Hello all, newbie here from across the water. What are my options for a studio to TX link. Distance about 8 miles. I was thinking of using 2.4ghz video senders but am curious what the audio will sound like. Was also looking at a 5.8ghz set up but again I am not so sure what the audio will be like. Will such systems carry stereo and RDS, I dont want to have this equipment at the tx site? I would like to get out of it for little money but would like decent sound. Thanks.
Those vid senders are terrible. We were lucky to get 50 metres clear with "legal limit" ones we sold retail.
You may wish to checkout hacking a Panasonic "Gigarange" cordless phone with DSS. With external antennas, they can kick butt for a few kilometers. 8 miles might be a stretch though.
Well the site is well up high and the studio is on the edge of the city so line of sight is pretty clear (with a 20/30ft mast). With the 2.4ghz I would of course be using yagis (15 to 25db gain) and a 500mw\1w amp If I had to. Its more the quality of the audio I am concerned about. Got a price on a 5.8ghz but its a bit pricey for the present budget. Like I dont want to run everything through a nice processor if its gonna sound bad after going through the video sender.
Well there is always the option of using the internet to link your audio if you have a high speed connection at both places. Shoutcast allows you to setup a private connection to send audio at good quality and it's free. With a UHF link you are going to need antennas with some really good gain to get that signal out 8 miles and they need to be really high up in the air. Now if you were just looking for mono AM link I could think of a ton of ideas but Stereo Transmittion Links are hard to acquire on a low budget. Using high speed DSL is the way to go if you have the ability as it can't be traced to the studio if setup correctly. Even UHF links can be tracked if that's an issue. If it's just a matter of a remote transmitter site and you're not worried about the feds you could use another stereo FM transmitter tuned below the regular FM band, say 70-80mhz and a good receiver at your transmitter site to pick up the off band frequency.
I had thought of shoutcast, and would be quite happy to use it but we dont have net access up there, and trying to send wireless up there too will just add to the cost. The 5.8ghz is about 960usd, havent worked that out in euro yet. Im not too sure about the 70 -80 mhz as I havent a clue whats on them here, I would have to look into it.
Well for 960$ you should be able to get a used STL receiver and transmitter if you really look around hard enough and have a bit of luck. I used a dollar to euro online calculator and 960$ US is around 672 Eur.
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