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A Few Good Reasons why your next studios will be built with IP-Audio technology.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already spent a lot of research time planning your new studios, and you’ve narrowed down your final choices. Here are some reasons why studios built with Axia will provide more flexibility, reliability and long-term value than traditional routing systems.

1. Axia systems are easily scalable. Because Axia uses standard switched Ethernet to transport audio, machine logic and Program Associated Data (PAD), studio complexes constructed using Axia can be expanded at will, up to 10,000 stereo streams per system — without the cost penalty associated with mainframe TDM routers. Switched Ethernet allows you to add more IP-addressable inputs, outputs, GPIO closures or entire consoles whenever and wherever you need them, without buying expensive card cages or routing frames.

2. Axia systems can be easily reconfigured. If your plans or needs change during building (or any time afterwards), your Axia network can be quickly and easily modified to suit your needs. Need more inputs than you anticipated for the syndicated talent’s studio? Just add another Axia Audio Node. Need two small voiceover studios instead of one big production room? Add another control surface. Thanks to this flexibility, running changes and modifications are simple and affordable. With traditional routing systems, modifications can result in big costs.

3. Axia reduces infrastructure. With Axia, audio inputs are right in the studios – where the audio sources are. All audio, machine logic and other data travels between studios on a single CAT-6 Ethernet cable; mainframe routing systems place their inputs in a central frame, which requires a cable “home run” from to studio for every audio input. Axia clients routinely find that the number of cable pairs per system is reduced from thousands to just dozens.

4. Axia systems are standards-based. Unlike custom TDM routing hardware, which uses proprietary software, there's very little about Axia that's proprietary. Axia's Livewire streams are switched and distributed by off-the-shelf Ethernet switches from companies like Cisco and HP — companies who have invested billions of dollars in R&D to develop equipment with ultra-reliable quality of service (QoS) for mission-critical networking. Video systems are rapidly migrating to IP-based distribution; Axia is currently the only system that employs Audio over IP transmission and is standards-based. This ensures that your Axia IP-Audio network is future-proof.

5. Axia networks are reliable and self-healing. Axia draws from the best of the IT industry. For example, the Cisco switches we recommend serve as critical links in hospital, banking and military systems. They're designed for better reliability than most traditional broadcast gear! An important feature of many Ethernet switches involves redundant paths and Spanning Tree protocol, switch enhancements that allow Axia networks to provide several levels of redundancy. The result: “smart” networks that can sense problems and route around them, ensuring 24/7 reliability.

6. Axia networks eliminate PC sound cards. If you’ve looked at new computers lately, you’ve noticed that PCI slots are becoming a thing of the past. And without them, those expensive multi-input PCI audio cards become obsolete and unusable too. PCs connected to Axia networks can send and receive up to 24 channels of stereo audio and GPIO commands natively, using our IP-Audio Driver for Windows® and the computer’s existing 100Base-T network interface card. This simple software solution eliminates both the cost of third-party add-in cards and their hardware dependencies, and works with products from major digital delivery system vendors like BE, RCS, ENCO, WideOrbit, Netia, DAVID Systems and more — see our Partners page for a complete list.

7. Axia networks can be remotely administered. Because all Axia Audio Nodes, mix engines and control surfaces are IP-addressable, you have remote access to individual settings and diagnostic reports at any time, from any network-connected PC — even via the Internet, if you choose. You can log in securely, quickly examine configurations and make changes if needed. Traditional hardwired routing systems do not offer this capability.

8. You can easily build custom automated routing solutions. Axia’s PathfinderPC™ router control software lets you create custom client applications that give operators a simple, intuitive onscreen routing switcher interface with only the controls they need. The push of a button can load a salvo, send a conditional logic message, insert talkback into a path and more. It’s easy to build advanced multiple-route-switching features too, using an easy-to-understand onscreen interface that lets you create “stackable” serial events using standard Boolean logic — all of which is invisible to the operators. PathfinderPC can even monitor critical program streams for audio presence and switch to a backup route or source if needed, adding another layer of redundancy to your network.

