Professional Audio Technology have configured and supplied a large Lawo NOVA17 router to Nova Entertainment in Brisbane, formerly known as DMG Radio.
The system, which consists of a Lawo NOVA17 Router with an additional DALLIS I/O frame, various LCD button panels for monitoring selection and three LAWO KSC.GPIO32 general purpose input and output panels, is being used by Nova Entertainment for the switching of all national DAB streams. In addition to this, the new Lawo router is also being used as the main audio router for Coles Radio, which the newly rebranded Nova Entertainment network supplies nationally.
After a thorough tendering process, the Nova Entertainment engineering team, led by Sydney Chief Engineer John Pearce, decided on the Lawo router technology for the project. Pearce said: “We chose the Lawo Nova17 in the end because we believed that its native features most closely matched the specific project requirements. The bang for buck was greater, local and international support was fantastic and the product line and technology was mature.”
The Nova Entertainment engineering team, in cooperation with Professional Audio Technology’s team of engineers came up with a design which not only switches over to another service should the primary service fail, but also switches back once the primary service is restored. The new system notifies the engineer in charge should any failures occur. This was achieved via integrating the main router system with Nova’s existing Kingfisher monitoring/paging system. To provide the engineering staff with visual system feedback, a series of custom designed VisTools screens provided switching information and level indication as well as alarm screens and general system monitoring selectors. Also included in the system is the Lawo MTXCon Scheduler, which allows engineers to schedule routes of the system well in advance.
PAT’s Technology Specialist Alan Liddelow said: “This was certainly an exciting project to be involved in. Rarely do we see customers push the capabilities of a system as far as the Nova engineers have done here. We are delighted to see our customers embrace Lawo’s technology like this and it is without a doubt another fantastic reference site for Lawo and PAT in Australia. Of course we think it is very fitting, that the Nova Entertainment group has decided on a Lawo Nova router – that goes without saying.”