Newcap selects Axia for Edmonton, Alberta facility

17 August 2005, Cleveland Ohio, USA

Newcap Radio Incorporated (www.ncc.ca), one of Canada's leading broadcasters, recently completed installation of a new Axia Livewire Audio Network. The installation, at Alberta's West Edmonton Mall, North America’s largest such facility, is home to K-Rock 97.3, 96-X Hit Radio, CFCW 790 AM, and Cat Country -- a network feeding twelve additional radio stations throughout the Alberta province.

Chosen for its high visibility as a shopping and entertainment destination, the new station affords visitors the opportunity to see what actually takes place at a radio station by way of its open, glass-walled design. The facility’s entrance has been designed with an interactive flair -- enabling visitors to see commercials being produced or watch an announcer voice a commercial.

With a timeline of just six weeks from completion of construction to the on-air date, Newcap not only required a system capable of rapid deployment, they also wanted one that represented the state-of-the-art. According to Owen Martin, Newcap's Director of Engineering for Canada's western provinces, "Axia was the one system we found that genuinely addressed these issues. It offers a substantial cost reduction in terms of wiring from room to room, and affords tremendous opportunity to grow and change the system as our requirements evolve."

Purchased and installed through Pippin Technical (Axia's Canadian representative), Martin reports, "The installation came together really well… and technical support from both Pippin Technical and Axia Audio was excellent. Since going on the air, we've been trouble free." The installation includes five SmartSurface studio control surfaces and 40 Axia Audio Nodes.

Martin praised the system's intuitive operation and rich feature set. "The Axia system has absolutely been a dream to work with. The SmartSurface controller does everything and more than conventional consoles, with the added flexibility of being able to dynamically re-configure the setup. We're particularly pleased with the system’s ability to interact with our phones. The ability to have multiple backfeeds allows us to integrate our telephone hybrids without having to jump through hoops."

Newcap Radio is currently finalizing plans for another station in Alberta and will interconnect it via fiber optics with the West Edmonton Mall facility. Martin notes, "Our experience with Axia's networked audio system versus the more conventional point to point wiring approach has been all positive, and we've had no technical issues whatsoever with audio dropouts or system congestion. I don't know why we hadn't gone this route earlier. Where we're installing new equipment, we're onboard with Axia."

Axia is the world's first audio network designed specifically for broadcast studios; using patent-pending Livewire(tm) technology, Axia networks transport real-time, "live" audio, plus Program Associated Data (PAD) and machine remote control over Ethernet, and supports up to 32,000 stereo channels per system. Livewire also eliminates audio cards by allowing PCs to send digital audio to network destinations through their Ethernet NICs. For more details, visit www.AxiaAudio.com or e-mail Clark Novak at cnovak@AxiaAudio.com.

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Axia, a Telos company, builds network-based professional audio products for broadcast, production, sound-reinforcement and commercial audio applications. Products include digital audio routers, DSP mixers and processors and software for configuring, managing, and interfacing networked audio systems.