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Audio Division announces new procedures for the public to follow while staff teleworks

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Cassette tapes sales are back in fashion, with sales reportedly at their highest in more than 15 years, with annual growth outpacing even vinyl’s resurgence. To celebrate, tape manufacturer RecordingTheMasters is launching a Kickstarter campaign for a new portable cassette player, Mystik.

As all analog music formats continue to rise in popularity, cassette tapes now outpace all other formats — including vinyl — in consumer-market growth, more than quadrupling since 2011. Artists including Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Eminem, Jack White, Taylor Swift, Jay-Z and others have all released recent albums on cassette. This year’s recent Cassette Store Day saw RecordingTheMasters partner with New York-based Dala Records for a limited-edition mixtape.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

With the rise in demand for analog music cassettes, RecordingTheMasters states its new compact analog cassette tape is the first newly produced cassette on the market to offer high-quality audio in analog format. The cassette tape is manufactured using legendary chemical formulas from AGFA and BASF at the Mulann facility in Normandy, France.

RecordingTheMasters’ new Mystik portable cassette player will feature a revamped electronic board designed with former Thomson/RCA audio engineers with an emphasis on audio playback, Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity and a rechargeable battery. It will also feature a built-in microphone for quick start recording, a 3.5 mm-1/8-inch line jack for higher fidelity recording, a 3.5 mm-1/8-inch headphone jack and a transparent window showing the spinning wheels of the listener’s favorite cassette tape.

Expected to retail at $110 when brought to market, the Mystik portable cassette player is now available to a limited number of early backers for $78, bundled with a blank FOX C-60 high-quality audio cassette tape, during the Kickstarter fundraising period.

Info: www.recordingthemasters.com

 

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Røde’s new NT-USB Mini is a compact USB microphone intended for recording directly to a computer or tablet; the new offering is intended for podcasters, musicians, streamers, gamers and others.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

Built around a condenser capsule with RF shielding, the NT-USB Mini — which is 89 mm wide and 141 mm high —sports a directional cardioid pickup pattern to reduce room sound and other extraneous noise. A built-in pop filter aids reducing plosives and the mic also comes with a magnetic desk stand that attaches to an integrated 360-degree swing mount within the mic.

Besides the NT-USB Mini’s USB output, it also has an internal headphone amplifier with precision level control and switchable zero-latency monitoring via a 3.5 mm-1/8-inch headphone output, all encased in steel and reinforced nylon resin construction, finished in matte black.

It ships with a USB cable.

Info: www.rode.com

 

The post Røde Rolls Out NT-USB Mini Microphone appeared first on Radio World.

In response to concerns surrounding COVID-19, as well as recommendations from health organizations, radio groups and broadcast organizations have begun to cancel and postpone events. We will update this article as we learn about changes.

Please refer to our events calendar for information about other events, and email radioworld@futurenet.com if you have any announcements of your own.

March 13: Minnesota Public Radio has canceled all events March 14 through April 24. MPR says it will offer refunds and exchanges and will contact ticketholders about changes.

The Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters has cancelled its annual convention. The association says they will announce 2021 dates for the OAB Convention.

March 12: Spanish Broadcasting System Puerto Rico says it’s cancelled upcoming concerts and special events.

March 11: The National Association of Broadcasters called off its April NAB Show plans and announced it is considering its options. Colocated events, including the SBE Ennes workshop and the Association of Public Radio Engineer’s PREC 2020 have also been cancelled.

March 9: The 2020 edition of Radiodays Europe has been indefinitely postponed, according to an emailed statement from General Manager Peter Niegel.

Also, CABSAT has been rescheduled for Oct. 26–28.

 

 

 

The post Coronavirus Cancellations Announced by Broadcasters appeared first on Radio World.

The author is membership program director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, has become a focal point of the nation. Travel, education, sports and public events have all been impacted by fears of the virus’ spread. And with the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic, one can guess this situation is prompting a great deal of caution.

What is a radio station to do in the midst of a coronavirus outbreak?

