By Jacob Daniluck, Tieline VP Sales Americas
Cogeco Media is one of Québec’s largest radio broadcasters and operates 20 radio stations across Québec and one in Ontario. These stations are leaders in their respective markets, reaching nearly 5 million listeners each week with varied and relevant programming.
Pascal Gélinas, Cogeco’s Head of Technology, and dealer Marketing Marc Vallee, approached Tieline in 2021 to assist in designing a new distribution network for their content, as well as their contribution codecs. The goal was to standardize equipment across Cogeco to provide not only the best flexibility, but also make it easier on technical support staff. 8 Gateways were deployed for Cogeco’s distribution network between all 8 cities, and another 8 units were configured for peer-to-peer communications to isolate contribution and distribution.
Cogeco has a number of Wheatstone studio installations, so the Gateway codecs needed to have WheatNet-IP cards to support seamless AoIP transport throughout their studios, as well as support for WheatNet logic IOs between sites. These logic IOs are important because they trigger all the commercial breaks.
Installations in 8 Cities
Pascal Gélinas, Cogeco’s Head of Technology, was tasked with designing and building a new distribution network that maintained high quality, had equal or greater redundancy, and ensured the entire platform was secure.
Two Gateways were installed in 8 cities, including Montreal, Laval, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Gatineau, St-Jérôme, Chicoutimi, and Québec. These codecs replaced older Tieline Commander G3 codecs and Musicam USA codecs. Depending on the location, the Gateways had different purposes. For the most part these units were all part of the syndication network. They would either send streams, receive streams, or do a mix of both. The other Gateways provided the capability and freedom to do remotes, without touching the distribution network, as well as connect to other studios if need be. Pascal also specified a backup unit for the project to be on standby ready to go in Québec in case it was required.
“The Tieline Gateways appeared to be the best solution for Cogeco Media as they provided great redundancy when using the SmartStream PLUS feature fed by two different ISPs,” said Pascal Gélinas, Head of Technology. “The codecs provide very low latency and high audio quality without compromising reliability. Additionally, the WheatNet-IP integration made the choice of Tieline Gateways a no-brainer.”
Even though a single Gateway could handle everything in each location, the team at Cogeco wanted isolation for redundancy purposes. Each Gateway codec is equipped with a WheatNet-IP card which allows it to not only pass audio between sites, but WheatNet-IP data logic as well.
Importance of Redundancy
Cogeco has access to multiple ISPs and can diversify IP networking to ensure the network has adequate redundancy. In particular, the engineering team wanted the same level of SmartStream PLUS redundant streaming capability for their distribution links, as offered with Tieline peer-to-peer connections. This was important as they didn’t want to put all their eggs into the same basket with these mission critical links.
After requests from Cogeco, Tieline added SmartStream PLUS redundant streaming support to multi-unicast streams. This additional capability, along with access to multiple ISPs in all markets, ensured sufficient redundancy was built into the new infrastructure upgrade for their contribution links, peer-to-peer connections, and the new syndication network.
This was important as one of the requirements was for the Gateways deployed for syndication to not only initiate multi-unicast connections to send audio, but also simultaneously answer multi-unicast calls from other Gateways. So, while stream 1 is encoding audio, stream 2 receives another multi-unicast feed from another market. Facilitating SmartStream PLUS over these connections ensures the level of redundancy required, which is especially important for mission critical broadcast links.
Going Live
The transition process included testing the codecs to ensure the equipment performed smoothly in a controlled environment. Then codecs were installed in two cities initially, before the remaining codecs were rolled out across the network seamlessly over time.
Frederic Vendette, Director of Technology Operations, is very pleased with the project’s outcome. “Our technical teams like the simplicity of the Gateway codecs and at the same time the ability to configure the devices for our different needs,” said Frederic. “The learning curve is very fast and their flexibility allows us to use the Gateway to syndicate programming and simultaneously receive program content from ViA codecs used for remote broadcasts.”
The project was a great example of how to deploy high density IP codecs successfully for mission critical broadcast infrastructure in important major city radio markets. It has been a great success and Tieline wishes to thank Tieline dealers Marc Valle and Jean-Philippe Vallee, who ensured the flow of information between Cogeco and Tieline, relating to project specifics, was timely and smooth.
Engineers involved on this project include:
- Pascal Gélinas (Head of Technology) – Key in early solution design, and laying out the key requirements for the network
- Jean-Pierre Cyr, Pierre-Luc Bégin – Main system engineers, final design planning and deployment
- Martin Perkin, Frédéric Vendette: Technology directors – Main supervisor on the project deployment
- Alexandre Bérubé. – Engineer thoroughly involved in the testing of the solution during Proof of Concept
Want to know more about Tieline products and software?
For more information about Tieline codecs visit www.tieline.com/products or contact Tieline sales:
- For USA, Canada & Latin America contact: sales@tieline.com
- For Australia and International: info@tieline.com
