Fairfield University Construction Project
WVOF 88.5-FM

Faifield University built a new Student Activity Center last year and to compliment the new center, it spent $100,000 on new studios to replace a very aged, worn facility across campus.

The project began in late December 2001 and has just about reached completion this week. Let's take a tour...

This page is a work-in-progress. More photos will be added over the next few days. Please check often for new content.

An early view of the WVOF main studio, which looks out onto main lobby of the Student Activity Center.

Here is another shot taken with our Sony DCR-VX2000 video camera.

A closer look and the control room operator station.

Closup shot of The board in Master Control (taken with VX2000).

Twin Stanton turntables hide neatly beneath the countertop. Note the custom furniture work here.

The Production Studio turntables. We used Stanton turntables here, which have peculiar requirements for remote start/stop, requiring us to install some glue logic to make it work with open collector momentary logic from the Audio Arts R60-18.

We started in the Production studio and built up to a functional level in a couple of weeks. Custom furniture was provided by a contractor. The phone system utilizes Gentner's new digital hybrid, resulting in superb caller audio. Audio Arts R60-18 boards were employed throughout. Three boards were purchased for the project, for three studios, Air, Production and Training/Webcast.

Production Studio, with Mac G4 and ProTools installed (VX2000 frame shot).

Here is a wider view of Production's left and right turrets. Two cassette decks, two of Sony's new single-rack unit minidisc recorders and the profanity delay/dump panel remote occupy the left. At right, two CD players and one CD recorder complete the local program sources. A Macintosh G4 computer was ordered and due to be installed shortly in this studio. This was a choice made by the students and university decision-makers.

Closeup of the left/right turrets in Production.

The Training/Webcast studio. Note the Mac G4 already installed here. Equipment compliment is pretty similar from room to room. Speaking of which, the contractor built these rooms for 60dB of sound isolation. No stone left unturned, no shortcuts taken. We ordered quality hardware, furniture and building specifications for the physical location itself.

A closer view of the core of Training/Webcast Studio.

In the air studio, down the hall, the central rack is located. The modulation monitors, EAS, Profanity Delay Unit and studio selector switch reside here, along with additional limiters for the webcasting audio feed and the fiber optic converter for the internet audio feed. I once again went with M66 punch blocks, although I have begun looking into a British-made interconnect system called Krone. We didn't have enough time to deviate from tried- and- true methods, so the 66-blocks prevailed.

WVOF main control rack, wide shot (taken with VX2000).

Inside the meter bridge of the R60-18 console. The circuit board to the right is my home brew distribution circuit which provides output from the audition buss to feed multiple recording devices. Since we had a real budget to work with, I took the time to prepare and dress all wiring with shrink tubing and pre-soldiered lead ends.