For many outlets, automation and federal policy changes on studios have meant business as usual continues. For many others that welcome and interact with the community, the spread of coronavirus has prompted deeper questions about safety, service and trust.

The National Federation of Community Broadcasters issued a directive this week on COVID-19 response for radio stations. We address some of the key decisions before community radio stations in particular. The biggest issues boil down to relevance, engagement and your internal base.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: Four Top Fund Drive Fumbles]

What is a community radio station without trust? How can we say we are community oriented if we are not relevant to the lives of the listeners, donors and wider region to which we broadcast? As much as we at community radio stations may worry about our canceled events and hand sanitizer supplies, these questions are the major ones, because they speak to who we are and why we do this work.

While I have written many columns on this subject, the emergence of COVID-19 should push every community radio station to be in touch with and actively involved with local first responders. Every state, county and city has an emergency preparedness team, often composed of area leadership, police, firefighters and media. These teams want broadcasters at the table. In addition, they have the most accurate and up to date information available to share with audiences.

Being connected with your station’s state and county first responders will help you cut through the misinformation and outright falsehoods that circulate on social media and elsewhere. If you are a mixed-format, news, or music station, you’ll have to decide how you distribute information with your audience. If you don’t do a lot of news, perhaps this is a time to test fly, or maybe you will want to stick with public service announcements and website updates. The choices you make will be determined by your resources and availability of support to pull it off. Be realistic with what you can do, and don’t be afraid to rely on whatever emergency response infrastructure may be available to you locally.

Last but surely not least, your station will have to take a thorough but measured approach to your obligations related to staff and volunteers. Proper care for staff and volunteers includes all the stuff we have heard about: having hygiene and cleaning protocols in place; educating volunteers about not coming in sick or if they’ve been exposed to sick people; and being able to respond if and when absences come up. However, stations will also have to contend with more complex matters like sick leave, remote delivery of programming and having a team in place to help your station address an emergency as needed. You may also have to shift culture. Community radio tends to attract people who want to help and to be there in a pinch, but safety is paramount.

For community radio stations that have eschewed automation systems, COVID-19 may impress upon you to have contingencies. The reality is people will get ill or feel unsafe to come in, and finding a live substitute DJ may prove challenging. While there are free and open source packages like Rivendell, at the moment they may be out of the question given their learning curve as well as the immediate need a station has. How you handle this at your station is a priority.

Despite the wave of universities closing up, most college and community radio stations are doing their best to stay open. If your station has not been seriously impacted by COVID-19, today is the day to act.

The post Community Broadcaster: COVID-19 Concerns appeared first on Radio World.

One in a series of articles reporting on what the radio industry is telling the FCC about all-digital on the AM band.

Hubbard Radio has been test driving all-digital AM broadcasting on its WWFD(AM) just outside Washington, D.C., since July 2018. According to the broadcaster, the ride has been mostly a smooth one.

The company told the FCC it is fully supportive of a proposal to permit AM licensees — on a voluntary individual basis  — to operate in an all-digital format 24/7.

Hubbard says the MA3 signal of WWFD, which operates in full-time all-digital under special temporary authority from the FCC, has proven to be much more robust than the hybrid mode of HD AM broadcasting, and with improved signal coverage. The company says it has received positive feedback from listeners about the fidelity and reliability of their all-digital signal.

“In Hubbard’s experience, the data conclusively confirm that all-digital MA3 operation provides an improved, consistently high-quality listener experience, in terms of audio fidelity and signal robustness,” according to the group’s filing.

[Hear directly from Hubbard’s Joel Oxley in the recent RW webinar “Digital Sunrise for AM.”]

The station, which broadcasts at 820 kHz and is licensed to Frederick, Md., has seen ratings gains since launching the all-digital signal, according to Hubbard.

“WWFD broadcasts an adult album alternative music format. The station had no ratings in its home market of Frederick, Md., for the five years it was an analog station with that format, but now that it is operating in MA3, the station is ranked by Nielsen in the market,” it wrote.

