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This is the
Ampex section/room. The
Ampex players played back pre-taped programs
delivered to us from studios in Washington, New York, or
from our main operation in Munich, Germany. From the
ampex room, programes
were then fed to the master control console and, from
there, to designated transmitter(s). In the beginning,
nearly all programs
were recorded on magnetic tapes, arrived by plane in
Barcelona, and were then fetched by drivers who brought them
to us. Sometimes, the tapes
were recorded via telephone line in the Telefonica's
building in Barcelona
from Munich to obtain the least possible noise, using
very special lines in those years. Unfortunately, the
quality was very poor, even when using the special phone
lines available in the end of
60s or beginning 70s. The main problem was cross-talk
where often phone operator voices could be heard mixed with
our own programs. Next to this room was a little recording
studio designed for use in emergencies if ever our outside
programming sources
were cut off for any reason. At the start of the 80s,
we obtained higher quality program phone lines called
musical and command lines, originating them in Munich
studios and terminating at our station. Problems with noise,
etc. did not disappear, but the improvement was significant.
It was not until we converted to
use of satellite feeds in 1985 that problems with
noise and crosstalk ceased. The programs
were broadcasted in seventeen languages: Uzbek,
Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian,
Lithuan, Estonian,
Tajik, Latvian, Kazakh,
Kyrgyz and
Tatar-bashkir and other, but these were the habitual
ones. Satellite service
was first obtained through the Spanish phone company,
but in 1991, RFE/RL obtained its own
"bird". In 1993, our skilled technicians converted
the
Ampex room to a fully computer-operated operation,
eliminating the need for any technicians there. The name
of
Ampex room comes due to the brand of the tape players.
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