University of Delaware Use Gateway 4 and ViA for Remotes
By David Mackenzie, Chief Engineer 91.3 WVUD at the University of Delaware.
I first worked at the University of Delaware as a student broadcaster and Assistant Chief Engineer in the 1970s. Later I was Chief Engineer at WJBR for 15 years, then Director of Engineering at CRB Broadcasting, before returning to take up the position of Chief Engineer at WVUD in 1996.
WVUD is a non-commercial broadcast operation operating on a limited budget and we prioritize selecting new equipment that works reliably and efficiently. A Wheatstone LX 24 is central to routing audio between our 3 studios and we rely heavily on Tieline Gateway 4, Bridge-IT and ViA codecs to produce sports remotes for athletics, football, basketball, ice hockey, baseball, lacrosse, field hockey, softball, and other music remotes annually.
We installed the Gateway 4 codec at our studio to expand our remote capability over IP. The Gateway 4 supports two simultaneous live stereo remotes and we also have a Tieline Bridge-IT, so we can theoretically run three stereo remotes at a time, which is useful when teams travel away.
We have two Tieline ViA remote codecs which work wonderfully. All of our announcers are students, so simple and trouble-free connections are important. We have preconfigured the ViAs with programs that allow students to connect to any of our 3 studios at the touch of a button. They find the ViA is very simple to use and it sounds much better than the POTS lines of old and our Martis, which still get used occasionally on campus when both the ViAs are in use, or we are following teams playing away.
Using the LX 24 we can easily route high quality mix-minus feeds to the ViA codecs which provide studio quality audio IP feeds in both directions very easily. This is quite a step up from our older Martis, which feed return mix-minus audio over the SCA 67kHz subcarrier signal for monitoring. This requires an SCA radio receiver to demodulate the audio signal. The quality can be poor and in the past had issues with the signal not penetrating buildings.
We encode using Tieline’s Music algorithm which sounds great at low bitrates. When sports are on our campus we can connect easily over Ethernet and use Wi-Fi from time-to-time if required. We occasionally encounter issues trying to connect over Ethernet and Wi-Fi at other Universities because firewalls can be problematic.
Since being configured the Gateway 4 has been set and forget and works 100% of the time. Configurations are pretty standard and we don’t require remote monitoring of connections, even though it’s available if required. Our goal is to cover around 100 live games this year and our Gateway 4 and ViA codecs will be crucial in delivering high quality live play-by-play coverage to our listeners.
Want to know more?
For more information on Gateway, Gateway 4, and ViA codecs visit www.tieline.com/products or contact Tieline sales:
- For USA, Canada & Latin America contact: sales@tieline.com
- For Australia and International: info@tieline.com