Hubbard is using the MA3 technology to transmit auxiliary data and metadata to listeners of WWFD, it says. “The secondary and tertiary carriers of WWFD can provide stereo audio information, data services such as station logo, album artwork, and other artist experience information, as well as multicast channels.”

[Read: NPR Supports All-Digital on AM, With Caveats]

In addition, earlier reliability issues with the secondary and tertiary carriers on WWFD have since been resolved, Hubbard said. The station fixed the issues by “installing a replacement transmitter, a Nautel NX5, with a pulse duration modulator that runs at a sufficiently high rate to pass the secondary and tertiary carriers, allowing the full MA3 waveform to be transmitted.”

Hubbard says their solutions to the issue will be documented in detail in a forthcoming technical paper.

WWFD in December tested an HD2 multicast channel, according to Hubbard, transmitting musical track data and a station logo image as well. Future versions of enhanced EAS alerting will use the secondary and tertiary carriers to supplement the data transmitted on the Primary IBOC Data Service Logical Channel (“PIDS”) carriers.

“Hubbard believes that these continued improvements in the MA3 delivery system will mitigate any concerns about secondary and tertiary carrier issues, and that these technologies will continue to be expanded to better serve listeners,” it stated.

[Related: NPR Supports All-Digital on AM, With Caveats]

Hubbard also believes all-digital AM technology will help WWFD compete in the dashboard of the connected car.

It commented: “Trends in vehicle entertainment system receiver designs are converging on ‘tuning by visual metadata,’ where listeners select an audio program by pressing a thumbnail image of the desired program. MA3 allows AM broadcasters to have both aural and visual parity with other broadcast services in the automobile dashboard.”

In conclusion, Hubbard told the FCC the MA3 mode of HD Radio provides “far more manageable solutions” to any unintended interference with neighboring analog AM stations in the band when compared to the MA1 mode. In fact, WWFD “has never received any interference complaints from co-channel or adjacent channel stations,” it reported.

 

The post Hubbard Radio Backs Push for All-Digital Option on AM appeared first on Radio World.

People enter the Federal Communications Commission building in Washington. 

The FCC is shuttering its doors to visitors, effective immediately, as a response to the coronavirus, which was officially labeled a global pandemic by the World Health Organization.

The FCC said that for the foreseeable future, no visitors will be allowed into its facilities, with the exception of those receiving special permission from the Office of Managing Director. However, the FCC said that such permission will be restricted unless there is a clear operational necessity.

FCC employees have also been instructed to telework unless they cannot otherwise accomplish their work.

It will remain business as usual, however, as the commission plans to conduct its regular and ongoing work. It encourages those with business before the FCC to schedule necessary meetings by teleconference.

Consulting with the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, the Office of Managing Director and Office of General Counsel, the FCC will monitor developments regarding the coronavirus and implement new or ease precautions should circumstances change.

The post FCC Bars Visitors from Facilities Due to Coronavirus appeared first on Radio World.

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MB cancelled Forfeiture Order issued to Carolina Radio Group, Inc

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One in a series of articles this week reporting on what the radio industry is telling the FCC about all-digital on the AM band.

National Public Radio “generally supports” allowing stations to transition, if they wish, to all-digital AM transmission using HD Radio in the United States. But it believes the commission needs to go further on how it would handle interference complaints from neighboring analog stations in the band.

About 80 AM public radio stations are affiliated with NPR or receive operational funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including WNYC(AM) in New York City.

[Read: Small-Market Owners Caution Against “AM Stereo Situation” With Digital]

NPR says it has significant interest in any measures to help AM broadcasters better serve the public by improving the listening experience.

“Facilitating the expansion of HD Radio and its additional functionality for program and public safety information and services would serve the public interest, provided the transition to all-digital HD Radio operation does not cause harmful interference,” NPR wrote in comments filed with the FCC this week.

“As it has in the past, NPR supports the expansion of HD Radio, but not at the expense of current analog AM service.”

NPR goes on to note the “concerns of others in the FCC record” over the potential for interference. Discussion of all-digital on the AM band in the United States has often centered around worries over interference.

