The July meeting of SBE Chapter 37 was held at the XM Satellite Radio Facility in Washington.

Eric Hoehn and Ed Schwartz first gave a presentation detailing the technology and philosophy behind the facility, then we had a tour.

The 70 plus studios were built by Acoustic Systems in Texas, then delivered and assembled at XM. The facility is seamlessly integrated, with multipurpose studios for air and production, and smaller studios for editing and assembling programs.

A full size recording studio is under construction to facilitate live recording. The common rack area featured 21 terabytes of drive space for audio; processing; and control hardware.

The tour ended with a visit to Master Control; a room reminiscent of NASA's Flight Control facility. A room full of plasma screens displaying VU meters for each channel; a map of the US showing status of all repeater sites; multiple router control panels, and a Captain Kirk chair (literally) for the Big Kahuna in charge.

Our thanks to Eric and Ed for their time and interest in our chapter.