Engineering

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Engineering Team
Maintains URY's audio and broadcast hardware. Also oversees building infrastructure and general maintenance.
Constitution
Created ???
Defined Here
Roles Chief Engineer
Assistant Chief Engineer
Contacts
General Enquiries engineering@ury.org.uk
Get Involved engineering@ury.org.uk
Head of Team chief.engineer@ury.org.uk


Engineering Team is the URY team responsible for maintaining URY's broadcast equipment and providing suitable set-ups for outside broadcasting, live sessions, or anything else you can think of really. If it handles analogue or digital audio and isn't a computer, its probably ours!

What do we do?

From the moment a sound leaves anything (a computer, vinyl, human, cassette, instrument, etc) to the moment it goes in to a computer for streaming, we are responsible for it! Whether that's in the studio, a session recording, the transmission (Tx) cupboard in stores or at an Outside Broadcast (OB), it's our issue.

Studio Red

The main broadcasting studio, Studio Red (formally known as Studio 1) was last re-built in 2011 with the support of Alumni funding (YuFund). The mixing desk is a Sonifex S2 split-chassis broadcast desk. There are: 5 mics; 2 vinyl decks; 2 CDJs; 2 CD players; 4 aux inputs; a telephone channel with jack input (for a smartphone); 3 BAPs channels (from the presenter PC); a guest PC input; a presenter PC input. For visualisation, there are also 2 HD ready cameras and 2 LED lights.

Studio Red is home to the Tardis. This contains all the outboard processing used in the studio, including a RedNet 2; compression; patch panels; headphone distribution; Wil's Black Box; sonifex power; black magic (visualisation); speaker amps.

Studio Blue

Last refurbished as part of the 40k project and complete over Christmas 2018/2019, Studio Blue (previously Studio 2) has been currently being refurbished to give it the same technical capability as Studio Red (Previously Studio 1). The new mixing desk is a Split Sonifex S2 and will be functionally identical to the desk in Studio Red. The physical table in which the Sonifex is mounted is a custom design built by Knotty Ash Woodworking, with Yellowtec m!ka 'Mic Arm TV' low profile mic stands. The low profile arms are designed to give presenters and guests a direct eye-line with each other, as well as improve viewing angles for visualisation purposes.

The rack, located to the left of the desk, houses an all new patch bay, new DBX mic compressors, a Samson Headphone Amp, M-Audio USB Audio Interface, Sonifex Power Supply and RedNet 2. A new 'Magic BAPS box' was also built by Matthew Stratford.

Past

Before the refurbishment as part of 40k, Studio 2 (Now Studio Blue) was primarily used for pre-recording. The mixing desk was a Sonifex Sovereign broadcasting desk with custom modifications. There were: 3 mic; 2 aux inputs; 3 BAPs channels (from the presenter PC); and a disconnected telephone channel.

Studio 2 was home to the Blue Box. This contained a RedNet 2; compression; patch panels; Sonifex power; a speaker amp.

Production Office

The production office is also the main office of URY. Day-to-day it is used by any member of the station as a space to plan shows, meet with other members or get some work done. At the far end is a production PC and mixing desk. These can be used for recording sessions, jingles, clips, etc. The desk is a Yamaha 01v96i digital sound desk with a MY-16AUD Dante expansion card. This is connected via USB and analogue cabling to the PC. It also has inputs from both office wall-PCs, the studios, the CD player, and a patch panel in S2.

At the end of the office is The Hub. This contains the studio selector hardware, and a lot of old analogue patching stuff (including the ends of tie lines down to the patching in stores - useful in an emergency)! It is also home to the power distro board, the input of satellite cables from the roof, some computing stuff and the door bell power adapter.

Transmission

URY is broadcast across campus on 1350AM. Our output is also streamed online at ury.org.uk, on radio player, iTunes radio, etc. The engineering team is responsible for getting the audio output to 1350AM and to the stream server for computing to stream. This all happens in the transmission (Tx) cupboard located in stores. Access to this is restricted to only the Head of Computing and Chief Engineer due to our licence, however, they can grant access to anyone except the station manager.

The Tx cupboard contains a Radica transmitter and compressor, some outboard compression, a RedNet 3 and a Scarlett 18i20 (USB audio interface). It also contains a number of servers and computers.

The transmitter is connected underground to a Radica tuner and the antenna (out the back of Vanbrugh Kitchen).