9. Axia control surfaces help make shows go smoother. Axia consoles are extremely flexible and configurable. Operators can set, save and recall their favorite set-up with just one button press; this means that everyone can have their own custom board layout, with sources placed where they’re most easily accessed. Axia consoles include studio-quality voice processing – EQ, compression, noise gating and de-essing – for every mic source, eliminating expensive outboard processors, all of which can be saved with each operator’s personal profile. Axia consoles feature automatic mix-minus generation for every incoming phone or codec source, which eliminates fumbling to set up backfeeds. These and other sophisticated features help operators produce complex programs with reduced effort, decreasing the chances for operator error.

10. Axia systems give you more capabilities with less cost. A not-insignificant side benefit of IP-Audio technology is lower cost. Both short- and long-term savings are realized in several different areas, including materials (cabling and mainframe router/switcher gear), installation (reduced labor costs) and maintenance (simplified infrastructure). Axia users typically report an installed cost 20% to 35% less than that of traditional hardwired studios.

Axia Saves You Money.

We’ve explored a few of the benefits you get from Axia that traditional systems can’t deliver. Now let’s closely examine how Axia not only delivers more capabilities, but does so more cost-effectively than standard studio construction methods.

1. Axia saves money on wiring. Sharing audio sources and destinations between studios with traditional consoles or mainframe-based routing systems is expensive because of the long runs of multi-pair cable needed. Let’s imagine that “Studio A” needs to send four stereo program streams to the Technical Center, and needs to receive audio from a codec, two satellite receivers, a four-output digital playout system and an air monitor located in the Technical Center. An IFB feed will be sent back to the codec, and one program stream will feed a distribution amp and sent to other studios, for a total of 19 audio channels entering and exiting the studio. This much audio requires Belden 8769 38-conductor cable; a 500-foot length costs $3,000.00. That’s for audio cabling only — more circuits are needed for machine logic. If capacity needs grow, adding additional multi-pair could easily double the cable expenditure to $6,000.00 per room. A 10-studio building would need at least $60,000.00 in multi-pair cable just for the inter-room wiring, not including connectors, cable trays and installation time.

By contrast, an Axia IP-Audio network can carry several hundreds of stereo audio channels, plus GPIO/machine control logic, Program Associated Data (PAD), and standard network traffic such as file transfers, messaging, etc. over a single CAT-6 Ethernet cable. A 1000-foot reel of Belden Mediatwist 1872 CAT-6 costs $225.00 — enough to interconnect several studios. Using Axia, the same 10 studios that needed $60,000 of multi-pair cable require only $1,200 of CAT-6, a savings of $58,800. A company building 100 studios in multiple locations could easily save $500,000 or more in wiring costs with Axia compared to traditional hardwired studios.

2. Axia saves money on soundcards. We already showed you how Axia gives you more operational flexibility by eliminating sound cards. But there’s cost savings to be had as well: a typical PC soundcard for broadcast can cost between $2,000.00 and $4,000.00. Axia’s IP-Audio driver replaces these, converting audio into IP packets and sending it to the network using an off-the-shelf $20 Ethernet NIC. In a typical radio station with five audio workstations, this represents a cost savings of between $10,000 and $20,000. But this is only the beginning.

In a traditional routing system, whenever a soundcard is used its audio outputs must plug into a corresponding console/router input. Axia’s IP-Audio Driver eliminates the need for dedicated console modules and router input cards too, so it’s not unusual for a typical station to save another $5,000 per studio when considering this aspect. For a group building 100 studios, Axia could save well over $1,000,000 in soundcard-related costs alone.

3. Axia eliminates outboard voice processing and mic preamps. External voice processing boxes can cost between $300.00 and $1,500.00 per microphone, not including mic preamplifiers — another $100.00 to $400.00 each. For a typical studio containing 4 microphones, the cost of outboard processing could be anywhere between $600.00 to $2,000.00 per mic.

