The World Youth Day 2008 event, which took place 15-20 July, is the largest youth event in the world, with the week-long series of events culminating in a Final Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI. The New South Wales State Government contracted The PA People to provide the World Youth Day organizers with a city-wide PA system for general announcements, paging and emergency messaging. The PA People integrated the Barix Audio over IP solution to stream live voice and pre-recorded announcements to several Barix Exstreamers, each assigned to one specific zone to decode and replay audio to local loudspeakers.
A playlist selected from more than 270 pre-recorded announcements was stored on a local USB stick in each Exstreamer and updated every two minutes from a central database. The database, which was configured via a simple web based interface to manage individual playlists for each zone, was connected to each Exstreamer via a wireless 3G data Network. Barix priority streaming ports in the Exstreamers were also enabled for emergency notification and other important real-time messages, interrupting USB playback through the Instreamer and returning to the USB playlist after the live streaming feed was finished.
According to Andrew Nisbet, technical director of The PA People, the Barix Audio over IP hardware and a Telstra 3G data network formed the basis of the network transport solution. With the expense and scarcity of hardwired solutions a significant challenge, the Barix solution proved a reliable answer to a potentially difficult situation, and vastly reduced the cost per endpoint across the PA network.
"Historically, city-wide announcements have been delivered over 10KHz analogue telephone lines using a control system located at the Government Control Centre," said Nisbet. "The phasing out of this telephone service combined with new and isolated PA locations meant an alternative solution was required for World Youth Day and future events. Barix delivered a very cost-effective hardware solution that combined flawlessly with the Telstra Next-G wireless network and easily met our client's playback requirements. We arrived at a solution involving local storage and playback of messages, with the ability to record and upload messages for automatic playlist updates. The ability to stream live audio to the sites simultaneously and centrally control playlists for each zone brought everything together."
Nisbet plans to use Barix for a variety of upcoming events in Australia, including New Year's Eve celebrations on the Sydney Harbor Foreshore; and the City to Surf fun run, providing a cost-effective alternative to landlines and satellite connections for establishing audio links between the start and finish lines.
Barix will display its complete range of Audio over IP devices, including Instreamer audio encoders and Exstreamer audio decoders, at PLASA 08.
(Jim Evans)