The bits between them all...

A digital audio over IP system is used to connect the studios, office, juxebox and Tx rack together. The system sits within the URY network, managed by Computing. We are using a protocol called Dante, which is developed by Audinate. In order to access this network, we have a number of RedNet devices spread throughout the building. The Yamaha desk in the office is also Dante enabled. Anyone wanting to learn more about Dante may benefit from taking Audinate's Level 1 Dante certification at audinate.com/certify.

RedNet 2

Placed in S1 and S2, the '2' is a 16 in, 16 out A-D and D-A.

RedNet 3

Located in the Tx cupboard, the '3' is a digital interface, with up to 32 channels via ADAT fibre optical, AES or SPDIF. This is connected to a Scarlett 18i20 to interface with the servers, loggers and AM transmission.

RedNet 4

Floating between S2 and OBs, the '4' is an 8 channel mic pre.

Audinate AVIO

Installed in the Spring of 2019, The AVIO is a 2 in, 2 out AES3 interface. At the moment, the AVIO is connected to a Tandberg Satellite receiver (IRN news receiver) which replaced a cheap set top box that had a habit of crashing as well as feeding AES3 audio into a first generation Blackmagic ATEM vision mixer for visualisation. As a result of the installation of the AVIO, the last regularly used analogue run around the station was eliminated and studios can be visualised independently of eachother.

More Detail

This network can be controlled using Dante Controller and the RedNet devices are controlled with RedNet Control. There is also a page further detailing our set-up at URY: URY's Dante Network.

Outside Broadcasts

Our Outside Broadcast (OB) kit is ever-changing, and varies for every OB to suit the needs of the event. The main part is a Rhino wheeled flight case with table sides. Inside this is the majority of kit required for a simple studio style set up. This includes several pieces of new equipment, an Allen and Heath Zed 18 Mixing Desk, two brand new Sennheiser ew100 G4 E band wireless mic receivers, a Behringer X32 rack for mics processing, the OB PC, speaker amplifiers, and a 4 channel Behringer Headphone amp.

It previously (prior to early 2020) consisted of: a Soundcraft Spirit M12 mixing desk; Focusrite OctoPre (donated by Stephen 'Stevo' Clarke in 2015); T.Bone Radio Mic Receivers; a Behringer 4-chan Headphone Amp; a Behringer 4-chan Compressor; OB PCs; speaker amplification. The rhino was originally conceived by Tom Haines in 2011/12. It has been reorganised a number of times since then, by ACE Sam Merryweather in October 2018 as most recently by Alice Milburn, Harry Smith and Jess Schofield in Spring 2020 with assistance of other eng team members.

Also included in a standard OB are 3 dynamic microphones; 2 speakers and various mic and speaker stands. Finally, there are 3 banners and 2 wife's (floor standing banners). They are the wife of the station manager.

Stores

Stores contains a variety of kit, some of which is currently in use, some of which is ancient and doesn't work. There is a lot of history in this room. To the left is the music store, which contains a library of records and CDs which the Music team is responsible for. The main section contains the URY rolling shelves. These were acquired from CS when it moved to Hes East. The rear shelf is reserved for computing hardware. The rest is Engineering. the very back shelf also has some paints and can be accessed by one person getting into the Tx cupboard, another rolling the shelf as far forward as possible (with no stuff in the way) and the Tx cupboard door being opened again (this will now be behind the shelf).

Broadcast Engineering

Many of the engineers that come through URY will have experience in live or studio audio engineering (although not having any is not a problem!). Whilst broadcast is not very different from these, there are a few minor differences to be aware of.

Broadcast Desks

Whilst on a standard mixing desk, the fader will go from -∞ to either +4 or +10, a broadcast desk will max at 0, and further adjustment should be done using the trim knob. This is to make it so, when presenting, the fader can be opened to 'full' quickly and easily by the presenter without causing distortion issues.

The broadcast desks in URY are modular, so each channel strip is its own individual module. This allows for custom layout and input design. The modules are connected together using a ribbon cable. The 2 desks are the Sonifex S2 and Sonifex Sovereign.

Broadcast desks usually use PPM meters to measure the audio level. The target should be 6PPM, with clipping occuring above 8PPM. Broadcast systems are usually set up for unity gain (input level = output level) with some compression and processing in the middle (URY does not currently do this).

Recent History

Members (past and present)

Chief Engineers

Assistant Chief Engineers

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