All Axia consoles feature, at no extra cost, built-in studio-grade mic processing (with EQ) by Omnia: EQ, compression, noise gating and de-essing. These processing features can be individually applied to every microphone source, no matter how many you have. Savings within a 5-studio facility could range from $10,000.00 to $20,000.00; over 100 studios, the savings could easily exceed $200,000 or more.

4. Axia reduces the cost of “Listening Stations.” Using traditional technology, setting up listening stations for programmers, managers and other office staff to listen to studio outputs meant using a selector panel hard-wired to the consoles or router frame, along with amps and speakers. This meant more wiring, more equipment, and more money. Because Axia is standards-based, studio audio is sent over the network in the form of RTP audio streams. Any PC with Windows Media Player, Winamp or a similar standards-compliant player can listen to these streams, and because modern PC’s are equipped with headphone outputs or small speakers, anyone with a computer has a full-featured listening station. To make this even easier, Axia offers a very low-cost program called iPlay that allows users to switch instantly between up to eight pre-programmed sources.

In a typical station with four studios and some shared audio feeds, you’d have at least four listening stations, each of which would cost around $1,000 to fully equip — up to $200,000 when applied to 50 radio stations. Axia does away with the need for that external hardware and saves you that $200,000. And, there’s a bonus: because of the ease and convenience of listening using standard PC’s, most Axia clients will set up far more than they would have otherwise, enhancing productivity by allowing many others in the organization to hear the streams — not just a select few.

5. Axia reduces the cost of station audio archiving (logging). With prices ranging from $2,000 to $15,000 and up, buying dedicated hardware recorders to log program audio can become a very expensive proposition, not just in initial hardware costs, but also in operating (media) costs. Software-based loggers running on PCs are less expensive, but soundcards must be used to get the audio into the computer for recording, driving costs up. For instance, the hardware cost to record 8 stereo streams using a Telos logging system with Telos soundcards would be around $4,000 — that’s $500 per stereo stream. This cost, of course, doesn’t include the PC and storage drive.

Axia’s networked audio logger, iProFiler, uses our IP-Audio driver to capture audio directly from the network without the use of expensive soundcards. Using Axia, a 50-station group could save more than $150,000 compared to the soundcard-equipped PC logging method (and much more compared to dedicated hardware recorders).

6. Axia reduces the cost of peripherals by allowing more sharing. Traditional consoles don‘t share resources well. A typical station might have need of an audio codec in various studios over the course of a working day. Since it’s impractical to physically move a single codec from studio to studio, stations have historically equipped each studio with all the peripherals its users might need during the course of the day. Even though the station doesn’t need three codecs, traditional consoles make it more convenient to install a codec in each of its three studios rather than attempt to share one or two devices.

Axia makes it practical share resources. Instead of duplicating devices in each studio, you can now share a few centrally-located devices between any studios that need them. It’s hard to quantify the cost savings derived from this, but it would not be unusual to see the overall quantity of peripherals in a typical studio complex cut by 50% thanks to the benefits of sharing. To see how this quickly this savings adds up, consider: even if you only eliminate one $4,000 codec per studio, this represents a $200,000 cost savings within a 50-station group.

7. Axia reduces the cost of studios by enabling fewer studios to do more work. Radio stations have historically made inefficient use of studios. The reason is simple: each studio was primarily designed for only one purpose — on-air, production, news — and when not doing this work, lay idle.

Axia allows any studio to be instantly reconfigured to perform an alternate task. For example, a production studio, when not being used for production, can serve as an air studio or a news studio or an interview studio by simply loading a new profile into the console. Even large and very busy stations have found that with Axia they could reduce the number of studios needed, because each talent can have their work preferences saved in software rather than built into the permanent configuration of the studio (as was necessary with traditional consoles). If a station were able to reduce its studio needs by, say, 20%, this could easily represent $250,000 or more across a 50-station group.

