Written by Mel Lambert in January 2003

National Public Radio, headquartered in Washington DC, should need little introduction. Established in 1970, NPR has grown during the past three decades to become a well-respected multimedia outlet employing more than 700 reporters, producers, editors, on-line and administrative staff. Today, NPR programming airs on 709 radio stations operated by close to 300 member organizations. At a time when many news companies are reducing operations, NPR News has expanded and today extends over foreign and domestic bureaus.
   NPR is renowned for journalistic excellence and standard-setting news and entertainment programming. A nonprofit organization, NPR serves a growing audience of nearly 27 million Americans each week. Cable, satellite and short-wave services make NPR programming accessible anywhere in the world. But an important part of the jigsaw was missing until earlier this year. NPR lacked a substantial presence on the West Coast. "Given the importance of the West Coast as a news source," offers Bud Aiello, NPR's Director of Engineering Technology, "we realized that a full-service facility was required within the Los Angeles area," to provide enhanced coverage of the western United States and Pacific Rim.
   After a search of available premises, a building was located in Culver City, just south of Los Angeles, in a space that recently housed an Internet video production and teleconferencing firm, complete with production suites, support systems and technical build-out. The presence of an existing technical infrastructure that included a high-power UPS, large-capacity AC, generator transfer switch, a central facilities room and provision for satellite dishes dramatically streamlined the conversion for radio production.
   "Because this building already offered a number of areas that we could modify for production and broadcasting," Aiello recalls, "we could save a large mount of money, compared to taking an existing space and converting it to our needs." The 25,000 square foot facility is the first large-scale production center NPR has established outside of Washington, DC. Eventually, NPR West will house a staff of 90, including NPR's Los Angeles News bureau. It opened officially on November 2, 2002, just in time for coast-to-coast coverage of the fall elections. Special series designed to showcase the new location included one on California's Central Valley, and another profiling individuals that exemplify the West. In addition, the facility plays host to "The Tavis Smiley Show," and other new programs. Reported cost for the NPR West project, including the $8 million purchase of land and a two-building facility, was $13 million.
   As NPR's second-largest facility, NPR West also provides backup to the network, which produces, acquires and distributes some 120 hours a week of programming to stations around the U.S. "September 11th made it apparent in a very urgent way that we need another facility that could keep NPR going if something devastating happens in Washington," says Jay Kernis, NPR's Senior VP for programming.

Flexible Networked Production and On-Air Studios

News Production 1

The new complex comprises five self-contained production suites plus two on-air studios with companion control rooms. A central Technical Center links all of the areas together via control and audio data networks between the production/on-air areas and central equipment rooms, and provides access to incoming and outgoing satellite and related circuits to NPR's Washington DC production center and other locations as necessary. Architects for the conversion project was studio bau:ton - architecture principal Peter Grueneisen serving as lead architect/acoustical designer, and Charles Irving as project manager - working closely with TGS Inc., a Virginia-based system designer and integrator. (A 40-by-40-foot area with associated control room is currently under consideration for use as a large recording studio or video production stage.)
   In terms of selecting production equipment for the new facility, NPR went with what it knew. At both its Washington HQ and the New York studios, networked hard-disk editors and asset-management systems from Dalet Digital Media Systems had been specified. A Klotz VADIS II Audio Network was also selected, with a variety of control surfaces tailored to the specific needs of each production and on-air studio, to match hardware installed in DC. "Our experience with these vendors has been very good, "Aiello says. NPR also wanted to ensure operational and technical compatibility between Washington and Los Angeles, so that staff can move freely between these locations and also to allow remote control of critical functions.
   As Aiello explains, Washington might need to take in stories from Los Angeles without an engineer being on-call. "A reporter will be able to enter [NPR West's] Production 4 or 5 and have an technician in DC handle the interconnect from 3,000 miles way." High-speed DS3-level connections to Washington will provide wide area networking of the Dalet playback and Klotz routing systems, in addition to enabling real-time digital audio transfers. "A total of nine MPEG Layer-2 [data-compression] codecs operating at 384 kbits connect [NPR West] to Washington," Aiello explains. "Codecs one thru four are normalled to the stereo outputs from the main on-air studios A, B and C [A is currently under consideration] plus the Tech Center. The remaining five ports are used for various mono/stereo feeds." At the Washington DC facility the outputs from NPR West's Studios and Technical Center appear as dedicated inputs on the Routing Switcher, for direct access by the facility's various production areas and satellite distribution network.
   The use of close to 60 Dalet workstations for audio recording, playback and asset management, plus eight Klotz digital consoles for level control and routing, dramatically streamlines the networking process. Dalet playback ports are normalled digitally to Klotz inputs, while outputs are routed to recorder inputs; various system topologies have been developed to let radio journalists run the five Production Suites by themselves, while conventional operators are used in the large-format studios. But for added flexibility, microphone and playback sources in the Production Suite 4 adjoining one of the main air studio can be routed to the latter's control room's console surface; a glass window between the two rooms provides visual communications for engineering staff and producers.
   "We designed the five Production Suites so that reporters and producers could handle everything from a central, self-contained location," Aiello explains. "Suites #4 and #5 are slightly different since they also house a Telos Zephyr system that can feed material directly to Washington, for example, via a [bidirectional] ISDN network connection. In this way we can also go live to the [NPR] network from any of these rooms, if necessary."

