Remote Radio Studios with RƎLAY and a Portable Power Core
Australia is enormous, and the gaps between capital cities and regional towns make conventional studio-only workflows inefficient. A producer in Perth can struggle to reach a host in Cairns without hours of travel, and regional stations from Tamworth to Broome have long relied on ad-hoc ISDN or expensive fibre links to bring talent on air. Distributed audio over IP changes that equation entirely, and a kit built around the portable Power Core node plus Lawo's RƎLAY virtual radio tools allows an entire on-air studio to live in a couple of Pelican cases.
For broadcasters serving the Australian market, this approach lines up with how the industry already thinks. The ABC's regional hubs, community stations along the Murray, and commercial networks like ARN and SCA have all been experimenting with remote contribution. A small-footprint, software-driven setup removes the need for a dedicated control room and lets presenters work from home studios, hotel rooms, or pop-up broadcast booths at country music festivals.
Why Australian broadcasters are embracing remote setups
The tyranny of distance has always shaped Australian media, from the outback telegraph stations of the 1800s to today's digital networks. Modern presenters no longer want to commute to a city CBD building for every shift, particularly when NBN speeds in metro areas are now sufficient to carry uncompressed AES67 audio with low jitter. A remote studio built around Power Core and RƎLAY lets a network hire talent from Broome to Brisbane without relocating anyone to Sydney.
Regulatory and commercial realities also play a role. ACMA licensing requires that radio signals meet certain technical standards, and a properly engineered IP workflow can be more compliant than a hastily assembled remote link. Studios can monitor loudness, true-peak, and phase remotely, ensuring broadcasts remain within the parameters set by the Broadcasting Services Act. The VisTool studio software interface gives engineers a clear picture of every meter, fader, and routing matrix without being on-site.
Power Core in a compact touring format
Power Core is normally a 1RU studio engine, but the portable touring variant strips the chassis to the essentials while retaining the same DSP and I/O count. It still handles 64 channels of AES67, MADI, and analogue I/O, plus onboard auto-mixing and processing. For an Australian broadcaster, that means the same mixing brain powers a Sydney main studio and a pop-up booth at the Tamworth Country Music Festival or the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
The hardware includes dual redundant network interfaces, which matters when you are streaming from a regional area where the local exchange is fed by a single fibre span. The unit can be powered from 12V DC, which is a blessing at remote sites where only generator power is available, such as a mine site outside Kalgoorlie. Engineers will appreciate that the same firmware that runs a fixed installation also runs the touring unit, so configurations transfer cleanly between sites.
RƎLAY as a browser-based mixing surface
RƎLAY turns any modern browser into a fully functional mixing console, which is ideal for talent working remotely. Presenters do not need to download or install software; they simply log in via a URL, and their preferred surface layout loads. This makes it perfect for the casual contributor who fires up a session from a loungeroom in Adelaide or a hotel in Darwin.
The software supports multitouch, so a presenter using a Microsoft Surface or an iPad can pinch, swipe, and route audio without a mouse. Latency over an Australian fibre or NBN link stays well under the threshold where round-trip delay becomes noticeable. Engineers can also dial in remotely to adjust EQ, apply dynamics, or switch between sources without travelling. Because RƎLAY is built on standard web technologies, it works on Chromebooks too, which are popular in budget-driven regional stations.
Cabling, clocking and network policy
| Connection type | Best use case | Australian suitability |
|---|---|---|
| NBN FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) | Primary link in metro areas | Reliable in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane; limited in remote areas |
| 4G/5G mobile | Backup or primary in regional towns | Decent in regional NSW, patchy in the Kimberley |
| Starlink or LEO satellite | Remote outback sites | Useful for mining camps and remote community radio |
| Studio-grade fibre | High-traffic permanent links | Available in capital city carrier hotels |
Network choice has a real impact on the kind of broadcast quality you can sustain. Studios based in regional towns like Ballarat often have a stable NBN FTTC connection, while broadcasters covering a Big Day Out-style festival in the bush might rely on bonded 4G. Power Core handles PTPv2 grandmaster clocking internally, so a single time reference keeps the whole RƎLAY network phase-locked across time zones from Perth to the east coast.
Step-by-step configuration workflow
Start by racking the Power Core touring unit with a small managed switch, a router, and a redundant UPS sized for Australian summer heat. Connect analogue mic inputs for talent, MADI for any external playback, and AES67 to the network. Set a static IP within your studio's subnet and configure the PTP grandmaster priority before powering anything else.
Next, register RƎLAY users through the partner authentication gateway and grant each presenter appropriate permissions. Most Australian presenters like to see their own headphone mix clearly, so set up a personal IFB channel mapped to a hardware fader on their browser surface. Use techkorr.com for sourcing ruggedised cases and reliable field cabling, since touring kit takes a beating at events.
Finally, schedule a quiet hour to test the full signal path from microphone to transmitter, including loudness metering and failover to the secondary network path. Document every step in your station's run sheet so the weekend announcer can troubleshoot if a fan fails in the rack and no engineer is on call.
Day-to-day operation and maintenance
A distributed workflow needs consistent housekeeping. Schedule firmware updates during off-peak hours, particularly given the time zones from Perth to Sydney mean there is a sweet spot in the early morning when no station is on air. Keep spare SFP modules and a backup router in the rack, because regional freight to a remote site can take days when something breaks. Log every change in the station's maintenance register so the next engineer inherits a clean history. For broader content strategy, broadcasters producing podcasts or live event streams might want to look at how the same infrastructure handles gaming tournaments, sports coverage, and other live broadcasts, and the Lawo insights library explores exactly that kind of diversification across markets.
A remote studio built around RƎLAY and a portable Power Core node is a competitive workflow for Australian broadcasters rather than a compromise. The combination delivers full broadcast quality without the overhead of a fixed facility, and it lets talent work from wherever the story is happening. Plan the network carefully, keep the gear rugged, and the rest of the operation falls into place.
