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Weely Roundup
Well, as the economy goes, so does the number of projects that get done. What do you do when things slow down? I like to catch up on documentation and one thing that really gets boring, inventory. I am also working on a couple of ideas that need to be researched before I make the budgetary plan. Sure it may not be for a couple of years, but it is fun to keep up and look into potential time-saving projects.
This week we had a Harris Flexstar exciter failure. Coincidentally, and if you have been following my tweets, it occurred about the same time our T-1 went down. The T-1 repair was at a B-box mid-span though AT&T testers showed it out our site. The tech dispatched showed it at the CO end. Go figure. Anyways, the XLR input board seems to have an issue on the exciter. No AES audio in the main nor the aux inputs. The analyzer says the audio is there and our axillary transmitter is on the air, but the Flexstar is not happy. My new parts should be here tomorrow. We’ll see if this is the only failure. I have a feeling I will be sending the box in for factory repair.
On the other side, I upgraded our Nautel NV20’s to version 1.3. Many of the minor things mentioned before are fixed. They even incorporated a screen saver. Some cosmetic changes makes the AUI look a bit better. One of these items is the Local/Remote button. It is not a split button and shows green on the half that is currently engaged, i.e the half that says Remote is green when in remote mode. Also fixed is the saving of profiles. The boxes will no longer put the profile being saved on the air.
Enco “fixed” their PADApult software and we are running PAD data on the older version of the Exporter. I don’t really know why the product was not compatible with the older versions as there are more out there than the the latest 4.2.
As for the Exporter 4.2, IBiquity has fixed the left/right channel swap and we await the software update from Nautel. Still have to wait for everything. Good thing HD is not that important.
DaySequerra has had our first M2.2R for over a week now. I still do not know if the fixed receiver board solves our RFI issue. When I know, you will know.
Phew. Have a good week!
Harris Flexstar
And on the other side, we had to do some network modifications while we installed the HD for the Nautels and other two stations. The bottom line is we had to configure our switches to a managed mode and take down the HD data streams to do this. The Nautel gear came back without much issue when all was done. The Flexstar did not fair as well. As it was late in the day we decided to let the HD slide until today.
What did we find: This morning I was told to listen closely to the station. I confirmed an audible tone in the audio. Before heading to the site, I confirmed that the HD stream did not recover on its own. I was able to ping the exciter. Questions popped into my head. I can ping the box, so network connectivity was good, but no stream. Interesting. Once at the site I noticed the red LED on the Flexstar indicating that something was not right with the data. We switched to the backup transmitter and confirmed the tone went away. It did. The Flexstar had degraded to the point it was generating some sort of intermodulation tone.
I rebooted the Flexstar by cycling the power. After boot, it came up and all looked good. After placing it back on the air, the tone was gone and the analog audio was good again. Very interesting. As you may guess, I am going to send a note to Harris regarding this.
Nautel vs. Harris
I really do not want to get into such a “fight”, but our IT guy and my assistant mentioned how much better our Class A simulcast sounds compared to our Class B main station. This morning we took a trip to a spot where both stations come in real well, analog and HD. We listened to one. We changed to the other. Very interesting results.
The Class A station runs the Nautel V1-D with the M50 exciter and the Class B station runs a Harris HTHD+ with a Flexstar exciter. Both have the same processing. Both are fed the same way. The only difference is the transmitters. The Nautel does NOT color the audio in any way and the station sounds really good. The Harris colors the audio, it is slightly grungy, and it seems to be lacking in fullness and apparently “missing” sounds. It is quite interesting. We intend to record our results when time permits and everything settles down on the other work.
Anyone have similar experiences? Oh, we also noticed the HD’s sound different too. To us the Nautel is more listenable than the Harris. Crazy. An exciter and transmitter should not color the audio or degrade the audio in any way, shape, or form.
Tech Notes from the Field 