The company provides multimedia customers with a premium service using Access MultiRack
Radio World Buyer's Guide Articles are intended to help readers understand why their colleagues have chosen particular products to solve various technical situations. This month's articles focus on products that support remote broadcasts and sports coverage.
Midwest Sports Broadcasting is a live broadcast service that provides engineering, technical support and remote coverage for a range of sports, talk, music and entertainment clients. The company manages high-profile shows for SiriusXM, Learfield, Westwood One Sports, ESPN Radio and more.
“I envision us as a premium service for national radio stations that value the highest quality broadcasts with extensive functionality,” said Jake Robinson, founder and CTO of Midwest Sports Broadcasting. “We pride ourselves on providing services that go above and beyond many of the basic remote broadcasts you see across the industry.”
Because Midwest Sports Broadcasting specializes in live events, it has a large stable of IP audio codecs available. “We have a large amount of Access NX [Portable] drives, Access NX Racks, BRIC-Link II encoders, and even some older Access 2USB drives.
Increasingly, however, Midwest Sports Broadcasting has included Access to MultiRack on their platforms for remote broadcasts. The Access MultiRack is an AES67-compliant multichannel IP audio codec capable of five full-duplex stereo connections simultaneously.
“Most of our systems are Dante-based, and the interoperability between Dante and AES67 has reduced our need for external converters and device bridges,” said Robinson. “When you're flying with a handful of pelican pods, the more you can reduce the space, the better. Access MultiRack has enabled us to reduce our logistics costs and we can provide more connectivity to the networks we work with.”
When it comes to running MultiRack broadcasts for remotes, Robinson is diligent about presetting the encoders. “We know exactly how many connections we're making, the on-site broadcast needs, all the intercom paths and whether or not video is involved,” Robinson said. “We check locations at each location and once it's time for the remote, all the work is done in advance.”
The similarities between the Access MultiRack's user interface and other Comrex IP encoders have made it easier to use in the field. “When a new engineer steps in front of a MultiRack, it looks familiar. It's easy for them to plug in and go.”
He says the Midwest uses Comrex codecs because they are compatible with the broadcast ecosystems used by its customers. “For years and years we were able to do ISDN pretty reliably across the country and around the world, and with the sunset of that service, IP has become the standard. In my experience, Comrex encoders have been the most reliable.”
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