We (Wayland Radio) are now at a stage where it would be useful to inject IRN/SKY news into our automated overnight/unattended TX. However, and there's always a however, I'm finding it really difficult to find an 'off-the-shelf' audio switcher to take a simple control command from the PCI1750 card to inject the audio into our TX chain.



This might be because I'm being picky... We use a Sonifiex RB-OA3 studio switcher, it works very well for us but it has a unique feature that allows an external source to be directly injected into a '9 pin D-Type' on the rear of the unit and this is where the 'however' comes in, again. For this input to work correctly and maintain optimum performance it requires a couple of contacts on the socket to be shorted when the socket is not in used to inject audio, so as not to reduce the units performance by 3db.



I'm after a switch (relay/solid state) that when activated removes the 'short' and feeds audio to this socket then 'shorts' the pins to maintain quality when no audio is present. This is not just a case of shorting the audio inputs, but shorting between on leg of the audio and, I believe, the ground on the switcher.



I did ask Sonifex at the last SBES (2008) if they intended to make a box to do this operation and they don't (currently) but would investigate the possibility, in fact I think I might have been the first person to ask about this as an option.



Any suggestions from the team here...



I'm not looking for a complex solution but a simple 19" rack mount box option with pair of XLR3 inputs and '9 pin D-Type' output and '25 pin D-tpye' control plug for the PCI1750 to connect to and an internal power supply with IEC power input.



This unit would then sit in the rack, connected to our Myriad automation PCs control card, IRN/SKY News would be feed to the unit from a dedicate pair of balanced inputs for the News DA all interconnected to the Sonifex Switch via the 'D-Tpye'.



I look forward to the comments.



Roger.

Roger Woods
Producer/Presenter/Engineer