FADO in the Atrium, and the public at home with ALIO codecs 18-05-2020
AMÁLIA RÁDIO OF LISBON BROADCAST LIVE THE ACTS OF THE DECLARATION OF FADO AS A CULTURAL HERITAGE OF HUMANITY
Fado is the most internationally known expression of Portuguese music. The most popular themes in Fado are nostalgia, jealousy, absence, melancholy, passion or short stories of everyday life in typical Portuguese neighborhoods. Amália Rodrigues popularized Fados with letters from great poets.
Fado has been declared by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. In these times of confinement due to Covid-19, recitals have been held in the lobby or Atrium of the building of the headquarters of the Junta Freguesia de Santa Maria Maior in Lisbon, without public, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, starting on April 27, 2020.
Rádio Amália is a Portuguese radio station that transmits from Lisbon on the FM 92.0 frequency, and from Setúbal on the FM 100.6 frequency. It broadcasts 24 hours a day, and its programming consists exclusively of Fado. The station's name pays tribute to Amália Rodrigues, the famous Portuguese Fado singer who died about 20 years ago.
Given the circumstances, Rádio Amália has become the link between Fado fans, who have joyfully received UNESCO recognition, and these celebratory concerts, which they unfortunately cannot attend.
For this reason, they have organized a simple and effective technical deployment. The live sound console connects to an AEQ ALIO audiocodec that transmits live through a 4G link with a Huawei router that connects to the station with an AEQ Venus 3 audiocodec. The broadcast is carried out in stereo through the OPUS algorithm. To achieve a transmission with transparent audio quality, the binary rate of 128 kbps is used. The high efficiency of this algorithm divides by 18 the need for a bit rate, with no apparent loss in quality.
The deployment is complemented by an audio and video recording system for archiving and publishing the concerts.
The engineer Mr Luís Montez, CEO of the Rádios Música No Coração Group, head of Rádio Amália said:
In this period that we are going through, we cannot forget about culture. In this sense, we are intensifying programming with access to the digital media that we have on our radio stations, to maintain the proximity of artists to the public, combat loneliness and keep our audience permanently informed. We are reinforcing the investment in remote production of audio and video over IP.
We adopted DANTE technology for the entire group for studios, due to the stability and versatility it offers with the entire Dante AEQ equipment ecosystem. For outdoors, ALIO audiocodecs ensure excellent transmission quality for stereo music and voice with the OPUS encoding algorithm. One feature that I consider very important is ALIO's simplicity of operation even when we use it with two different destinations (2 streams) simultaneously.
António Piçarra, Sales Manager of AEQ for Portugal, Brazil and PALOP (African Countries of Portuguese Official Language), said "For AEQ, it is a great pride to participate in this initiative that celebrates the Portuguese culture, even in times of social isolation like the ones we are going through because of this terrible pandemic”
For more information about Rádio Amália and its programs, visit: https://www.amalia.fm/radio-online/
For more information on the activities or on the equipment and systems manufactured by AEQ, visit http://www.aeq.eu/. If you need detailed information, send an email to comercial@aeq.es or call +34 91 686 1300
