IP audio and control company Barix has opened a new research and development center for intelligent audio solutions. Based in Aveiro, Portugal, the Barix Innovation Center focuses on innovative technologies including audio analytics, anomaly detection, predictive maintenance, and environmental sound monitoring.
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Barix Founder and CTO Johannes Rietschel identified Aveiro as the ideal location given its proximity to the University of Aveiro, one of Europe’s leading technical institutions. Barix has been aggressively hiring local engineering talent, including recent university graduates, to fill key engineering and research roles. The close proximity to one of Barix' long-term strategic production partners, HFA SA, will further accelerate Barix’s ability to quickly build custom solutions at this new facility.
Barix’s business headquarters will remain in Zurich, and will retain its local engineering talent alongside all sales, marketing, product management, and other staff.
“Aveiro is known as Portugal’s ‘digital city’ and produces a high rate of digital technology innovations, many of which originate from university students and graduates,” Rietschel said. “Our new Innovation Center places Barix in the center of European digital development—a perfect home for Barix, which has brought audio-over-IP innovations to broadcast, commercial AV, security, retail, and other markets for 20 years. This new location does not replace our Zurich operation; rather, it will propel Barix innovation in new directions. And we will use our latest generation modular platforms to build very powerful, reliable, compact, and energy-efficient solutions that serve a continually evolving set of end user requirements.”
At ISE 2020, Barix offered a preview into its next-generation intelligent audio-over-IP solutions. These include environmental audio monitoring, detection, and analytics solutions for everything from general concerns (noise measurement) to highly sensitive operations (global, universal emergency intercoms, and government facility monitoring).
“The new age of intelligent widespread devices that understand and hear their surrounding is only beginning,” said Reto Brader, CEO, Barix. “We expect widespread adoption of AI and adaptive learning innovations in all of our markets, and we are proud to have secured highly qualified talent in Portugal for our next-generation research and development team.”
Barix has a large base of installed products worldwide, including custom-developed OEM products for other companies. In recent years, the company has accelerated product development for its core markets, including multi-site audio distribution (RetailPlayer, SoundScape), intercom and paging (Paging Cloud, IP Former), and broadcast audio transport (SIP Opus hardware codecs, Reflector uncompressed streaming service).
Barix will demonstrate these now-shipping products, along with next-generation prototypes from the new Barix Innovation Center at the 2020 NAB Show (April 19-22, Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth C1139) InfoComm 2020 (June 17-19, Las Vegas Convention Center, Booth C6150), and ISC West (July 2020, Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, Booth 19140; rescheduled from March 17-19).
