Audio stream arrangement

Abstract

Conference systems are often installed in plenary halls and comprise a plurality of microphones for participants of a discussion, whereby the speech signals of the participants are received by the microphones, amplified by the conference system and distributed to the other participants of the discussion. An audio stream arrangement () is proposed comprising: a plurality of audio devices (), whereby each audio device () is adapted to provide an audio stream and whereby each audio device () comprises an audio device network interface () for transmitting its audio stream over a network (), a control device (), whereby the control device () is adapted to send a command over the network () to any of the audio devices () to set the audio device () in an active state, whereby the audio device () in the active state transmits its audio stream over the network (), a processing device () for processing the audio streams from the active audio devices (), whereby the processing device () comprises a processing device network interface () for receiving the audio streams from the network () and a mixing unit () with a plurality of input channels () and an output channel (), whereby each input channel () can be assigned to a audio stream from one active audio device () and whereby the mixing unit () is operable to mix the audio streams from the plurality of input channels () into a common audio stream and to output the common audio stream to the output channel (), whereby the audio streams from the active audio devices () to the processing device are transmitted by a multicast transmission.