Royal Media Services Upgrades Fourth Station to Lawo AoIP

Radio Citizen's new Lawo crystal console

Royal Media Services, one of Kenya’s leading media companies, has upgraded a fourth station’s broadcast studio infrastructure with Lawo IP technology. RMS has 14 stations.

Nairobi-based Radio Citizen has installed a new 12-fader crystal console. Lawo system integrator BYCE Broadcast oversaw the project management and installation. Radio Citizen broadcasts nationwide, carrying news and education programs in Sanifu, the standard Swahili dialect.

RMS, Lawo and BYCE Broadcast began their relationship in 2017, with the installation of their first Lawo mixing console. Lawo’s crystal consoles are now in service at Radio Citizen’s sister stations Ramogi FM, Inooro FM and HOT96.

According to BYCE, crystal consoles have proven popular with RMS thanks to their cost-effectiveness, intuitive design, standards-based Ravenna/AES67 networking, and advanced features such as AutoMix hands-free mixing and AutoGain one-touch mic gain controls. Lawo VisTool GUI-building software comes standard with crystal, providing touchscreen graphical controls the stations can customize to tailor workflows even further. A bonus for RMS is that the crystal consoles use the open-source Ember+ remote control protocol to operate automation and other broadcast software.

“It is exciting to watch as Royal Media Services sets the pace for adopting broadcast IP technology in Kenya,” says Cynthia Odari, head of business development for BYCE Broadcast. “RMS was our first client in Kenya, and we thank them for their continuing trust in us and in Lawo — a decision which keeps proving to be right!”