Devon County Radio / BBC Radio Devon

INDEX

BROADCAST EQUIPMENT:
Here's a selection of some of our finest technical friends ( and foes) who helped to keep the needles wagging across the decades.


BE Cart Machines.		Station Idents and "Stings", and longer "trails" were played out on 1/4" Broadcast Electronics Cartridge Machines. Triple stacks were installed in th studios, and usually a single unit plus recorder were installed elsewhere. The machines electronics incorporated circuitry that would detect tones of a certain frequency ( secondary and tertiary). These tones were recorded on to master tapes, and the detected tones were used to switch relays to fire other Cart Machine which in turn used their recorded tones to fire relays to opt-out on the Medium Wave Transmitter Network. The Cartridges were recorded with a common music bed, but a fixed length announcement with the frequency for the relevant transmitter - a system know as " split-carts" or "split-idents"> Today a similar system is used using PC's and GPI's.

SONIFEX Cart Machines		The BE's eventually wore out. The replacements were the Sonifex Micro HS and HSX cartridge machines. Same format of tape, but very different machines, featuring a very fast start and good audio performance. they also employed a different method of providing the required tones for split idents. FSK tones were detected and provided outputs via a small connector on the back of the machine. Sonifex units performed well, and after a period of "instability" using ASC Darts, the Sonifex units were put back into service and continued well beyond their designed life.SONIFEX HSx

ASC Dart Machine		The arrival of ASC DART machines was a new departure in technology, using very high density floppy discs in NEC 3.5 inch floppy drives. ( up to 13Mb) Operationally they we very use to use with lot's of facilities, however when they went faulty they could produce the strangest of effects, playing out deleted tracks and skipping. Sadly these became so unreliable after a couple of years that the Sonifexes were pulled out of the garage store and re-installed to bridge the gap before the introduction of Mini-Disc units.

DENON MD1050 MiniDisc Recorder.		The Denon Minidisc recorders were introduced in the mid-ninetees. MiniDisc (MD) was becoming a popular format. Although these machines were extremely versatile and operationally quite slick, corrupted mini-discs often caused trouble, and once these things went out of alignment it was very hit and miss to get them back again. However they are still used in the studios as some news is still gathered on portable MD recorders.