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Cornelia Zwirnmann					Barbara Haller-Rietschel	                    
FUCHSKONZEPT e.K. public relations              		Barix AG
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kontakt@fuchskonzept.com				barbara@barix.com

Barix assisting the Festival of Lights in Leipzig

Streaming solution deployed in the “City Radio Media Room” sub-project

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND, xx. September 2014 – For the Festival of Lights on 9 October 2014, at which the city of Leipzig is celebrating together with its citizens and prominent political representatives the 25-year anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution, Barix is making available hardware for realising the “City Radio Media Room” sub-project.  As an emotional highpoint of the many remembrance events taking place a quarter of a century after the historically far-reaching events in the autumn of 1989, the Festival of Lights is extending across the whole of the inner city ring road for the first time.  It documents the historical route of the Leipzig Monday demonstrations and establishes links between the events in 1989 and 2014 along the route through the media of a broad diversity of projects, performances and projections.

For the “City Radio Media Room”, detektor.fm is reviving Leipzig City Radio (Leipziger Stadtfunk) from 1989.  “No violence!” – the legendary chant of the “Leipzig Six” with Kurt Masur has gone down in the history books.  During the Festival of Lights, online radio detektor.fm is returning visitors to these historical moments with original recordings.  Contemporary witnesses, historians and ambassadors from other countries will be speaking about the then and now.  Sound collages and features about the generation of ’89 reflect the day through the medium of a special listening experience.  Included in the program are the musical treasures of the time.  Also, the Festival of Lights artists provide accompaniment throughout the day and introduce their projects.  Inspired by the spirit of the Peaceful Revolution, visitors to the Festival of Lights are themselves to become part of the broadcast - everyone may have their say. The radio station is inviting all to join in and is calling for people to get involved in the program on 9 October via social networking and the interactive detektor.fm App by contributing their personal experiences.  The audio streams presented by detektor.fm will then be broadcast between 6:00 and 19:00 at all of Leipzig‘s LVB public transportation stops within the inner ring road of Leipzig.

NATURTON audiodienste GmbH is assuming responsibility for technical implementation of the radio system at stops and stations.  Involvement in the Festival of Lights is a personal desire for the company’s CEO Adrian Neumann.  Whilst he had to experience how his employer faded into insignificance as a result of the currency union and stronger competition from the old federal states, he has on the other hand been able to use experience gained then to very quickly make his hobby his career, and as a sound technician during the period of transition was able to provide sound systems for meetings in the town hall.  Initial contact with Barix equipment was more from coincidence and resultant private interest than anything else.  Now Neumann is all the more glad to be able to deploy this technology during the Leipzig Festival of Lights:  “Now knowledge gained from my data teleprocessing days is standing me in good stead.  I mean for the question as how to relay an audio signal through an IT network – what we are ultimately doing at the Festival of Lights.  This is where LTE transmission and IT streaming, and amplifier and loudspeaker, technologies are being united.  Or my education in the East and my career in the West. This is why the project is very exciting for me!”.

The ten Exstreamer 100s made available as part of the Barix sponsoring agreement represent a key part of the technical implementation of the “City Radio Media Room”.  The devices decode IP audio streams and relay the audio signal received to amplifiers and speakers. With their support of numerous protocols, encoding methods and application-specific firmware, Extreamers lend themselves perfectly to radio programs, Internet radio and VoIP applications. The tens of thousands of users across the globe mean the family of devices has established itself as a standard in its segment.  “This hardware is ideal for the deployment planned at the Leipzig Festival of Lights”, says Frank Frederiksen, CEO of the Zurich-based company.  “We are extremely glad to be able to support the festivities surrounding the memorable events in the autumn of 1989. The Peaceful Revolution and the accompanying end to the Cold War also associate us in Switzerland with a transition to a new global era.  In this respect, being part of this wonderful event is a matter close to our heart.”

Please visit www.lichtfest.leipziger-freiheit.de for more information on the Leipzig Festival of Lights, the program and additional material.

Barix: We can do audio (www.barix.com)
Barix provides system integrators and end customers across the globe with simple and reliable solutions and components.  We relay high quality audio over IP networks, and so have been enabling our customers for longer than 10 years now to benefit from the hundreds of thousands of devices installed the world over.  The range of applications for Barix solutions is diverse, ranging from the distribution of background music with dynamically inserted advertising for the retail industry, bars and hotels, and PA systems for schools and public areas, to intercom and entry systems for building surveillance, protection and security. Barix is also providing support in OEM projects for more than 500 companies across the globe. 

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