50 MAYAH MERK II Portable Audio Gateway Codecs / Mixers for 51st Eurovision Song Contest

15th May, 2006. Hallbergmoos. Eurovision Song Contest has been the largest annual pop-music and media event in Europe for exactly 50 years. Current TV audiences for the show average 100 million people. This year the show takes place on 18th and 20th May at the Olympic Indoor Arena in Athens, Greece.

37 countries will send their best artists to take part in the competition. The scale of the technical preparations made for the project are huge.

To make the difficult job of national commentators and their technical teams easier, and to unify the support workflows MAYAH’s Portable Gateway Codecs MERK II was chosen by the technical supplier of the event TVN (Germany). The desktop devices combine the strengths of a powerful audio codec and a small digital mixer. Up to four professional microphones and headphone sets can be plugged into the MERK II. While still leaving analog and digital AES/EBU inputs and outputs free. MERK II can operate over IP, ISDN or X.21 networks using 15 major professional audio coding algorithms, including the entire MPEG range, Eapt-X and more.

Installed in every commentator’s booth, MERK II will transmit journalists voices over ISDN networks directly to the national TV channels control rooms.

“The choice of the MERK II Mixer / Codec as main transportation tool for commenting and editorial communications during the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 confirms the flexibility of our solutions. Moreover our colleagues and partners in many countries will see the highest compatibility of MAYAH codecs, easily establishing the direct connections to various devices of various manufacturers abroad. Current developments of MAYAH bring these stable solutions not only for ISDN but for all types of professional broadcasting communication over IP networks”, – says Detlef Wiese, one of the founders and CEO of MAYAH Communications.

About MAYAH Communications

The company’s main objective is the development and distribution of innovative hiqh quality solutions for audio and audio/video communications in broadcast and corporate networks. Focus is given to standardized audio and video formats, such as MPEG-1, -2 and 4 as well as proprietary but accepted formats such as E/apt-X, ADPCM4SB and others.

MAYAH started its operations at the end of 1997 and is a privately held company with its headquarter in Hallbergmoos near Munich, an R&D department in Flensburg and a worldwide distribution network.

MAYAH stands in close relationship with and is licensing technology from FhG-IIS, Coding Technologies, IRT, APT and others. Its customers are in radio and TV broadcasting as well as telecommunications, studios and ISPs.

For further information and images please contact:

Daniel Adasinskiy
Press & Marketing Assistant
MAYAH Communications GmbH
Am Soeldnermoos 17
85399 Hallbergmoos, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 811 5517-49
Fax.: +49 (0) 811 5517-55
E-mail : daniel@mayah.com
or check our press section at www.mayah.com