Hospital Radio Reading have become the latest hospital radio station to install the Sonifex S2 Solutions Studio Package.
The station, known on-air as HRR took advantage of a move from Battle Hospital in West Reading to the site of Royal Berkshire Hospital to ditch all their old equipment in favour of a complete new station package based around Sonifex S2 (also recently installed recently launched ILR stations such as 107 The Bee in Blackburn) and the Myriad automation and playout computer software from PSquared.
On of the station engineersJeff Pritchard said: “We decided to go for top quality equipment that would meet our budgetary requirements. I knew that Sonifex made good equipment so we asked the hospital radio committee to approve the purchase of a Sonifex S2 Solutions package together with Myriad automation system from PSquared.”
The proposal was passed by committee and they ordered the equipment from Sonifex Ltd. The Sonifex S2 Solutions radio studio package consists of the S2 digital I/O analogue mixer mounted in modular ash technical furniture and surrounded by leading brands of high quality broadcasting equipment carefully integrated to provide an easy to operate professional studio. The cabling is pre-prepared so that installation consists of simply connecting the various pieces of equipment together.
Charles estimated that when the move came it would be on a short time scale and he was right. The new studio was set up temporarily at the Battle site in order to give their members a chance to get familiar with the new equipment before the move to the Royal Berks Hospital. The actual studio move came just before Christmas 2005 and took about four days. Charles said “I was determined to make a really neat job of installing the Sonifex gear, so Jeff and I took every care. It paid off, the new studio looks great and it works beautifully, of course.”
The service is distributed to the patients via the Patientline system. Stereo audio is delivered to them via a long length of cat5 cable and the return signal is monitored locally. The engineers can now feel secure that the hospital radio service is reliable and of top quality.