Hospital Radio Maidstone's engineering team help to keep the service on the air, as well as developing new technology to enhance the studios and the listening experience.

HRM has three studios at the Maidstone General Hospital - two are used for broadcasting and the other for production and off-air work.

Each studio is equipped with the following:

•  One Air 2000 mixing desk
  
•  Two CD players
  
•  Two MiniDisk players
  
•  One tape cassette machine
  
•  One computer playout system
  
•  One computer for internet access
  
•  Two microphones
  
•  Two pairs of headphones
  
•  One telephone-to-air unit
  
•  One radio clock
  
•  One television
  
•  And not forgetting - one record player.
  

HRM's music database features more than 30,000 tracks, with new and classic tracks added regularly.

Technology has defiantly played its part in our studios. Our production studio boasts Adobe Audition. This is a very powerful editing system and enables the team to produce some very interesting material.

The production team used to have a reel-to-reel tape machine and lots of glue and razor blades! Nowadays the PC has enabled a complete editing system without any blood and tears!

Our playout system is Audioenhance's DPS. This has really enabled the HRM to run 24 hours a day, with news every hour.

Every week the programme controller sets off a task on the scheduler system that picks daytime music programming. A few tweaks to ensure a constant sounding output and then the presenter adds his or her magic and daytimes on HRM are sorted.

Studio output