From Broadcast to Browser: Connecting Ravenna Audio to Open Intercom
Modern broadcast facilities are full of audio. Mixing consoles, stage boxes, playout systems, radio codecs, hardware intercom matrices — they all produce audio that lives on the studio network, moving around as professional audio-over-IP streams. At the heart of this is Ravenna and its interoperable sibling standard AES67 — the de facto standard for studio-grade audio transport over IP. Ravenna is what connects the console to the router, the stage box to the monitor system, and the intercom matrix to the rest of the facility. It is precise, low-latency, and deeply embedded in how modern broadcast infrastructure is built.
At the same time, browser-based intercom solutions like Open Intercom are becoming a viable alternative to dedicated hardware — allowing contributors and operators to join a conversation from a laptop or phone without any specialised equipment.
The challenge is connecting these two worlds. How do you bring audio from your Ravenna network into Open Intercom — and send the intercom mix back out to your traditional broadcast gear?
Open Intercom: A Browser-Based Intercom Built for Broadcast
Open Intercom is an open-source intercom solution built by Eyevinn Technology together with Nordic broadcasters. It replaces proprietary hardware intercom systems with a browser-based alternative — participants join from any web browser, with support for push-to-talk, multiple simultaneous calls, and individual volume control.
Because Open Intercom is built on WebRTC and open signalling standards, it is not limited to browser clients. Any audio source or destination that can speak WebRTC can participate in an intercom session — which opens the door to connecting it with virtually any audio infrastructure you already have.
Open Intercom is available as a managed service on Eyevinn Open Source Cloud, so you can have a production-ready intercom backend running in minutes without managing any infrastructure yourself.
Connecting Broadcast Audio to Open Intercom
Open Intercom exposes standard WebRTC ingest and egress endpoints — meaning you can push audio into it or pull audio out of it using widely supported open protocols. This makes it straightforward to connect a wide range of audio sources and destinations:
- **Professional audio-over-IP streams** (Ravenna, AES67) from mixing consoles, stage boxes, or hardware intercom matrices
- **IP audio codecs** commonly used for remote contribution and outside broadcasts
- **Streaming playout audio** from broadcast servers or radio automation systems
- **Any other WebRTC-capable source**, including softphones, browser tabs, or custom applications
The common thread is that you need a bridge — something that receives audio from your existing infrastructure and forwards it into Open Intercom, and optionally takes the intercom mix back out and delivers it to your broadcast gear.
Strom: One Way to Build the Bridge
One particularly flexible option for building this bridge is Strom, a visual pipeline editor from Eyevinn Technology. Strom lets you connect audio processing blocks together in a drag-and-drop interface — no coding required — and has built-in support for both professional broadcast audio protocols and WebRTC signalling.
For a Ravenna or AES67 setup, a Strom pipeline can receive a multicast audio stream from your studio network and feed it directly into Open Intercom. The return path works the same way in reverse: Strom pulls the intercom mix from Open Intercom and re-injects it onto your broadcast network as a standard audio-over-IP stream, where any compatible device can pick it up.
Strom is open source, runs as a Docker container, and can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. Pipelines survive restarts and can be monitored via a REST API, making it a solid fit for production environments.
The traditional intercom world and the WebRTC world have historically been separate. Dedicated hardware, proprietary protocols, and closed ecosystems made it difficult — and expensive — to bridge them. Open standards change that.
With Open Intercom at the centre, a broadcast facility can have a single intercom system that serves both studio operators on traditional gear and remote contributors on web browsers, without forcing anyone to replace their existing infrastructure. Audio from anywhere on the network can be brought into the conversation, and the intercom mix can be sent back to wherever it is needed.
Whether you are planning a greenfield IP facility, modernising an existing installation, or just exploring what is possible with open-source broadcast tools, this is a good moment to look at what Open Intercom can do.
- Open Intercom: intercom.apps.osaas.io
- Strom on GitHub: github.com/Eyevinn/strom
