Austin, TX (October 2, 2023)—From recording interviews to backup music, KUT 90.5, Austin’s National Public Radio station, and sister station KUTX 98.9, the Austin Music Experience, are using a variety of Tascam devices to broadcast to their Central Texas audience.
Todd Callahan, digital platform content director, and Rojith Thomas, technology coordinator, are both tasked with supporting the studios, network, and production facilities that are used to create and provide the programming for the stations. According to Rojith Thomas, they have found success with the Tascam equipment.
“We installed the SS-R250N in July 2023,” reports technology coordinator Rojith Thomas. Alongside Todd Callahan, digital platform content director, he is tasked with supporting the studios, network and production facilities that are used to create and provide programming for the stations.
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“We are using this Tascam SD-card recorder in one of our production studios. It’s integrated into our Axia Livewire network and serves as the primary backup for recording interviews and segments for our statewide news show, Texas Standard,” a one-hour program airing live Monday through Friday on more than 30 radio stations across the state.
“For the most part,” Thomas says, “we use the SS-R250N for recording interviews. We have one unit in our music library for digitizing vinyl records and playback/listening to songs. In two other recording studios, we have older DA-3000 models that are used for recording two-way interviews as well as full-session musical performances by various bands.”
He continues, “We also have a couple of Tascam SS-R250N systems in our technical operations center running as 24/7 backup music sources for our KUTX FM and HD channels. If, for some reason, we encounter a DJ issue or a technical outage, we have silence detectors in place to switch from our live programming to the Tascam SD-card players, which are programmed with appropriate music for each channel. The Tascam players are constantly on repeat of a 100-song playlist. We’re also planning to add another SS-R250N at a distant FM transmitter site as a backup source because it’s an hour and a half away from our studio.”
There are also 16 Tascam CD-500B players, he notes. “There’s a pair in each of our four edit bays, our production studios, another in the Texas Standard studio and in the broadcast booths for KUT and KUTX. Hosts in the booths can control the Tascam CD players through the on-air consoles via GPIO/Serial commands.”
