Badalona Comunicació is a state-owned multimedia company located in Badalona City, Spain. Its radio station, BDN Radio Ciutat de Badalona launched in 1981 and operates 24/7 on 94.4 FM and online. BDN covers local information, music and sports.
BDN Radio Ciutat de Badalona was the first Catalonian local station to take the digital leap in 2008 with an AEQ Arena console. At that time, the broadcaster installed the digital console in studio 1 while it continued to use analog consoles in its three other studios to manage auxiliary production. Then in 2019, the station decided to go fully digital and migrated all audio connectivity to AoIP.
Nacho Olivella, head of AEQ’s Catalonia office, worked with Jordi Coloma and Martí Santander of BDN on the project. They updated BDN’s existing AEQ Arena digital console in studio 1 with a new IP audio card and added the Arena Screen application. This, AEQ says, allows touchscreen configuration and the display of broadcast parameters for each channel.
AoIP Transition
In addition, the station incorporated Virtual Arena technology for remote control of the console. It also installed two Netbox 4MH IP audio interfaces for speakers in booth 1, each with four mic inputs and four headphone outputs.
AEQ explains that this lets staff use the main speaker booth in combination with any of the other studios, oruse the audio directly from journalist workstations. The setup delivers audio to the IP network. From there any Dante device in the building can extract the audio.
Other upgrades include the replacement of AEQ BC-500 analog consoles with modular AEQ Forum IP Split digital consoles in studios 2 and 3. And the installation of AEQ Capitol IP console in studio 4 for news editors.
BDN also added a Netbox 32 AD/MX matrix to the master control room. It connects to the Dante network and allows access to IP audio I/Os of all radio studio controls. The unit interfaces with the main speaker booth and the BDN television located on the ground floor of the building.
The central matrix connects to the wiring of the old patch panel, which technical staff reconfigured for the new layout. This allows for multiple levels of switching and security, added AEQ.