Facilities in the Radio Station.

I was asked to interview Chris Gladwin who is Eccles College’s media technician and find out the answers to some questions me and my partner had. These questions were about the equipment in our radio room used to broadcast E6 Radio.

Above there is a link to our interview with Chris Gladwin.

The first question we asked was, what is the most efficient programme to use when recording a radio show live? He answered with ‘when recording live for E6 Radio we used the S radio live module.’

Above is an example of the S Radio live module- this is how we create our radio shows by adding speech, jingles and music.

We then asked Chris, What are your best tips for using the mixing board? He replied by saying the optimix mixing console that we have in our radio station is designed to be used quite robustly and not to be tentative with it- he also added a tip when using the faders, as they are quite large you can use them quite quickly.

For anybody who doesn’t know a mixing board it is an electronic device for mixing and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. Below is an example of a mixing board.

The third question we asked was do you think when using the microphone there are certain ways for it to sound professional. He answered by saying of course with the distance from the microphone and getting the mic level right and the type of voice you have an example he used was someone with a very low, quite voice needs to be closer to the mic.

Below is a picture of the microphone we use in the radio room.

We then asked how much the equipment in the radio room is worth. He explained that the S Radio optimix contract with portable unit it worth around £4,000, the mics are about £500 each and so altogether he suggested around £6,000-£8,000.

Below is an example of what our radio room looks like and what type of equipment we have in it.

If there was something that you would improve in the radio room what would it be? He said the soundproofing- as we have a lot of sound through the door.

The last question we asked Chris was what is the broadcast range of the radio station? As we don’t broadcast over FM, we have a wired connection that goes to the café, but we can broadcast digitally through streaming which we would use Planet E stream service which allows us to stream our radio station digitally to any computer in Salford city college.