WMSR Studio Construction
In July and August 1998, KK Broadcast Engineering built new studios for WMSR-FM in Florence, Alabama. The new facility consisted of an Air Studio, Production Studio, Equipment/Distribution Room and associated offices built in a totally renovated office complex in downtown Florence. This facility is the nicest setup that KK Broadcast Engineering has installed to date. All new equipment was purchased (although some of it arrive beat to #$%@). This facility has a unique feature in that the 160ft STL tower actually comes down thru the building thru a hole in the roof and all guy anchor points are attached to the building itself with steel mounts tied into the steel roof trusses. American Towers and the building owners engineered and installed the tower and hardware. The tower sits on a concrete foundation surrounded by drains for rain water that comes thru the hole in the roof. It sounds weird and I wasn't really sure how well it would work, but it has proven sturdy and makes access to the roof mounted dishes easier.
Air studio with bare sheet rock walls.
All studio walls are 6 in thick w 6 in insulation. This image is
looking thru the window into the business portion of the building.
All Windows are double paned and all doors in the studio area are solid
wood/composite with felt seals around the perimeter. The owners at
times were more interested in aesthetics than acoustics hence the hardwood
floor and exposed brick wall on two sides of the studio.
Shelton hanging 3 inch acoustic foam. The smile on his face is due to a steady dose of adhesive fumes. All acoustic foam was beveled at exposed edges and cut on angle in corners for a "finished" appearance.
Yes, the exposed brick is a bit unusual in an air studio (to say the
least) but it has surprisingly good acoustic value. The acoustics
in this studio are very good despite the hardwood flooring and only 2 walls
having acoustic foam.
My dear wife Connie making up Cannon plugs for the Auditronic consoles. She built all of the input and output snakes and did most of the punch down work in the studios and distribution room. If she ever comes to this page and sees that I have put a picture of her here without HER makeup on... KK Broadcast Engineering will be a female owned business from then on. I hope to survive.
The enclosure seen in the top of this picture is equipment racks for accessable equipment. CD players, Cassette player, EAS etc is mounted in his space. A secondary rack area can be seen to the far left under the console top. This area housed mic processors, telephone hybrids, automation computers and monitor amps.
The 2 images above show the damage caused when FedEx either dropped
the air console or hit it with a forklift fork. After a prolonged
discussion (argument) Auditronic's sent a field tech from Memphis to replace
the main frame on site.
The Production Room is quite small but is very very dead accosticaly.
It has 3 inch accostic foam on all 4 walls and a hardwood floor.
The small rack seen here houses all electronics for the production room
except the computers. All computers (Enco, SAW, and DCS) are housed
in the cabinet at the bottom left.
If the previous picture of Connie doesn't get me killed... this one will. She was under the Production room console punching down the interconnect cables from distribution. It was only about 100 degrees in the building on this particular occasion.
This room became the distribution room eventually. The wooden panel at the back right was an old window that had been covered. It became the mounting point for punch blocks carrying signals to each studio and the distribution rack.
Connie again.
She did a wonderful job on everything that I needed her to do.
The Enco Server with shipping damage. The harddrive mount on the left hand side was broken loose and flopping around loose in the case. Enco reloaded software and music onto a new drive and sent a complete server. The packing was quite secure on all of the damage equipment but the shipping companies incompetence exceeded the protection of the shipping materials.
Distribution rack in place. It now contains the Enco server, satellite
receivers, Orban processor, Aphex Compellor, monitor receivers and STL
equipment.
Upon seeing the mass of the new equipment, we were wondering if all
of the equipment would actually fit into the space as designed. It
did.
