QF Radio, Qatar
The Qatar Foundations mission is to make the knowledge-based society a reality. Its flagship project Education City is a campus that spreads over 1,000 ha and houses the majority of the Qatar Foundation's member institutions dedicated to education, research, and community development.
In April 2009 the Qatar Foundation launched QF Radio, a proof of concept radio station designed to share the vision and stories of the Qatar Foundation with the community, internally and externally.
AVC was selected to provide the technology for this project as a turnkey solution incorporating studio equipment, field recording apparatus, audio editing, radio automation system, streaming services, and IT equipment. Based around the Axia Livewire studio system, the entire studio and production facility including automation servers and streaming systems was preconfigured and mounted into rugged transportable flight cases before being shipped to Qatar, where it was installed and ready to use within a matter of hours following delivery.
AVC staff accompanied the equipment to Qatar in order to provide training in the use of the system, but John Bullock the architect of the project for the Qatar Foundation was able to very quickly make the system productive and was delivering test transmissions within days.
QF Radio can be heard worldwide from the website www.qfradio.org.qa . Encoding of this broadcast takes place on site using the capabilities of a Telos iPort codec which is capable of encoding up to eight independent sources. The bidirectional capabilities of this device mean that future collaboration from locations across the world will be possible.
Processing is provided on site using an Omni an 8X audio processor which can process up to eight separate sources prior to distribution internally or externally. Audio is managed using Axia Livewire nodes, Studio Engine, and Livewire virtual soundcards. Radio Automation is Nexgen, servers and workstations are DELL, and studio fittings are Yellowtec.
Contact person: Andrew McTeigue
