Studio Hawk reports problems via e-mail (above) and text messaging.

In my application, I have set my Studio Hawk to log silence periods lasting longer than 10 seconds and to send the group e-mail and text messages for silences longer than 30 seconds. If the silence continues longer than say, 5 minutes, another salvo of e-mail and text messages are sent. Thereafter, every 5 minutes, messages are resent until the silence is corrected or the maximum amount of attempts you set in the program are made. The beautiful aspect of this is not lost when you are at dinner with the wife and family. You can discreetly look at your cell phone's text message notifying you of the problem. If you don't get any further messages you can safely assume the problem has corrected itself and you can check it out later at your convenience. Customized ring tones for your alerts can be added to most cell phones that will let you know before you look down that the Studio Hawk has sent you a message.

Several versions of the Hawk and now the Studio Hawk have been an indispensible safety net for our operations in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa for several years now. I feel comfortable enough to “disengage” from constant monitoring knowing the Studio Hawk will alert me the minute any one of our stations has an audio problem.

Newberry is the market engineering manager for Clear Channel Radio, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa Al.

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