to offer digital audio quality with analogue reliability in a modular format. S2 has both digital and analogue input channels, together with simultaneous analogue and digital outputs.
Following on from the Sonifex Sovereign range of audio mixers, S2 combines all the features needed of a radio broadcast mixer in a stylish, flush-mounting chassis : a wide range of input and output channels, PFL/cue, fader-start operation of equipment, automatic monitor muting on mic-live, light switching remote outputs, optional EQ on input modules, gram amp input options and 2 main audio buses, allowing you to broadcast on the PRG bus while recording on the AUD bus, with bus output selection on each module.
