Radio Maisha is a 24-hour Swahili radio station with a national reach, Owned and managed by Standard Digital Group and established in Nairobi in 2010, Radio Maisha singled itself out as a market leader with its superior entertainment and current affairs content, as well as top-notch talent. Radio Maisha plays Afrobeat hit music and has twice been voted favorite station nationally in Communication’s Authority Kuza Awards.
Jamiro Broadcast was tasked by Radio Maisha to Supply, Install, Train, and Commission a Robust Multichannel, Hybrid (IP + DVB) Audio Contribution system which could serve both STL application and contribution to Satellite on DVB-S2. With this customers’ requirements, there was no ready hardware in the market which could fit these specs and we had to make our own specifications through our hardware manufacturer in order to meet the customer requirements.
Radio Maisha is the 2nd radio to embrace Digital Audio Mixing Console in Kenya back in 2010. Four (4) Studios were established with 2 housed in SGL Headquarters, 10 Kms from City Square, and the rest located at the I&M building in City Square. All Studios were built with AXIA Mixing Consoles leveraging LIVEWIRE for connectivity between City Square and HQ where the program from HQ connected to Analog STL for Contribution to Nairobi Transmission Site –Limuru, located 40 kms away from the HQ.
With the growing demand for high fidelity audio in FM Broadcasting, Radio Maisha needed an Upgrade from Analog STL Audio to satisfy her listeners and keep abreast with the technological advancement which would allow scalability in audio distribution.
The design specification produced the hardware with the following features:
- MPEG1 Layer 2 Audio encoding, with Audio bit rate up to 384 Kbps
- Support for balanced and unbalanced analog audio inputs: To allow older systems without Digital Audio.
- Supports AES/EBU, SD-SDI digital audio input: Common Standard for Digital Audio from Professional Audio Processors and Consoles.
- ASI output (2 BNC interface): Used for Satellite Uplink –Distribution.
- IP output (unicast/multicast): Used for STL Contribution over IP network between the HQ and Transmitter location.
- LCD / keyboard and web-based NMS operation
The Hardware was finally delivered, installed, and tested for 1 month before going LIVE on November 01, 2021. With Multichannel capability, up to 4 Radio Programs can simultaneously connect which makes the technology scalable to future requirements whilst serving both IP and DVB needs. With this installation, Radio Maisha, Vybez Radio, and Spice Radio can now have a unified Audio contribution to Satellite and for Terrestrial on IP Link.
“This being a special project to us, this project gave us a good opportunity to design specifications which could benefit the market needs for hybrid (IP and DVB) Audio Encoding which we have benchmarked as a solution for future deployments.” Says Benson Nyaga, Technical Director-Jamiro Broadcast.
