RNE chooses aixtream for national radio distribution

Since the beginning of 2023, Radio Nacional de España, Spain’s national state-owned public service radio broadcaster, has used a Ferncast aixtream installation on each of four servers to demux its national multi-program transport stream, reencode all its 128 programs, and output them in different web streaming formats and multiple bitrates. This way, the broadcaster’s entire programming is available for web radio, mobile apps and smart TVs. The system generates over 1400 local and national radio streams across multiple formats, including Icecast, HLS, DASH and RTMP. It encodes the streams in various algorithms, including AAC, MP3 and Dolby AC-3, all available in multiple bitrates, including adaptive bitrate in the case of HLS. 

Ferncast operates the whole system for RNE as a service. Ferncast experts set up all audio workflows and handle much of the everyday monitoring. Ferncast keeps RNE informed of everything happening on the system via an automatic email messaging system generated by the aixtream software.

For the Ferncast team, this project was a great opportunity to test aixtream’s limits and further improve its high-load performance. Over 700 outputs per system are now proven under real conditions, including a mirror backup for all of them. This project was the first to implement the demux input, now used for projects requiring DVB and DAB/FM format conversion or monitoring. It was also the first major cooperation in Spain between Ferncast and its Spanish distributor Star Comunicaciones. 

Using aixtream software has greatly streamlined RNE’s Internet Radio Department workflow and reduced their overall workload. Despite the exceptional number of 1400 simultaneous encodings, their system runs even more reliably. 

Manuel Ángel García, commercial technician from Star Comunicaciones, says, Once the customer had defined their real needs, it was quite easy for us as consultants to implement the solution. The great expertise of the Ferncast technical support and the enormous flexibility and capacity of the solution made it possible for us to successfully solve some non-trivial issues the customer was dealing with before.”