Axia, Wheatstone, or...what?

[spinjector]

Hi all,

It's time our facility started looking for new consoles. One of our consoles just went legs up; it's going in for repair, and may be permanently dead. We have a cluster with 7 air studios, 3 talk studios, 2 news booths, 6 production studios, and 10 news/edit cubicles. Not to mention 44 satellite receive channels, 10 ISDN's, 4 Hotlines, 6 RPU receivers, and gobs of other stuff like dial-up couplers and subcarriers on our FM's. Oh yea - and now all the HD channels too... I would like to go with an IP based system so we can put everything onto the wire, all the inputs, all the ouputs, even our live trucks via LAN bridges.

Right now we have a Sierra 32000 router, and a 64000 router that is a) "kinda" maxed out, and b) unfortunately configured incorrectly by Harris when it was installed. In fairness, I should say this might be from incorrect directions from a previous CE here. If we wanted to spend $20,000 to install the correct modules and fix the configuration problem, we could un-kinda-max-it-out and gain 64 more outputs, but why spend that kind of money when our consoles are at the ends of their collective lives anyways..?

So...

That brings me to my questions:

Who has Axia? Do you like it? Love it? Hate it?

Who has the Wheatstone system? Same questions...

Are there any other radio-oriented systems that I am not aware of?

Can anyone suggest any good solid questions I need to ask?

Right now I have just started looking at Axia, and I think it's a damn slick system. But Wheatstone seems to be pushing heavy to say theirs is "economical", and when comparing prices I tend to agree. However I am completely sold on the Telos/Axia technical support service. Telos support for our Zephyrs has been OUTSTANDING every time I have called. Their cup runneth over, and has poured into ours many times. They've even sent us spare parts for FREE on occasion (but just little ones <g>). So just on the support angle, I am leaning towards Axia.

If anyone could fire me back some good suggestions, I would be grateful.

Thanks.

 

[littlejohn]

The Wheatstones work real well and are quite flexible. Support is excellent. Initial wiring and configuration is ESSENTIAL. Actually, it is so on any of the systems.
SAS offers the Rubicon which runs off the SAS routers, just as the Wheatstone surfaces run off the Wheatstone routers. The initial Rubicons would go silent if the connection to the worksurface was lost, I understand their software has been massaged to behave like the Wheatstone, everything stays as it was if the worksurface connection is lost.
The Axia product is intriguiging - we evaluated it along with the Wheatstone and the Rubicon/SAS product. One person I spoke with using it said he felt it needed a bit of work yet to be ready for major markets. I've no personal experience with it other than demoing... we felt the worksurfaces themselves looked less than robust. They probably hold up quite well, they just don't look like they're going to.
We rejected the SAS product because of the cost to expand in our situation. Somehow, every room ended up with only one slot open in the local chassis, after which you have to buy another complete chassis at substantial bucks. Might not be your circumstance. The Rubicon surface is actually the most robust looking of the Big Three.
Do as we did - have each vendor supply you a worksurface and ancilliary stuff to beat on for a week, and see how you like them.

 

[spinjector]

Thanks, Littlejohn. That's exactly some of the info I've been searching for. I will do as you suggest.

Anyone else..?