Broadcasting audio across a site

[nutso]

Hi all,

Our management are interested in looking in to setting up an internal radio station - and then forcing everyone to listen to it by putting speakers across the whole site. Has anyone got experience in distributing audio in this way? I'm sure I'm missing a nice obvious easy solution, but the options I've come up with are:

1. Run lots and lots of speaker wire across the whole site
2. Stream the audio across the network to lots of small laptops, each with speakers
3. Standalone radios that can connect to internet radio stations via wireless networks, and stream the audio to those

Has anyone got any thoughts on these methods, or any alternatives?

Thanks

[plexer]

MP3elf - advanced network audio system ???

Or some such other network attached streaming media device?

Ben

[nutso]

Thanks, I guess that's something along the lines of the small laptop idea.. it seems like it could get pretty pricey to wire up the whole site with those though. Are there no other schools piping their radio stations in to their corridors, or do they all have the luxury of a tannoy system?

[plexer]

NetStreams - The Ultimate IP A/V Experience

Freecom MusicPal gets friendly with internet radio | Register Hardware

[Mandy]

nutso,

We can provide alternative solutions for your requirements.

Would you be looking to set up a radio frequency so the station can be accessed out of the school, or just run audio through the speakers??

If you're interested, I can get you a quote on a number of different solutions and see what else is out there for what your after...

Let me know if this will help...

[tmcd35]

iTunes + a speakers connected to Airport Extreme boxes. (Got to keep Mattx happy and provide the logical Apple alternative )

[Mandy]

http://www.invisionuk.com/

We are partners with Invision and can supply and install the solution...

I hope this helps

[SteveBentley]

I'd have thought a 100V Line aplifier and lots of speakers would be more reliable than IP.

[dhicks]

Has anyone got any thoughts on these methods, or any alternatives?

Get a bunch of cheap (< £10 each) very-short-range FM transmitters off eBay, the sort that just take a standard small stereo plug, made so you can listen to your iPod in the car. Hook those up to equally cheap radios with speakers connected to the headphone socket along with the FM transmitter via a two-way stereo splitter, i.e. each unit both produces sound and re-transmits the FM radio signal.

--
David Hicks

[FragglePete]

We've set up an internal Radio Station broadcasting over the network.

Anybody on the network can click the link to connect Windows Media Player to the Stream and listen.

We have one machine hooked up to a central amp behind the Stage that feeds the hall, reception and dining rooms.

Kids use SAM Broadcaster to 'present' the shows. Using Shoutcast on the same machine to stream. Seems to work well, and quite a cheap solution.

Only downside is that there is about a 40 second delay on the stream (depending on what is being steamed). So it's not really 'Live'. Close enough though.

HTH

Pete

[ChrisH]

When we did our local radio station project last year I used the windows media encoder on an xp machine that was fed from a line in. I then used windows media services to stream it. This year I will be looking at shoutcast etc as the windows server doesnt do multicast unless your using enterprise (I think) . Since we had a limited amount of clients, I just went with it.

[nutso]

Thanks for all the ideas! The Freecom Musicpal looks promising for an IP based solution, particularly since they used wired ethernet and it might also be possible to use Power over Ethernet adapters to power the units, and save spending a fortune on power sockets.

I am actually leaning more towards the amplifier and lots of speaker cable angle though since there's less to go wrong. I just don't know enough about audio kit to find something suitable.

[plexer]

How about audio over cat5?

CyberSelect | AV over Cat 5

Ben