Barix Radio was launched a few years ago as a fun tool to help customers easily prove that their new Exstreamer was happy in its new home – connect it up and get down to the groove!

We expected lots of short connections, as customers installed their devices and then set them up for business, but the statistics show a different story: Barix Radio is feeding hundreds of long term listeners. It seems our customers benefit not only from the Barix trademark rock-solid reliability, but also enjoy the great music mix that is Barix Radio as the soundtrack to their lives!

We hope that we continue to entertain you all for many years to come!

Allen Temple Baptist delivers services to those unable to attend using Barix IP audio solutions

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, December 10, 2012 — Audio over IP pioneer Barix AG is helping Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California stream its Sunday services to radio station KDIA-1640-AM with exceptional audio quality and low latency — and at a very low cost.

Allen Temple Baptist transmitted its services via telephone line to the radio station for more than 30 years, but was looking to become more cost-efficient while moving into the digital age. The church purchased a Barix Instreamer 100 for on-site encoding of live services, and an Exstreamer 100 for KDIA to receive and decode the audio.

Director and Minister of Communications Charlotte Y. Williams said that Barix came highly recommended, and has simplified the way the church delivers the signal to KDIA. She notes that the migration to Barix IP audio will save the church several thousand dollars annually.

“Our broadcast has never sounded so good, and we have never experienced such substantial cost savings as we have by transferring our broadcast via Barix,” said Williams. “We are able to set it and forget it, and the audio has a much cleaner, pristine sound. We highly recommend the Barix solution as a simple, low-cost, high-return method.”

Williams added that the church was highly impressed by the “excellent customer service” provided from point of purchase through installation, which helped the church get their stream up and running quickly.

Swedish company exclusively uses Barix to enhance the shopping experience through the power of music

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, March 5, 2012 — Barix is exclusively providing IP audio decoding solutions to Music in Brands for the delivery of unique music programming to retail stories and other public areas. The company uses Barix for both direct audio streaming and store-and-forward solutions in businesses around Sweden, providing flexible, low-cost playout solutions for in-store campaigns.

Based in Stockholm, Music in Brands creates musical identities for brands through audio, designing specialty programs that match the business and its customers. The company produces a custom radio station for each business, building unique playlists that update regularly to keep programming fresh and store environments lively.

“Music is a very important piece of the shopper experience, and we want to play music that matches the environment without repeating the same songs over and over,” said Anders Svensson, president of Music in Brands. “There is a lot of psychology involved because customers can shop elsewhere if they don’t like the music. We operate similarly to a radio station to improve the atmosphere. This results in increased loyalty, more committed personnel and increased buying behavior.”

Svensson points to several customers currently using Music in Brands audio branding with Barix in-store technology, including Swedish automobile manufacturer Volvo; telecom companies Telenor and 3; retail businesses JC and Polarn O. Pyret; and the Scandic Hotels chain. Barix Exstreamer IP audio decoders reliably receive and play out high-quality audio at multiple locations for these businesses, while minimizing expenses through low device cost and simple installation. Svensson and his team configure the devices and ship them to the store locations, where employees typically install the devices themselves.

Locations with plenty of network bandwidth receive continuous, high-quality AACplus audio streams, while those with stricter bandwidth limitations — like JC and Polarn O. Pyret — use Barix’s store-and-forward capability to download the streams to the devices for MP3 audio playout.

For Scandic Hotels, Music in Brands produces five music channels streamed simultaneously to the hotel. Staff can choose jazz music in the bar or easy-listening in the lounge using the Barix channel selector function. Svensson has found the Barix Exstreamer 200, featuring a built-in amplifier (2x25W), especially helpful in smaller stores such as those operated by Telenor and 3.

“We have mostly used Exstreamer 100s to this point, but the Exstreamer 200 is a very cost-effective and space-saving solution for small shops,” said Svensson. “We can provide an entire solution with an Exstreamer 200 and a few speakers, with Barix providing the IP receiver and amplifier in one device.”

Svensson also noted the importance of Barix’s open-source software, which allowed him to freely build a custom monitoring program to access information from every device in the network. “Barix takes care of all the in-store playout needs while allowing us to see everything that is happening across the network,” said Svensson. “They were clearly the best choice for cost, flexibility, audio quality and reliability.”

We’re really excited to announce the first of many Apps to be coming your way, The Barix Reflector iPhone app is now available for download from the App Store!

The app enables Reflector customers to listen in to their station, check the status of all their registered devices, see stats for network performance and monitor the state of the encoder contact closures. Broadcast engineers on the go can stay informed!

Watch this blog for announcements of other Apps!

The introduction of a SIP gateway is the most effective way to merge audio over IP distribution with an already established SIP-based phone system. This is most useful when you are directing background music, paging and public address to loud-speaker systems as opposed to simply routing phone calls.

IT Telephony Article

Hello,

here is a nice photo picturing a large installation of Barix Exstreamer 1000 devices (hundreds, this is only a part of the installation) …i can’t disclose as of now where that is – a press release and success story will follow 🙂

Johannes

Barix Exstreamer 1000 Installation

Have you ever wished you could listen to Internet Radio in your car, send a live audio feed from anywhere to your studio, or have a mobile paging/intercom station for your Barix based campus emergency paging system ?

Well, this is now all possible and actually quite easy to achieve. The little gadget you need is called a “wireless access router or “3G Wireless router” or similar. Such devices are made by various manufacturers, and they typically allow you to connect Ethernet or Wireless, IP based devices to the internet via a mobile broadband connection.

Achievable data rates of course vary, depending on the technology, provider used, contract etc. Barix Audio devices support, depending on the model, various Audio Codecs, and with a modern 3G or 3.5G network connection, which you now get in many cities and areas of Europe, you can perfectly stream CD quality, stereo audio to a studio.
The typical CDMA or EVDO based networks, common in the US, are quite a bit slower (similar to EDGE in Europe, which you get almost everywhere now), but even these are quite suitable for audio streaming.

You can find a bit more information and one device suggestion on our wiki.

Read this post to understand how an Exstreamer-100 can save you its purchase price per year in energy savings.

A Barix customer had PCs available at no cost to him. He thought about using them for audio distribution for instore audio purposes through his stores nationwide distribution. Fortunately, he evaluated the cost of operations. Besides updating, mechanical failures and other service calls, the operation cost in terms of energy and cooling jumped into his mind.

24*365=8760 hours per year (this year even 24 more !). With a power requirement of approx. 200W, translating into 1752 kWh/year, the cost for the operation of the PC, just the power!, is roughly 175$ (at an energy price of 0.10$/kWh – and this is likely to raise and not drop !).

In contrast, the Exstreamer-100, Barix’ best selling Audio over IP device, needs only about 2W – or 1% – of the above amount. So for $1.75/year you can operate it.

In addition to the energy cost, you need to add the cost of energy for cooling (your Rack), depending on where you are located this can add significantly to the bill.

Well – you can guess, for the customer this was a striking advantage, the Exstreamer roughly pays back for itself with the energy savings every year ! And so they bought 1200 pieces, for savings of roughly $210k, EVERY YEAR.

Consider installing Barix to conserve natural resources – go green !