United as Estonian public broadcaster ERR (Eesti Rahvusringhääling), the former Eesti Raadio and Eesti Televisioon recently relocated five radio stations from its campus in Estland’s capital Tallinn to a new production complex.
The move included moving the studios and installing Lawo equipment in the new premises for radio production, as well as for the networking the new building. In addition to a central Nova73 HD router, ERR has installed five Lawo crystal and eight sapphire radio broadcast consoles. This has given dramatically increased flexibility and efficiency over the previous set-up, and transitioned ERR from analogue into a fully digital operating environment.
‘After consulting with other radio stations all over Europe, we were in a position to define our requirements very precisely – and Lawo won the tender due to its advanced technology and price,’ says Vytautas Martinonis, Head of the bradcaster’s Radio Technical & Sound Recording Department. ‘Now we have efficiency and flexibility in our workflows that we never had before.’
Conceptually, besides acting as central router for signal distribution, the Nova 73 HD handles the studio switching, and functions as talkback matrix. As master control system, ERR installed Virtual Studio Manager from L-S-B.
In the main control room, a 12-fader sapphire radio console is used as a broadcast mixer for the management of the five radio programmes, and additionally will be configured for switching the scheduled studios. The studio complex is designed as a multi-purpose studio for panel discussions, meetings and general recordings and, due to the network infrastructure, can be used by each programme.
The first station to go live from the new studio complex was Raadio 2. This involved three control rooms, each with a 16-fader Lawo sapphire console for production. The first of its programmes was aired on 18 December, the date reflecting the birthday of radio in Estonia in 1926. The other stations – including Viker Raadio, Raadio 4 and Klassika – moved into the new studio complex between February and April in 2015. A fifth station, Radio Tallinn will soon join them using the main control room, and broadcast from there.
Vytautas Martinonis raises another issue that is important to him: ‘Presently, we benefit from the redundancy, flexibility in configuration, efficient use of resources and facilities from the Lawo equipment. In the future, this solution will allow us to expand simply by integrating the installation into our IP infrastructure using the AES67 compatibility of its Ravenna IP technology.’
More: www.lawo.com
