International. Anticipating this serious situation, the Spanish radio station COPE, for years has been progressively providing its foreign correspondents, collaborators, contertulios, journalists and now presenters, with portable audiocoders Phoenix ALIO of AEQ, to total about 200 units.
The initial objective was that correspondents could interact live on the air, avoiding impossible displacements. Then, allow the interactivity of journalists stationed in various places, so that they can answer questions from the presenters, avoiding the coldness of a chronicle. The next step was to avoid non-appearances in the study of contertulios and occasional collaborators due to agenda incompatibilities, or difficulty of traveling to the studios to participate in the live program.
Over the last few years, the operation has been refined and with cope's suggestions, the ALIO tool of AEQ's Phoenix IP audiocodec family has been optimized. A non-technical commentator connects the equipment, already preconfigured, to the Internet router of his house, and no longer has to do anything else since from the station it is started and controlled. The buttons on the front of the computer can be locked, leaving you only access to a button labeled with the word HELP to get the attention of the remote operator who has a software copy of the computer's controls.
There is a control app that can, from one or more workstations in the studios, handle all the remote ALIO audiocodecs and pair them with the stationary Venus and Stratos audiocodecs that are in the central controls.
The quality of transmission over the IP network is similar to that achieved with the presence of the announcers in the studio.
If a journalist is displaced to a place with no wired Internet connection available, he can use a 3G or 4G router, a small accessory with a SIM card that allows you to use the mobile phone network to access the station in high quality.
At this critical time, COPE has sent most of the staff home. For this they have adapted radio studios in the living room of their homes: A laptop, a printer, a microphone, a clock synchronized by radio, an AEQ ALIO audiocodec, and an immense desire to help listeners to get through these difficult days in the best possible way.
