> > I know someone had been looking into a hardware device to
> do
> > this, but I'm working with a station that wants to try
> this
> > with a translator. Their management sent me a link for
> this:
> >
> >
> >
http://www.raduga.net/airlink.htm
> >
> > Does anybody have any experience with this package or any
> > alternatives I should be investigating? Good? Bad?
> Something
> > other than using Windows OS?
> >
I'm friends of the Raduga guys (and a customer too) so take what I say with whatever grain of salt you want. We use their automation for our radio station and we're extremely happy with it.
I've played with Airlink, and it seems to work just fine. The problem is it uses computer at each end. To me, that's a lot of extra moving parts to go wrong, regardless of operating system. If you are comfortable with the computers, Airlink is an easy way to accomplish what you need to do. Of course, you could also use Shoutcast, Simplecast, Icecast, etc.
Personally, I'd rather have a dedicated stand alone device at each end that has few if any external buttons, switches, keyboards, etc to accidentally get messed with. Driving to a remote transmitter location to reset things because your neighbor on the tower thought he'd check his email on your computer has little appeal to me.
There are some devices that do this, from companies like Tieline. I can't say I'm wild about the price though. They probably work reliably though, and reliability is certainly a feature worth paying for.
I've found a Swiss Company called Barix
http://www.barix.com/ that make stand alone streaming and decoding boxes. Called the Instreamer and Extreamer, they look interesting. I'm playing with some right now. They work fine on a private network, although latency is an issue. I'm thinking of using a pair of them in conjunction with a pair of unlicensed 5.8 GHz radios from a company called Tranzeo. They have radios they claim will do up to 25 miles. If it works, it would be a handy way to get a signal from one point to another.
If you have any suggestions, I'd be most interested.