It Could Happen: Wheat Roadies!

Wheat Road Crew Pass

If only we had our own reality show. We could call it Wheat Roadies, for all the bizarre and interesting WheatNet-IP audio-over-IP uses we’ve seen in our travels.


Because while other studio AoIP systems have a rather ordinary existence, our WheatNet-IP Intelligent Network has made some extraordinary gains in network speed, redundancy, and agility.

Really. No other AoIP system has nodes that are self-healing to give you as many points of recovery as there are BLADE access points in the network. It’s why we easily have an entire season’s worth of mission-critical government applications, including a made-for-TV episode that involves a FEMA studio from which officials regularly update the nation on natural disasters. Our Wheat Roadies set up a WheatNet-IP system there just weeks before Hurricane Sandy blasted the east coast. In fact, the WheatNet-IP system is a regular fixture in D.C. We can’t talk about the nature and uses of WheatNet-IP in some federal agencies for obvious reasons, but trust us, this stuff is way more interesting than Honey Boo Boo.

WheatNet-IP also has a distinguished military career, including a WheatNet-IP-equipped electronic classroom for a U.S. Army base. We’re proud to offer the military the only intelligent audio network that distributes control and intelligence across all access points, unlike other AoIP networks that have a single point in the network calling all the shots.

No doubt, this is one reason why WheatNet-IP has found its way into some off-the-wall installations. For example, a firm on Wall Street is using our WheatNet-IP Intelligent Network to bring in an audio feed all the way from a data center in New Jersey. True story. So, once again, our Wheat Roadies were on a plane headed for D.C. to meet the suits there and to set up a mission-critical WheatNet-IP system.

Then there’s the broadcaster who needed a way to monitor an on-air signal off the AoIP network, so he set up the Aura8-IP BLADE  – our BLADE with eight audio processors built into it — as a fake, pre-delay air feed for monitoring anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

WheatNet-IP also has a reputation as a useful studio-to-transmitter as well as studio-to-studio transport system, in part because it’s able to run at ten times the network speed of other AoIP systems. Clear Channel in Charlotte, for example, didn’t have the line-of-sight needed for all the usual STL options (not to mention there was an airport in the way), so they made the hop by feeding BLADE IP audio into a DragonWave microwave unit, which piggybacks all BLADE IP audio plus input auxiliary and HD data to four transmitter sites. (See this WHEAT:NEWS article.) There’s no noticeable audio delay here, or at Clear Channel’s Portland cluster either, which is running WheatNet-IP audio out to four transmitter sites through dark fiber on a wide-area network. WheatNet-IP’s network speed of 1 gigabit/second  is one reason why ESPN in Chicago is able to connect a street level talk studio to a control room on its seventh floor, and more precisely, why they’re able to operate in near real-time for all mixing, talkback and intercom functions between the two.

It’s WheatNet-IP all the way for Skyview Networks too, which uplinks 44 channels of audio onto satellite from main and backup uplink sites divided by a mile and a half but unified through the WheatNet-IP audio network – all synchronized and automated by customized software on the network.

Our Wheat Roadies have seen it all, from D.C. to Portland and back again, and for all sorts of interesting WheatNet-IP applications. We couldn’t make this stuff up. Really.

Let us know your unusual WheatNet-IP application! Email us your WNIP story at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We can’t wait to hear the cool and unusual uses you’ve discovered for our WheatNet-IP system.

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