DNAV Case Studies

Founded in 1948, WRSU-FM is one of the oldest college radio stations in the nation. Since its inception as WRSU-AM, the station has evolved through many styles, including oldies, top 40, and its transition in the 1980s, to the variety of sounds it is renowned for today. WRSU on-air personalities range from first-semester Rutgers freshmen to longtime alumni and community members, and all are engaged in the long-standing WRSU tradition of designing their own playlists.

WRSU boasts many shows featuring specialty programming, with Sunday devoted primarily to the sounds of world music. The station broadcasts all Rutgers football and basketball games from around the country, and is the flagship radio station of the Rutgers Womens’ Basketball team. WRSU news broadcasts a variety of news updates and issues talk shows, sending student reporters into the streets for original stories.

WRSU students now have the flexibility of using any studio as a pre-production, on-air or social media development suite. On demand integration of live athletics streaming, audio and video control are adaptable from web-based cloud control.   Equipment and workflow are now equal to those found in a commercial, major market broadcast facilities.

DNAV was chosen to offer design consulting and integration for a turn-key refresh to modernize the WRSU broadcast facility.  Room acoustics, ergonomics and future proof equipment design were key focus points . A Dante audio and video over IP network was designed from the ground up to provide efficient communication throughout the broadcast facility.  Added benefits include the ability to connect athletic facilities on campus with intelligent audio routing and IP based control.  SAS IP audio consoles and routing was chosen to provide core centralization of routing. The SAS Global Connect IP adds cloud-based routing capabilities for interconnect abilities between facilities on the local campus and remotely.

WRSU’s existing facilities were a mix of classic analog equipment.  Equipment was in poor working condition and no longer supported.  Rutgers wanted their equipment and abilities to better emulate commercial radio stations and offer more flexibility to use each studio for production, podcasting and on-air.  They wanted to use equipment that was most common for major market broadcasting.