Adding redundancy to your Automated Playout

Craig Arthur of Radio Royal Falkirk • January 11, 2019

A guest BLOG from Craig Arthur of Radio Royal Falkirk

A bunch of servers are lined up in a row

One day it’s going to happen, your primary Automation system will fail and hopefully your plan B (you do have a plan B don’t you?) will kick in and take over your station output, providing some branded output until you can fix whatever fault caused everything to fall over.

At Radio Royal we have a lot of pre-recorded content for when we are not live. Whilst we have relied on an Elan Audio REP-01 twinned with a Sonifex silence detector, that only gives us some basic song-song-jingle style backup. Now whilst that’s better than nothing, we also have some redundancies in our systems: we have primary and backup servers for our audio and SQL databases and have tools to keep them synchronised.

Audio is synchronised between the servers using Windows DFS (“Distributed File System”). For the Myriad SQL Databases, the primary server is set up as a “Publisher”, whilst the backup server is set up as a “Subscriber”. Any changes made on 1 server are written over to the other server in effectively real-time.

A screenshot of a sql server showing a list of databases

We already had the infrastructure to enable an entirely separate Automation systems running on the primary and backup servers. Our primary automation already ran on a virtualised server with Axia livewire used for the audio, although of course this could be any AES67 based AoIP solution which saves the need for hardware audio cards.

Given we have 2 Citrix XenServer boxes, we set up a backup ‘virtual’ Myriad playout instance on the second server. That instance of Myriad is set to use a child “Station” of the primary on air station all within the same Myriad Database. Every hour it will pull down the running order from its parent station which is the primary Station for the main automation instance. By doing it this way any voice tracks are also pulled over from the primary systems. As we are using SQL merge publication it’s not possible to use the main “station” in the database as it would be simultaneously in use with the primary Myriad playout instance and they would conflict with each other. This way, each Playout get’s it’s own copy of the log to work with.

A computer screen shows a playlist of music including latest from the sky never center

Next task is to swap over to the backup instance if the primary playout fails. We use Axia Pathfinder at Radio Royal for all our studio and transmission management. Pathfinder can monitor any Livewire audio source for silence or clipping. We have some stack events in Pathfinder monitor the audio levels on the primary audio feeds, should that be silent for 15 seconds then it will switch the Automation feed to the backup playout as well as send out an email alert. Once audio returns it is swapped back to the primary system automatically.

And of course, if it all goes pear shaped and somehow both systems go down, then the Elan Audio and Sonifex boxes live to fight another day!

A black box with the word rca on it
A red box with the word sonipex on it
By Liam Burke May 12, 2026
Cloud Playout Phase 1 – Winding Down We initially launched Myriad Cloud Playout, now referred to as Phase 1, in the Autumn of 2020 to provide a solution for stations launching in the throes of a worldwide pandemic that rendered a more traditional approach to launching a radio station impractical. At the time we outlined a multi-phased approach to developing the technology in a way that would provide an immediate solution whist paving the way for wider adoption and deployment at scale. Phase 1 (Cloud Playout)– Desktop playout running on hardware hosted at Broadcast Radio HQ. Initially this involved Myriad Playout running on physical or virtual hardware with full remote access via RealVNC and voice tracking & live control via Myriad Anywhere. All other function (Myriad Schedule etc) was done via remote access. Phase 2 (Myriad Cloud Dedicated) – Desktop playout running on datacentre based VM’s offering higher levels of power and connectivity resilience. This was coupled with an extension of Myriad Anywhere to provide true web-based functionality for all major elements of Myriad including Schedule, Admin, User Management etc. Direct remote access is still included via RealVNC to allow for administration of 3rd party applications, Myriad Splits and BR Encoder. Phase 3 (Myriad Cloud Native) – Complete cloud solution running natively on MS Azure without the need for Windows 10/11 host VM. Control over all functionalities including encoding, audio processing and all Myriad functions provided via web interface. Includes native integration with streaming and web players etc. As there is no host Windows PC/VM, there is no direct remote access and no provision to run 3rd party applications. As part of out ongoing commitment to provide the best technical and cost-effective solutions for our customers, we will be deprecating Phase 1 services over the coming months with the option for customers to choose whether to switch to Myriad Cloud Dedicated or Myriad Cloud Native. Which should you pick? We have already identified which Phase 1 customers will likely need to switch Myriad Cloud Dedicated and which have the option to switch to Myriad Cloud Native instead, although the ultimate choice will be with you the customer. Broadly speaking the main factors to consider are: You should consider moving to Myriad Cloud Dedicated if: You are using Myriad Split Playout If you are using specialist 3rd party applications (audio processor, encoder, logging etc) If you are using Myriad Logging on the same PC/VM You want to retain direct remote access for other reasons You should consider moving to Myriad Cloud Native if: You want to avoid issues caused by Windows Updates or hardware driver issues. You want to be able to manage all aspects of your station (including encoding, streaming, archive etc) from a single web portal. Want to be able to add and remove stations and share content between stations managed via your portal. Get seamless integration with web player and optional website CMS / mobile apps. Want to benefit from the reliability and scalability of MS Azure. There are benefits to both platforms and we fully understand that whilst we can make a recommendation, it is down to the customers choice which is the best route for them. In either case, we will handle the migration for you so that all your content is replicated to the new platform and the transition is as seamless as possible. Phase 1 customers will receive emails in the coming days outlining the options and inviting them to contact us for more information and to confirm their decision. Phase 1 accounts for a tiny percentage of our overall Myriad Cloud (dedicated and native) customers so the vast majority of Myriad Cloud users will not be affected. If you have not received an email in the next ten days then you are already on Phase 2 or Phase 3 and the ramp down of Phase 3 will not impact you at all. As ever, if you have any questions, please contact the Broadcast Radio team for more information.
Media player interface showing a list of tracks with
By Billy Billany March 17, 2026
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