8. Axia reduces the cost of audio routing. All stations route audio, even the smallest ones. Of course, they don’t always think of it as routing, but anytime an engineer needs to patch around a problem, an operator share a feed, a jock change what’s being sent to a caller, or a tech send one audio source to multiple destinations, routing is what they’re doing. And if a station doesn’t have an audio router, they employ a hodge-podge of other devices to do the job. The cost of all those patch bays, distribution amps, line selector, sub-mixers and PC-controlled switches can add up to significant sums. A mainframe-type router can eliminate the need for many of those devices, but doesn’t effect any cost savings. Mainframe routers cost even more than the various devices they replace!

By contrast, Axia is a true audio network that uses Ethernet to allow any device to connect to any other device in a facility. Axia networks use high reliability switches from companies like Cisco, HP, and AT as the core routing components, whereas Axia’s routing-switcher competitors build proprietary products. This provides Axia clients with much more reliable solutions: Cisco has more experience building networks for 24/7/365 operation than all of the broadcast companies combined! Axia simply adapts Cisco’s core technology to the needs of broadcast so that broadcasters have access to much more advanced technology, reliability and lower costs, due to the comparably higher volumes of Ethernet switches as compared to broadcast routers. Axia hardware typically costs 50% less than a comparable mainframe-type router.

9. Axia reduces maintenance and operating costs. Because Axia is based on standard Ethernet, the audio network is maintained using the same tools, cables, testers, and diagnostic programs used for your IT or VoIP networks. Remote administration and configuration is simple and requires nothing more than secure access and a standard browser. Stations can save money not only on engineering (a smaller staff is possible because skills are leveraged across multiple platforms), but on the tools, spares, equipment and training needed to keep all of these systems operating.

Technical Comparison

We’ve looked at the advantages Axia gives based on costs, but we also realize that costs alone should never be the only reason to select a particular system. With that in mind, here are some technical merits of the Axia system to keep in mind when choosing.

1. IP-Audio will be the standard for transporting audio in the future. We’re the first to admit this statement sounds a bit self-serving, but it really is inevitable. Consider: video is already migrating to IP-based transmission networks, in a big way. Standards-based systems are where the most promising future always lies; Axia is currently the only audio-over-IP distribution system that is standards-based, using switched Ethernet as a backbone. Axia audio streams are standard RTP (Real Time Protocol) streams; they even work with Windows Media Player.

2. There's very little about Axia that's proprietary. Axia Livewire streams are switched and distributed by off-the-shelf Ethernet switches from major manufacturers like Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. Livewire streams are fully compatible with other network traffic such as e-mail, file transfers and Web browsing. Standard hardwired routing systems use a completely proprietary backplane that cannot carry standard computer network traffic.

3. Axia technology has been proven and verified in a University study. This study confirmed, in a real-world operational setting, that, properly configured, Livewire IP-Audio networks can easily scale to create systems large or small, just as Ethernet scales up or down. Traditional routers can be enlarged, but do not scale elegantly or easily in the same way that Ethernet-based systems do.

4. Radio experience. The Axia team of management, developers and designers are, in many cases, radio industry veterans. This experience figures heavily in the design of Axia equipment —and clients like you benefit. We're also good listeners: if there's a capability or functionality that you need, we’ll work together to figure out a solution.

5. Reliability. Because Axia networks use off-the-shelf Ethernet equipment, clients with Axia studios get the benefits of the best thinking of the IT industry. The Cisco switches we recommend weren’t designed just for radio stations — they serve as critical links in hospital, banking and military systems. Frankly, they're designed to be more reliable than most traditional broadcast gear!

6. Redundancy. Ethernet is a fabulously mature technology, yet there's ongoing, active development on several fronts. An important feature of many Ethernet switches involves redundant paths and Spanning Tree Protocol. Use of these switch enhancements make it easy for an Axia system to offer several levels of redundancy and alternate pathing should the need arise.

We hope we’ve provided some insights that will be useful in your decision. Have questions or want to talk more? E-mail us anytime .

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