Professional Audio Technology configured and supplied a large Lawo Nova17 router at Nova Entertainment in Brisbane for the switching of all of its national DAB streams. In addition, the new Lawo router is being used as the main audio router for Coles Radio, which the newly rebranded Nova Entertainment (formally DMG Radio) network supplies nationally.
After a thorough tendering process, the Nova Entertainment engineering team, led by Sydney Chief Engineer John Pearce, decided on the Lawo router technology for the project: ‘We chose the Lawo Nova17 in the end because we believed that its native features most closely matched the specific project requirements,’ he says. ‘The bang for buck was greater, local and international support was fantastic and the product line and technology was mature.’
The system comprises a Lawo Nova17 Router with an additional Dallis I/O frame, various LCD button panels for monitoring selection, and three Lawo KSC.GPIO32 general-purpose input and output panels.
Based around a sophisticated redundancy fail-over design, the Nova engineering and Professional Audio Technology teams of engineers came up with a design based on intelligent logic, which not only switches over to another service should the primary service fail, but is also intelligent enough to switch back once the primary service is restored. And the system notifies the engineer in charge should any failures occur. This was achieved via integrating the main router system with Nova’s existing Kingfisher monitoring/paging system. To provide the engineering staff with visual system feedback, a series of custom designed VisTools screens provided switching information and level indication as well as alarm screens and general system monitoring selectors. Also included in the system is the Lawo MTXCon Scheduler, which allows Nova Entertainment engineers to schedule routes of the system well in advance.
‘Rarely do we see customers push the capabilities of a system as far as the Nova engineers have done here,’ says PAT Technology Specialist, Alan Liddelow. ‘We are delighted to see our customers embrace Lawo’s technology like this and it is without a doubt another fantastic reference site for Lawo and PAT in Australia. Of course we think it is very fitting, that the Nova Entertainment group has decided on a Lawo Nova router – that goes without saying.’