The broadcaster does suggest in its comments several ways the FCC can help mitigate the risk of harmful interference from all-digital deployment. “NPR urges it to collaborate with industry to monitor both the progress of stations that adopt all-digital AM and the effects of such deployment on all-digital stations’ analog neighbors,” it wrote.

[Read: NAB Is All-In on All-Digital AM]

“Second, NPR suggests that the commission consider periodically disclosing general information about the number of stations transmitting all-digital AM signals, the number and type of interference complaints it receives, and how such complaints were resolved to help stakeholders understand the full landscape.”

NPR acknowledges certain FCC policies might prevent it from disclosing specific facts about complaints it receives.

“Finally, NPR encourages the commission to issue a public notice on or about the first and second anniversaries of the effective date of any rules it adopts here, seeking comment on the positive and/or negative effects of any all-digital AM deployments.”

NPR, which produces, acquires and distributes programming to nearly 1,200 public radio stations nationwide , also agrees that adopting the NRSC-5-D standard for all digital audio broadcast operations in the United States is appropriate.

 

The post NPR Supports All-Digital on AM, With Caveats appeared first on Radio World.

Paul McLane is editor in chief of Radio World. Marguerite Clark is editor in chief of Radio World International.

The necessary and prudent decision by the NAB to move or cancel its big spring show obviously causes a lot of understandable questions and short-term uncertainty in our industry. We’d like to take a moment to explain what Radio World readers and advertisers can expect from us in coming weeks.

Our core ongoing mission is to bring together buyers and sellers of specialized broadcast technology, and to help radio industry engineers and managers advance in their jobs and careers by exploring key technical and business trends.

Those goals usually converge at the annual convention, which we’ve covered in depth for 43 years; that’s why so many of our stories and ads are created during the spring show season.

Our team members were already making plans around a possible show postponement. Now we are working hard to adjust RW’s familiar offerings to these unique circumstances.

The key point for us right now is that commerce goes on. We have no doubt that the NAB Show will return vigorously next year (and possibly in some form yet this year). But meantime, radio engineers and managers need to buy new products … trends that would have been discussed during the show conferences are still newsworthy … and manufacturers need to get their word out to professional consumers.

Radio World, as the industry’s leading radio technical brand, has a crucial role to play in coming weeks. We will continue and expand our coverage under our “Spring Show @ Home” initiative.

Expect us to continue to report on new products that would have been shown at NAB, while also exploring new ways to put them before you. Our Best of Show Awards program, webinars, and Sneak Peeks and Must See newsletters all will be offered in slightly modified form as part of the Spring Show @ Home series. If anything we feel these information channels have an even more important role than ever in helping shine a spotlight on new offerings.

All of these are being created with the idea of helping you to do your job — whether you are a user of technology, or a creator of that technology.

Meanwhile we also seek to cover the ongoing impact of the coronavirus on the industry in a responsible manner. And we want to hear from our readers as well as our advertising partners about how we can best serve you.

Thanks for bearing with us as we adjust our own processes to serve you best. Let’s face it, this is an unusual business situation. But like radio itself, the broadcast technology industry is vibrant, enduring and evolving, and we’re proud to be part of it. We welcome hearing from you on this or any matter.

Paul McLane
Editor in Chief
Radio World

Marguerite Clark
Editor in Chief
Radio World International

 

The post A Note to Our Readers & Advertisers appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters has created an online Coronavirus Response Toolkit to help broadcasters cover COVID-19 developments accurately and effectively. 

NAB added new downloadable COVID-19 public service announcements Thursday. The PSAs are available in both English and Spanish, and scripts are available to stations who want their own talent to read the information. 

Additionally, the toolkit features editorial guidelines, including lists of trusted resources and social media accounts to ensure stations point listeners in the right direction for COVID-19 information. 

“As COVID-19 impacts everyday life, it is important for broadcasters to communicate credible news and information to keep people safe and informed,” NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith said in an announcement about the coronavirus toolkit. “I encourage all broadcasters to utilize resources in the toolkit to help their local communities during this critical time.”

