As part of the Remote Contribution theme of UNESCO’s ongoing Remote Radio Week, today there was a discussion on how to manage audio contributions from home.

The session was moderated by Lawrie Hallett of Red Tech and featured Bala Murali Subramaney, Chief Technology Officer, Astro Radio, Malaysia, Gary Kline, Founder, Kline Consulting and Radioinfo Asia’s Steve Ahern, who is also the Head of ABU Media Academy.

Speaking about his experience in remote broadcasting, Subramany said during the last 12 months most of their announcers worked from home and they only had one engineer per shift at the control centre.

It was challenging as not all announcers had computers or a broadband connectivity at home, so they would record their audio on their phone and transfer the file to someone who had a computer. They also tried to virtualize the automation system and console.

Steve said it was a mixed experience over the last 18 months, and agreed with Bala’s comments about poor internet. When the pandemic struck, he researched extensively about remote radio and learnt that as soon as you move from an acoustic studio to a home studio, there are lot of issues like more echo and background noise. It’s good to choose a small room, use the corner of the room to reduce echo and dampen the sound from the walls with foam or curtains. Even though one may be using the same mics that they usually do, they are not in the studio environment, so use a much closer mic technique and use a headset mic, so if you move around then the mic is in the same position. The playout software has many different configurations, so you can do virtual voice tracking back to the studio, so you only need a microphone and a computer, or you might use the software in your computer to trigger the playout so you’re in control of the whole system remotely, or you can have the audio files and the playout interface on your computer, and at home you out your computer and microphone through a mixer and send the whole program back to the studio or the transmitter.

Gary, a consultant, spoke about how when the pandemic struck, almost overnight, most of the staff of radio stations were ordered to stay at home. Many stations were not equipped to broadcast from home, so they made a scramble to get the equipment which put a load on the manufacturers. The rush to get jocks on air meant often there was a sacrifice in terms of audio quality and there was also the issue of internet connectivity. There was a need to assess how to be prepared for any such eventuality in the future.

Answering a viewer’s questions about managing broadcasting from home, Steve said one of the problems of handling live was the inadequacy of internet services. If radio broadcasters are thinking ahead, they should be installing direct broadcast lines, IP lines and buying dedicated space in hubs and direct feeds, so they have control rather than internet or mobile services. One should also have multiple backup connections.