SCAsat Audio Distribution “Best of Satellite, Best of WAN”

When a new broadcasting corporation was formed from the merging of several existing broadcaster groups, challenges arose in terms of cost, compatibility, and consolidated operations. The mergers had resulted in the continent-wide contribution / distribution audio network being a patchwork quilt of incompatible networks and systems. Centralised, or even efficient management was impossible. Engineers from the broadcaster, along with software, hardware, and IT professionals, working together over two years fully developed, extensively tested, and have now deployed an ideal audio contribution / distribution solution. Each individual piece of technology works together providing a cost-effective, reliable, and user-friendly audio and metadata network. The solution incorporates persistently redundant delivery, backup head-ends, multiple contribution points, plus full metadata and GPIO, to provide multiple channels of scheduled and ad-hoc audio. This paper and presentation describe the parameters, challenges, and technical solutions such that other engineers and broadcasters may integrate or even duplicate the process and results.

Published

2015-07

Content type

Original Research

Keywords

Radio, Audio Distribution, Audio over IP, Satellite, Codec, Encoding, Decoding, Broadcast

DOI

10.5594/M001603

ISBN

978-1-61482-955-3