The toolkit also includes information to help stations mitigate coronavirus–related staffing concerns and to create internal plans to cope with disruptions related to the pandemic. 

The NAB also aborted plans for the April NAB Show Wednesday due to the coronavirus spread. The association has not yet announced whether it will reschedule the event. Some groups who had planned colocated events, such as Nautel’s NUG@NAB and PBS’ TechCon have cancelled their events, while others are formulating their own responses and deciding whether or not to postpone.

Visit the Centers for Disease Control’s coronavirus page for more information and the latest updates on the U.S.’ mitigation strategy. Learn more about social distancing and how it can help stop and/or slow the spread of diseases, per CDC recommendations.

The post COVID-19 Response Toolkit Now Available From NAB appeared first on Radio World.

The author is sales and marketing manager at 2wcom.

The way people consume media content is changing significantly. Like the expansion of IP, this greatly influences the convergence of media production and distribution units for radio, video and the internet.

Anke Schneider

Broadcasters therefore have the chance to adapt to the transitioning media-consumption behavior and use it to their advantage.

• Target group orientation: Keep in mind that besides the attractive younger audience, it‘s crucial to offer each target group the content they want, whether mobile or stationary.
• Cost and time efficiency: By treating a contribution as a cross-media project, the video, radio and internet units are no longer separated.
• Expand the value chain and encourage interaction: Cross-media content production and distribution means all playout sources can refer to each other. This leads to significantly higher coverage. Moreover, by integration on social networks, the opportunities of interaction with the audience increase. Both aspects include the chance of deploying new marketing formats.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES

Results of these developments include international projects such as 3GPP and 5G-Xcast. The latter is designed to build a universal and multidirectional IP network for efficient large-scale media distribution via 5G-Xcast. The project focuses on the dynamic switching between unicast, multicast and broadcast and also enables spectrum-efficient distribution of program content to a large number of simultaneous users with only one stream.

End users can receive reliable live and linear high-quality content without burdening their mobile data contingent. With a view toward the future, 5G-Xcast will allow national and private broadcasters to launch new on-demand formats or offer interacting facilities, besides classical linear content.

The transformation to cross-media production can only be achieved with a solid technical foundation. It’s important to carefully consider which approach best meets system requirements and the associated applications. For example, the best-of-breed approach is focused on using only those components per device that best meet the technical requirements. This method can be expensive and each eligible solution must be evaluated in regards to e.g. compatibility aspects or its compliance with the IT security guidelines.

A diagram of a cross-medial studio setup. The audio description contribution, Facebook commentary and radio contribution are produced in parallel, but separated from the video. A multimedia over IP network server enables for hybrid distribution of audio/radio content. Credit: 2wcom Systems.

Here are a few significant points focusing on interoperability and flexibility:

