Know-how

Roman Quintet

RAI, Italy's Rome-based public radio station, is undergoing a major transition by replacing old analog technology with digital equipment. Besides installing new components, RAI is also focusing on reorganization: Some of the smaller studios will be closed down while the larger ones will be utilized more often. It is a prerequisite that the remaining studios must be operated as flexibly as possible. They will be used as both production and on-air facilities. RAI found CANTUS to be the perfect console to accommodate these scenarios. Five of the studios have just been completed, each equipped with one CANTUS and one NEXUS.

It is not only flexibility but ease of operation that makes CANTUS a perfect console for live situations: As with an analog desk, the engineer has direct access to all parameters of each channel. Dedicated control knobs and potentiometers are available for panning, filters, dynamics, aux-sends, input gain, etc.

Some features such as a multi-channel talk-back system were custom-made according to RAI requirements. One of the talk-back lines is freely configurable, allowing for any input provided by NEXUS to be routed to any output.

Parlo Italiano
»It was indeed of great importance to us that Stage Tec was willing to make some modifications. Even most of the status and system messages of CANTUS are now in Italian,« says Enrico Guido, project manager at RAI. Besides, the other major factor was the system's reliability – as with almost all other customers opting for the CANTUS. Since early November 1998, two shifts are working in all of the five studios every day. They do all kinds of jobs: Producing radio features, musical recordings, interviews, and live broadcasting.

The studios are connected to each other and to the machine center. Thus, any of the new studios can go on air or work in conjunction with the existing studios. A special feature is the automatic speaker-mute system: 200 ms before going on air, NEXUS automatically mutes the studio monitors.

Linear Audio Quality throughout the Net
Renewing the studio complex will not end with just new consoles and routers; in future, production and broadcasting will be made using digital networked workstations. In the meantime, some of the analog archive tapes are being transferred to this new computer system. In a tryout project, the CANTUS studios will be hooked up to this system as well and will start producing. By the way: All audio material is transferred to hard disk without data reduction, retaining the full quality of the CANTUS output signal – quite the opposite of how it is done, for example, in Germany today.

CANTUS Fourteen Times
RAI has become one of the most prominent users of CANTUS and NEXUS worldwide. They run a total of 14 CANTUS consoles and NEXUS routers, six of them in the main facility in Rome. It all began in 1995 when the first CANTUS was installed in a new radio-drama studio. Since then, the Italian broadcaster has always opted for a CANTUS when looking around for a larger digital console.