Audio over IP for Hospitality

Printer-friendly version

Hotels have long used audio as a source of entertainment and information for guests. Music and hospitality go together, and hotel guests are accustomed to the audio experience whether relaxing in the main lobby, spending time by the pool or enjoying a night of leisure in the club.
 
Hotel management and staff usually don’t have time to spend maintaining either outdated or overly complex audio systems. The ideal system for them is one that sustains pristine audio quality without maintenance requirements that demand too much attention from staff or incur high costs.
 
Digital Media Distribution (DMD2), a provider of individualised radio channels, has partnered with audio over IP company Barix to develop an end-to-end audio streaming solution designed to distribute programme audio to hotels, restaurants and other hospitality outlets. The program, ‘hotelradio.fm,’ combines various music and sound channels for reliable delivery using a maintenance-free hardware and software infrastructure.
 
Early adopters of this solution include The Castello del Sole in Ascona, Hotel Schweizerhof in St. Moritz and the Palace Luzern, all five-star hotels located in Switzerland. The service currently offers 40 premium music only radio channels, ranging from classical music to pop and rock. Public radio channels can also be played with the integrated music solution if desired.
 
The audio over IP delivery platform requires little more than a stable high-speed internet connection, thus removing costly equipment requirements associated with satellite distribution, such as dishes, receivers, PC infrastructures and data storage devices. The hotelradio.fm infrastructure instead adds a Barix Exstreamer decoding device at the receive point, which decodes the music at premium quality for playback in one or more zones. Amplifiers and speakers comprise the remaining infrastructure in each zone.
 
DMD2 programmes and distributes hotelradio.fm over the internet direct to Barix Exstreamers at each hotel. Each Exstreamer is assigned an IP address to ensure that the audio is delivered to the appropriate devices. The Exstreamer converts the hotelradio.fm signal to music and feeds the audio to the hotel amplifier or loudspeaker systems.
 
Hotels can elect to supply multiple zones with the same program, which requires only a single Exstreamer. Alternatively, the hotel can supply different feeds to different zones by installing an Exstreamer in each zone. This allows the hotel to supply audio that fits the environment surrounding each space.
 
The simplicity of the operation reduces manpower requirements as well as shrinking equipment costs. The operation requires no technical expertise once the Exstreamers are connected to the appropriate computers and amplifiers or speakers.
 
“The hotelradio.fm service is designed to be hands-off and reliable, and the Barix devices are a significant piece of the end-to-end operation,” said Alexander Dal Farra, founder and CEO of DMD2. “Our hospitality customers can concentrate on guest services instead of being concerned about updates or malfunctions to their audio systems.”
 
Dal Farra added that hotelradio.fm is also live in first-class restaurants including the Rive Gauche at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, as well as numerous three- and four-star hotels and restaurants.
 
The Exstreamer adds redundancy features that make the end-to-end system immune to network failures or malfunctions. Back-up options include a USB stick that can be added to a port on the front of the device, which automatically begins playing back of a programme mix if the network connection temporarily goes south.
 
“The back-up features ensure that hotels and restaurants can continue feeding audio to their guests without being held hostage by a failed connection,” said Dal Farra. “In many cases they may not even notice if the failover occurs since the switchover is essentially seamless. The main programme feed then picks up where it left off once the connection is re-established. This means that the hotel goes silent only when they choose.”