• Choose standards and protocols that optimally support respective use cases. The SMPTE ST 2110 standard is designed for cross-media production. In its structure, audio, video and ancillary data are separated, which allows for the ability of handling each one individually depending on the playout source. This is very practical, as SMPTE ST 2110 can receive all AES67 streams at a 48 kHz sample rate. It is interoperable with all common standards supporting pure audio/radio productions, such as Ravenna (distribution networks), Livewire+ (studio) or Dante (concert halls, conferences or studio). A specific application could be, for example, the audio description in a video, which helps blind and visually handicapped people aurally better follow the story. For this purpose, it’s sufficient to produce the audio content with one of the previously mentioned standards. Due to the structure of SMPTE ST 2110, the respective audio can be added to the stream, already including the video signal and ancillary data. Besides the flexible handling of different stream sources, an uncomplicated negotiation and management of all connections is possible for unicast and multicast streams because all relevant protocols are supported (SIP for unicast and RTSP/SDP for multicast). Unicast, for instance, makes sense in case of permanent point-to-point connections between studios. In order to be able to deal with advertising and discovery, connection management and network control in environments based on SMPTE ST 2110 and AES67, the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) has published the NMOS standard. Recently launched, this standard is constantly being refined based on technical real live requirements.
• Compatibility of audio algorithms can’t be taken for granted. Especially AAC profiles and Opus are implemented in different ways, which leads to incompatibility in regards of frame sizes. It is therefore important to put every manufacturer through its paces to ensure all possible variants of an audio algorithm are supported.
• Conversion of audio formats, protocols and standards according to the use case. That is, considered in terms of bandwidth economy, it makes sense to convert an audio stream for publication on a website from the high-quality PCM format to the compressed AAC xHE format. Or, to provide a stream not only for audio over IP networks but also for DAB+, it must be possible to transform from Ravenna standard to AES67.
• An intelligent content management of streams is essential, amongst others because the number of audio streams for a production is significantly higher compared to the number of video streams. It enables the combination of the appropriate elementary streams into logical groups. For example, Facebook comments mostly differ, so the “normal audio comment stream” is replaced with the “Facebook comment stream.” Hence, for further processing, you can select the relevant ones.
• Virtualization counts on scalability and maintenance. Most broadcasters want to be able to expand their networks as easy as possible, add new services with just a mouse click or mirror the configuration of one device to another. Scalability can be notably improved by using virtualization strategies. The possibilities that have been introduced by Docker or VMware to copy instances, take snapshots or run them across multiple hardware devices is a great improvement for scaling and maintaining networks.
• That has also a major impact on needed rack space. Thanks to virtualization, applications can share the same hardware or even run as a swarm across multiple hardware units with different hardware configurations. That reduces the number of devices needed, because server hardware has, in most cases, a lot more processing power than the specialized hardware of codec manufacturers. Thanks to AES67 and other audio over IP standards the requirements for real hardware interfaces are slowly disappearing and that is opening the door for virtualized solutions that are depending on an all-IP infrastructure.  With high bandwidth and robust IP lines audio processing in the cloud becomes possible. In consequence manufacturers have to pick up the pace and offer their solutions as virtualized software.

ENSURING TRANSMISSION ROBUSTNESS

There are various ways to ensure transmission stability. By standard software feature and/or protocol the SMPTE ST 2202-7 standard ensures dual-streaming of a generated IP stream. In the case of packet losses of the first stream, the respective packets can be reconstructed from the second stream. Another method is to transmit the stream in up to four different audio qualities.

In case of failure, the decoder switches to the next quality available. If unicast streams are sufficient for certain scenarios, SRT [Secure Reliable Transport] can also be used. SRT was originally designed for video, but supports audio perfectly, too. It offers a much better protection against packet loss than other FECs with low latency. Moreover, SRT offers encryption of the content.

An example of KroneHit’s cross-media radio election reporting with analyses and graphics for the homepage. In addition to radio and video, the station also integrated an online editorial team. Source: KroneHit, Austria

By device, this requires a logical concept that defines exactly how encoders and decoders should be cross-connected and when to switch to the backup device. In principle, this structure is similarly adaptable for all parts of a system.

In addition, hybrid distribution comprises not only an alternative source as a backup but also to increase coverage by reaching regions still lacking of IP or certain end customer devices like DAB radios. The possibility of using several sources in parallel means the produced content can be distributed via IP, FM, satellite or DAB.

The IRT’s 5G-Xcast project allows end users to receive top-quality linear and non-linear content with their 4G/5G-capable devices. Source: IRT Institut für Rundfunktechnik

By bandwidth and stream management, it is obvious redundancy by software does not come with low bandwidth and especially video streams are real bandwidth drivers. By using a SDN [software-defined network] controller the optimal path through the network is chosen for the traffic. In addition, an orchestrator handles the high number of streams.

Finally, synchronization in IP networks, and particularly audio syncs to the video, can be achieved by PTPv2. With parallel hybrid distribution via satellite this takes place via GPS using the 1pps signal.

The post Cross-Media Adoption Unites Media Production, Distribution appeared first on Radio World.

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