Where is PodSqod and Studio1A?
High atop Downtown Orlando.

Sound Re-inforcement
70% Auralex Tile and Auralex ceiling/back refractors

Lighting
Cool-Flo 3-point lighting with soft boxes - 2100 watts total, video and chroma-key ready

Broadcast Surface
A commercial 7′ custom built surface holds a KRK 8 RU rack and operator equipment. A Mika mic boom with 17″ riser and MSS support our touch-screen monitor systems. Four Heil risers for the PL-2T spring-steel microphone booms are available for guests.

The Mics
Studio1A maintains a Neumann TLM-49, Heil PR-40’s, Sennheiser MD-46 and 900 Series, a Neumann BCM-705, Sennheiser MKH416T, MXL V69 Mogami and 76t valves, Electro-Voice RE-20 and RE-27, Shure SM-7B, Shure SM-57, Rode Broadcaster and a constant influx of demonstration mics that flow through the studio from Telefunken, Neumann, Rode, Blue and many others.

Processing Room
4 - Aphex 230 valve vocal strips give the mics first-line preamplification, processing, gating, compression, de-essing and a bit of “Big Bottom” sound along with an Aural Exciter. The vocal strips outputs are wired directly to line-level faders on the Wheatstone R55e radio on-air console. The processing room rack houses the Aphex 230’s, Aphex 204 and Aphex 2020MkIII Broadcast Processor along with the Wheatstone console power supply unit.

The Path
From the output of the Wheatstone R55e console, the audio path goes to an Aphex 2020MkIII FM Broadcast processor sidechained with an Aphex 204 Aural Exciter. Audio metering is provided by THX certified Dorrough peak-reading loudness meters and Coleman Quad analog VU meters that deliver before and after processing levels. The leveled and processed output of the Aphex 2020 is sent directly to the line input of the Presonus FirePod. The Presonus FirePod is where the audio is last seen as analog and is time synced via an internal clock and converted to Firewire400 on a Dell XPS 600 running dual 19″ displays. Dual Dell Dimension E310’s with touch panels act as cart machines. The virtual carts are fired using BSI WaveCart 4.0 and remote triggering punched to the Wheatstone consoles start/stop logic. Depending on the job, 1 of the Dell XPS machines record real-time ’shows’ using Audions Podcast Station or Adobe Audition 2.0 if multi-track is needed.

The Servers
Dual Dell XPS600’s with hardware RAID and disk mirroring act as the recording heart of Studio1A. A PowerMac Dual-Core G5 with 4GB of RAM and 1.2 Terabytes total disk storage is used for audio production. “Audio” hard drives include a sound-dampened Glyph Technologies 050Q.

POTS for Call-In Show and Studio Interviews
A rack mounted Telos One digital hybrid rides on the SuperPhone module of the Wheatstone for live telephone interviews via the Studio or Toll-Free Interview lines. Comrex IP point-point are being implemented for high-quality, low-latency studio-studio interviews.

Software
Adobe Audition 2.0, Podcast Station, Sony Sound Forge 8.0, ProTools LE, Bias Peak Pro and Acoustica MixCraft 3.0 are available depending on the project and operating system.

Digital Mastering
Most digital mastering is sampled to the RAID array at 44.1Khz encoded as Broadcast WAV. Non-computer mastering is handled by an Alesis MasterLink 9600, Tascam DV-RA1000 along with Panasonic SV-3700 and SV-3800 DAT recorders. If a more portable mastering solution is needed, a Marantz PMD-660 and CDR-420 are available for field recording directly to CompactFlash with their pro XLR, Phantom-ready connections. Stealth field recording is available using a Zoom H4 micro-recorder and stereo X-Y microphones.

Analog Mastering
If the analog touch is needed, we use the Teac A-4300 reel-to-reel or the Mastering Tascam 22-2 1/4″ reel-to-reel at 15ips using Quantegy 456 and Ampex NOS tape.

Audio Cabling
Studio1AProductions uses Gotham Audio and Neutrik connectors exclusively for both broadcast and post-production studios analog interconnects.

Thanks for taking a tour of Studio 1A and being a part of PodSqod.
…and remember, the fun part is that the Studio is always undergoing development

Best,
MarkJensen
Studio1AProductions, LLC