Showcase festival broadcasts live with Axia gear for 3rd straight year
11 June 2009, Cleveland, OH USA
Every year, the peaceful town of Manchester, Tennessee becomes the staging ground for the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, a four-day, multi-stage music festival that brings together fans of an eclectic mix of rock, jazz, Americana and other musical styles. The 100-acre event attracts thousands each year, and is also broadcast on a network of radio affiliates — and for the third year in a row, those broadcasts will be powered by an Axia IP-Audio Network.
From June 11th through 14th, a network of more than 30 radio stations known as the Bonnaroo Radio Network (which includes stations such as KSWD, WXRT, WFUV, WCNR, and DAVE FM/Atlanta) will air 118 hours of music from the festival, which originates under the watchful eye of Tom Hansen, owner of PE-Audio, LLC and Director of Technology of Nashville’s WRLT-FM.
Tom is very familiar with Axia, having installed a Livewire network at WRLT in 2006. Since he’s also the contract operations manager for Bonnaroo, he also immediately began thinking how a IP-Audio might speed construction of the on-site temporary studio complex called the Backstage Radio Compound. In 2007, after careful planning and consideration, Tom deployed an Axia network on-site at Bonnaroo which included Element broadcast consoles, multitudes of Axia Audio Nodes, and Livewire-connected Telos Zephyr audio codecs.
Choice of equipment is always important, and the use of Axia adds to the ambience in the Radio Compound. According to Hansen, “Most of the DJs doing live shows are being sent halfway across the country to report on cool bands and artists they have never seen before, or want to cover just because it may be the coolest performance on earth this year. And Axia is definitely cool.” The broadcast compound typically contains 6 radio studios, two to three production areas and a TOC.
The Axia IP-Audio system allows broadcasters to build audio networks of any size using standard switched Ethernet to connect a few rooms, or an entire facility. Axia networks have a total system capacity of more than 10,000 audio streams, and can carry hundreds of digital stereo (or nearly a hundred surround) channels over a single CAT-6 cable, eliminating much of the cost normally associated with wiring labor and infrastructure. Over 1,500 Axia studios are already on-air around the world.
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Axia, a Telos company, builds Ethernet-based professional IP-Audio products for broadcast, sound-reinforcement and commercial audio applications. Along with the popular Element modular console for on-air, commercial production, audio workstations and personal studios, Axia products include digital audio routers, DSP mixers and processors, and software for configuring, managing and interfacing networked audio systems.