With its technical infrastructure more than ten years old, Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) has begun refurbishment of its master control room with a new server based around Lawo equipment. When complete, a Lawo Nova17 MkII routing systems will take KBS into a new era of radio operation, along with VisTool workplaces for visualisation and control.

The project will a establish fully-redundant system of core radio broadcast facilities, along with user-friendly and efficient operation, and sophisticated monitoring and alarm management. An additional benefit is that certain functions no longer need to be accessed via external devices, but are integrated within the Lawo equipment.

For each of seven radio stations, KBS has installed main and backup Nova17 routers with two VisTool systems and two KSC control panels. This set-up provides full redundancy for each control room.

The station’s engineering team is particularly impressed by the customisation of the VisTool user interface with regard to page layout and logic functions that can be easily configured by the operator. The system status of the seven programmes is monitored by two log servers via SNMP, handing over the status to SNMP monitor software from Korean Software house, AD-Soft. This is controlled by a Korean APC solution, while the audio file system is from French company Dalet.

Since adopting the new Lawo technology and infrastructure, KBS has benefitted greatly from the integration and user-friendliness of the VisTool operating software. The broadcaster’s teams can carry out configurations without specialist knowledge, and enjoy the efficient, smart and well laid-out design.

The system is being tested during the winter months, and has been going live in stages since January 2015.