Assignable Digital Control Surfaces

News Production 4 and Studio B

NPR West's Klotz digital mixing engines comprise a series of DCII Control Surfaces linked via high-speed Ethernet local area networks connected to VADIS (Variable Audio Distribution Interface System) processing cores and routers located in a number of technical areas throughout the complex. According to Karl Schoning, Klotz' Director of Engineering, "the DCII [controller] can be supplied with up to 56 moving faders; each individual assignable channel strip contains a level fader, pan (with use-selectable profiles), mute and optional EQ and/or dynamics." A/B source selection plus eight programmable buttons are also provided per module, while real-time EQ/dynamics displays are accessed via the system's LCD screens.
   "NPR West's central mainframe houses the VADIS 880 DSP controller/router that handles assignment of the control surface's various shaft encoders and programmable switches," Schoning adds. The system is configured with a number of mic pre-amps, analog inputs, AES-EBU and S/P-DIF digital inputs, MADI, ADAT optical, RS232/422 serial control and other ports.
   "By creating a two-layered system in VADIS we have separated audio from control," stresses Klotz Project Leader Jonathan Burtner, allowing the routing of logic/machine control information, audio signals, serial information, program-associated data information and digital sync while eliminating approximately 90% of traditional inter-room cabling. "And our TDM [time division multiplex technology] has allowed us to design a system with scaleable DSP that results in an unlimited bus structure."
   Instead of traditional crosspoint switching, the VADIS AudioMedia router's TDM-based switching allows the system to route 256 channels of audio per VADIS frame; an unlimited number of frames may be interconnected simultaneously via a high-speed fiber optic network. "Our patented software allows VADIS frames to 'speak' [to an another] via the TDM bus," Burtner explains, "allowing the addition of as many VADIS frames as needed by the client." While audio is distributed from one VADIS frame to another via fiber optic cables, logic/machine control information travels over a closed Ethernet-based LAN between individual consoles so that operators can create a customized logic-control topology. VADIS frames and controller engines can be located remotely or in the same room as the DCII surface, or both, depending on user's requirements. VADIS' unique combination of TDM and fiber optics means that an unlimited number of virtual control surfaces can be connected to the system.

Klotz VARDIS router racks

   The universal VADIS 880 mainframe accepts a variety of audio, data and DSP modules without limitation to inputs or outputs. All VADIS frames can act as a master digital audio sync, but can also slave to external house-clock references, including an nVision NS-5500 Universal Sync Generator that was supplied to NPR West. The frame comes standard with a dual fail-safe power supply and dual redundant digital audio sync modules.
   NPR West's five Production Suites each feature four-fader VADIS DCII console surfaces, while the two On-Air Studios and Technical Center were supplied short-loaded with 20-fader surfaces, and hence room for expansion. Any source connected to any console surface can appear on any fader; entire console setups of sources, mix-minus, dynamics, EQ, bus assignments, and so on can be recalled at the push of a button. Typical mixer layouts provide source selection per fader, or several fader channels connected to the external router. TFT screens in each room display system settings plus graphics for EQ/dynamics parameters. Each DCII can address four stereo output buses - PGM, AUD, UTL and Mix-Minus - plus various mix-minus DSP options, each with an individual talkback features and stereo/mono configuration.
   "Because of the VADIS system's distributed processing and closed LAN topology," says Greg Mensching, former Klotz Digital Sales Engineer and system/technical designer for the NPR project, "there are no slaves and masters as such. Any console surface, in theory, can control any processing element anywhere in the building or, with access to the LA-to-DC wide area network, anywhere in the NPR system. Integrating consoles, audio routers, logic-follow capabilities and distribution of digital audio sync can be a formidable proposition; VADIS networking is designed to dramatically streamline that process for NPR West."

