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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => Installed Sound/Contracting => Topic started by: Lee Douglas on March 23, 2021, 05:33:18 PM

Title: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Lee Douglas on March 23, 2021, 05:33:18 PM
Seems like this should be easy, but I'm not finding it.  I'm looking for a small cheap system that will encode audio at the head end and push it out over the LAN and amplified decoders on the field side that I can just "point" at the encoder.  Small amplifier for a couple of background music speakers.  70v or 4 ohm is fine.  Audio is low quality background music for a storage unit.  Security beyond what my network will already have is not important.  Looking for suggestions!  Thanks!
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Hal Bissinger/COMSYSTEC on March 23, 2021, 08:13:57 PM
Sounds like you are looking for IP speakers that are becoming popular these days. No, I haven't done any but I did find this from Axis who I know from security cameras. All POE, just run network cables to each speaker from a POE enabled switch.

https://www.axis.com/products/network-speakers (https://www.axis.com/products/network-speakers)

https://www.axis.com/products/axis-audio-manager-edge (https://www.axis.com/products/axis-audio-manager-edge)
So now you know what to look for. There are many others out there.

-Hal
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Lee Douglas on March 24, 2021, 11:05:07 AM
Sounds like you are looking for IP speakers that are becoming popular these days. No, I haven't done any but I did find this from Axis who I know from security cameras. All POE, just run network cables to each speaker from a POE enabled switch.

-Hal

Thanks, Hal.  I do know about Axis, both video and network audio products, and installed quite a bit of both.  I was hoping for a budget version, as I don't think I can get the owners of the site I'm working on to spend that kind of money on this.  I've used point to point fiber solutions in the past, but my fiber runs only hit one of four points I need to cover. So I'm hoping for an affordable network solution.
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Hal Bissinger/COMSYSTEC on March 25, 2021, 01:57:35 AM
Okay. How about this:

https://www.bswusa.com/Codecs-Barix-Instreamer-P8850.aspx (https://www.bswusa.com/Codecs-Barix-Instreamer-P8850.aspx)

Together with a decoder with amp from this list:
https://ip-audio.com/collections/exstreamer-family?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI58KAqeDK7wIVjLbICh1NagOnEAAYASAAEgKKHvD_BwE (https://ip-audio.com/collections/exstreamer-family?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI58KAqeDK7wIVjLbICh1NagOnEAAYASAAEgKKHvD_BwE)
Use it to drive regular speakers.
I don't think you will find cheaper.

-Hal
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Mike Caldwell on March 28, 2021, 11:37:04 PM
Okay. How about this:

https://www.bswusa.com/Codecs-Barix-Instreamer-P8850.aspx (https://www.bswusa.com/Codecs-Barix-Instreamer-P8850.aspx)

Together with a decoder with amp from this list:
https://ip-audio.com/collections/exstreamer-family?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI58KAqeDK7wIVjLbICh1NagOnEAAYASAAEgKKHvD_BwE (https://ip-audio.com/collections/exstreamer-family?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI58KAqeDK7wIVjLbICh1NagOnEAAYASAAEgKKHvD_BwE)
Use it to drive regular speakers.
I don't think you will find cheaper.

-Hal

Have you used the Barix Equipment?

I posted a message about the same equipment and did not receive any comments.

My use would be sending audio to remote location over the internet.
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Hal Bissinger/COMSYSTEC on March 31, 2021, 08:13:31 PM
Have you used the Barix Equipment?

I posted a message about the same equipment and did not receive any comments.

My use would be sending audio to remote location over the internet.
I saw your message after I made that suggestion. I knew I heard of it someplace.  ::)
No, I haven't used it but from what I see it's easy to set up and use. And the price is right. There are many YouTube videos about setting up and using their equipment. Just Google for them if you haven't seen them already.

There doesn't seem to be anything out there that is comparable to this. There are plenty of decoders (from self contained speakers to stand alone receivers) but no encoders. I actually expected to find a software encoder app that would run on a PC but no.  It seems every decoder I found is intended to work off a SIP extension on a IP phone system.

Dunno, I have seen drawings for large projects that spec IP ceiling speakers throughout. Without any other information I would assume that it was only capable of zoned paging through the phone system with maybe background music- as much as the phone system can deliver.

So, yeah, if I had an application I wouldn't hesitate to give Barix a try.
-Hal


Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Lee Douglas on April 01, 2021, 11:27:01 AM
As always, thanks for the suggestions.  I ended up proposing the Axis equipment, as we already have experience with it.  I wonder if the Axis C8033 Audio Bridge would work as an encoder for other products?
Title: Re: Easy Unsecured Low Quality Audio Over Network
Post by: Mike Caldwell on April 06, 2021, 12:14:01 AM
Just to follow up on the Barix equipment I posted about earlier.
Yes it works!
Really easy to stream point to point over a LAN and with a couple extra
steps setting up port forwarding you can stream point to point over a
WAN / internet via HTTP.

I'm actually listening to it right now streamed from my home router with the Instreamer, set my tablet up to be a 4g hot spot, using an old Linksys router flashed with DD-WRT set up as a bridge and connected to the Exstreamer decoder.

There's a couple other ways to stream point to point over the internet but they were getting above my networking comfort zone.

For my upcoming project I think they will work and I'll keep them in mind for others.