NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES: The Museum of Television and Radio (MTR), which has locations in Midtown Manhattan and Beverly Hills, is upgrading its Ralph Guild Radio Studios with the assistance of Geoff Daking and Dave Thibodeau of DakingPlus. The company is donating Daking audio equipment for use in the two radio studios, while the company principals are lending their design expertise to the renovation project, working alongside original benefactor, Ralph Guild of Interep, Norm Pattiz of Westwood One, with Doug Warner, MTR's director of engineering, acting as project manager. Daking and Thibodeau are sourcing new audio equipment to bring the studios up to date with current technology. The museum's New York building was originally completed in 1991 and the Beverly Hills branch in 1996. "We're going to give them a Daking Mic-Pre IV, two Mic-Pre/EQs and two FET Compressor/Limiters," Daking reports. A Sierra Audio Systems digital audio mixing console has been selected for both studios and Daking and Thibodeau are working with the manufacturer to provide total integration of the Daking Mic-Pre IV with the system. "Dave and I have a company called DakingPlus, the digitally-controlled side of the company," Daking explains. "We're developing a product hand-in-hand with SAS, taking the Mic-Pre IV and making it remote controlled." Thibodeau elaborates, "SAS does not offer a mic preamp for their console. Historically, people have just bought off-the-shelf mic pres and put them in a cabinet somewhere. But they lock them up, generally, so if you want to tweak it you have to find a way to get in there. The Mic-Pre IV is a high quality analog mic pre, and we're going to digitally control it through a couple of different protocols." For integration with the SAS system, DakingPlus will implement the RS 485 protocol. The unit will also include MIDI and USB control. The fully digital audio setup at the radio studios will allow fast changeovers from one operator or program to the next. "It's a fabulous system, the way SAS has set it up. It can address any of the Mic-Pre IV settings on the front panel, so they'll be able to change settings from one user to another, or show to show. They'll just click one button and everything is set, with the equipment routed where it needs to be routed," says Thibodeau. "Although the price point may not necessarily meet the budget of every radio station," continues Thibodeau, "the new digitally controlled DakingPlus product offers a lot of potential. It's a transformer input, transformer output design that is particularly well suited to driving tougher loads. If they're doing anything with mic pres that need to be very far away, it's a perfect solution." The multi-use rooms, which will continue to host guest radio stations and operators for live broadcasts and will also offer editing functionality, will additionally be outfitted with a small Digidesign Pro Tools system, Telos telephone hybrids, CD players and 360 Systems digicart machines. Bob Heil of Heil Microphones is supplying his popular model PR40 radio microphone as well as mic stands for the rooms. Daking and Thibodeau will also oversee the expansion and relocation of the radio studio at the MTR's Beverly Hills branch to a street-side position. "It's going to be like the old 'Today Show,' with a window onto the street," explains Daking, who was involved in the original radio studio design and equipment choices at the two locations. The design of the studio at the New York branch will remain largely unchanged, he says. The Beverly Hills location will additionally include video equipment. Norman Pattiz of broadcaster Westwood One is overseeing that part of the project, according to Daking. The renovation is being sponsored by Ralph Guild, who is head of Interep, the country's largest independent national sales and marketing organization specializing in radio, the Internet and new media. Guild is a broadcast industry hall of fame inductee and the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2001 Gold Medal from the International Radio and Television Society. He is also on MTR's board of directors. The MTR, formerly known as the Museum of Broadcasting, maintains a duplicate archive of over 120,000 television and radio programs and advertisements at both of its locations. The collection covers nearly 90 years of broadcast history from around the world and encompasses all genres. |
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