Networked Digital Audio Workstations and Editing Systems

Technical Center/Master Control

As with NPR's New York and Washington facilities, NPR West features Dalet Digital Media Systems editing workstations, along with several high-capacity digital audio servers. The Dalet 5.1 Advanced Pro System comprises an array of 55 workstations connected via a 100-megabit Ethernet LAN to five servers that communicate with central hard drives via a high-speed fiber-channel topology. (NPR has also installed 280 Dalet workstations throughout its main Washington DC facilities.)
   According to Ken Tankel, Dalet's North-East Sales Manager, "The system provides real-time sharing of all digitized media files that NPR [journalists and producers] generate for their programs. For high demand systems, requiring a terabyte of more of storage, we specify IBM Series Fast-T 500 storage [arrays that] are configured in RAID-5 topology to ensure instant recover from any hardware failure," linked Windows-based PCs for desktop editing and programming. A dual-loop fiber channel connection to each or the arrayed hard drives also provides additional network redundancy. A total of 5 Terabyte of digitized audio and metadata can be stored in the NPR West facility. "This is not the largest Dalet server array [being used by] a radio customer," Tankel concedes. "XM Satellite Radio, for example, which provides 100 channels of [US satellite delivery programming], features 28 Terabytes of data - some 1.8 million songs - shared by a total of 350 workstations."
   Dalet's 5.1 Advanced Pro System uses a client/server architecture to provides real-time audio playback at any of the networked workstations, reading/writing audio files directly to NT/2000-based servers arrayed on a TCP/IP-driven LAN. Dalet's media asset management system provides an integrated digital audio environment for recording, editing, and storing audio, plus log creation and automated/live playback. All of NPR West's production studios, voice-over rooms, news preparation areas, producer areas and central control rooms are networked through the media asset management system. Since industry-standard TCP/IP and FTP protocols are used for most data transport within the network, and to/from external sources, the architecture does not rely on a proprietary, potentially unreliable operating system.
   Sybase SQL Professional ASE or Microsoft SQL serves as the database for digital audio files and asset management; a single database references audio, text, multimedia files and other program-associated data associated with these files. The Dalet system can edit and play out linear PCM, MPEG-Layer 2 and MPEG-Layer 3 data-compressed files, in stereo or mono, interchangeably.
   "Our editing software handles eight stereo tracks simultaneously," Tankel considers, "and eliminates multiple transcodings. The Dalet editing software generates EDLs that are executed when a 'project' is saved. The EDL is executed on the MPEG files in dedicated DSP or using the workstation's CPU." Transcodings only occur if the finished format is different from any of the formats in the project.
   Various software components handle specific functions within the Dalet server and workstation network. For example, manual recording, automated recording, two-, four- and eight-track editing, manual and automated play out are all modules that can appear on the desktop. A flexible user rights management system allows user access to specific tools and desktop environment to tailored specific needs and skills.

Studio Design and Modified Acoustics
According to studio bau:ton's Peter Grueneisen, "[NPR's] architectural plan calls for serious acoustical improvements, which were accomplished with floating floors and new, heavy room shells in the two larger studios and with isolation cuts in the slab around the smaller rooms. Although the layout of the building did not need substantial changes, the rooms essentially had to be rebuilt." To provide enhanced sound isolation within the three edit suites and pair of production areas, modular, prefabricated broadcast booths from Wenger Corporation were assembled inside the existing areas. The self-sealing Wenger rooms can be installed in a studio without fasteners, caulking or permanent attachments to a building structure.
   "For the larger control rooms and on-air studios," offers studio bau:ton's Project Manager, Charles Irving, "we decided to raise and float the concrete slabs. For acoustical room treatments we used three products that were selected for their economy not only as material, but also for ease of installation. On the walls we used a combination of Bonded Acoustical Fabric Pad (BAFP), which is a fiberglass-free material produced from recycled cotton rag, and Porous Expanded Polypropylene panels (PEPP). These panels were either bonded directly to the gypsum board surfaces or, where we needed to cover acoustic wall and ceiling cavities, we employed a system of wire-mesh backing or exposed wood battens. On the ceilings we specified a combination of PEPP and Sonex, utilizing using similar attachment methods." Acoustical Surfaces, Inc. supplied the BAFP and PEPP products plus Sonex. Systems integrator TGS Inc. supplied the various studio desks and control room furniture.
   "NPR West is the one of the most significant developments in NPR's capacity to provide programming services to stations and listeners in the past two decades," says Kevin Klose, NPR's president and CEO. "Years of thoughtful analysis, months of careful site selection and detailed facility planning have gone into NPR West. This means a huge expansion in our capacity to bring timely, comprehensive news of the West to our national newsmagazines, newscasts and cultural programming. The unique sounds and energies of this storied region and its people will be heard in lively new ways from NPR West."

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