Industry News

Dan Slentz gets funky with Adafruit. Fred Jacobs reflects on the recent Consumer Electronics Show.

Paul McLane plays with smartphone apps. Lance Coon builds an EAS antenna.

And Frank Foti explains his new audio initiative called DejaVu.

Read it here.

The post Inside the March 2, 2022 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

“Real-time TV measurement” company iSpot has announced it is expanding its cross-platform viewing verification capabilities by agreeing to purchase a TV-viewing data analytics company known for its measurement of consumer viewing in public locations across the U.S.

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Since 2015, he has held the role of Market Manager for Cumulus Media‘s radio stations serving Little Rock.

As of today, he is now Regional VP of all of the company’s Arkansas properties.

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Expect to hear a lot more from Audacy about selling to “addressable” audiences.

The company has launched the Audacy Digital Audience Network, describing it as “an addressable aggregate of over 60 million listeners that other audio platforms and streaming platforms do not reach.”

Audacy local and national salespeople can use it when working with agencies and clients.

Chief Revenue Officer Brian Benedik said in the announcement, “The marketplace has moved to audience-based investment and our new ADAN offering is highly scaled with unduplicated digital listeners. We can target these audiences with precision and optimize campaign performance for better marketer outcomes.”

Audacy believes it reaches 200 million people every month and that 30% of them can be found on ADAN through streaming, on the Audacy app and on its podcasts. It says these audiences are more affluent, more likely to be college educated and more diverse than others.

“Through this high-performing audience solution, ADAN can target precise audiences at scale and deliver high-performing digital audio media strategies for Audacy’s advertising partners.”

The post Audacy Launches Addressable Audience Platform appeared first on Radio World.

Planning for the 2022 NAB Show is ramping up, and Radio World is asking exhibitors about their plans and expectations.

Gary Luhrman is sales & marketing manager at Inovonics Inc., which will be found in the new West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Radio World: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trend for radio professionals at the show?

Gary Luhrman: There is a great deal of movement in AoIP applications for broadcast radio. I have spoken with many audio engineers who seem to be very happy with the audio quality and impressed with the ease of setting up AoIP connections, provided of course the cabling and switches are solid.

Inovonics has been incorporating Dante-based AoIP ports in all our latest models. This enables a simple connection with other Dante-equipped devices and gives AES67 AoIP interoperability among a wide range of pro-AV products. Dante is generally also compatible with proprietary systems from independent manufacturers of AoIP-enabled products.

In our world of radio broadcast, for example, this could mean incorporating our SOFIA 568 HD Radio SiteStreamer+ in a broadcaster’s Axia Livewire Network. We have a white paper explaining the setup procedure on our website.

RW: What will be your most important news or exhibit theme?

Luhrman: We’re very excited to introduce our new 551 and 552 HD Radio Modulation Monitors to this year´s NAB. We’ve been working on these in the background for a good two years now and we are extremely proud of the finished products. We believe these mod monitors are truly compelling products for our industry.

Actually, we were going to present the 551 and 552 for the first time last year when the show was cancelled. The big advantage of presenting them now is that both are already in production and shipping. It has also given us more time to work with a valuable group of beta testers, who have provided excellent feedback to enhance the reliability of the firmware and functionality of the products.

So, interested customers can be confident that what they see on the show room floor at NAB is what they will get when they place their orders. And like most Inovonics products, we typically have product in stock for fast processing of customers’ orders.

RW: How is it different from what’s available on the market?

Luhrman: The 551 HD Radio Modulation Monitor is unique to the market with a high-resolution 7-inch TFT Touch Screen that displays all the essential FM and HD Radio modulation data for accurate readings in a graphic format. The touch screen also displays HD Radio album artwork, station logos and similar visuals.

In addition, all the essential information is remotely accessible from any web-enabled device through an interactive web interface. The 551 and 552 include a built-in BandScanner, a real-time clock and full SNMP functionality.

Full-time off-air program audio is available simultaneously as L/R-analog, AES3-digital and Dante-based AES67 AoIP streaming, all with adjustable levels, plus a multi-listener Internet IP stream and front-panel headphone jack.

RW: How has the lack of physical trade shows affected your clients or your own business?

Luhrman: The lack of physical trade shows and inability to safely meet in person with customers has required major adjustments for everyone. While we’re fortunate to have communications tools like Zoom, it is just not the same as shaking a hand and having a face-to-face conversation with a radio professional.

But we were all in the same boat and collectively have made business happen under the circumstances. I think Inovonics has managed pretty well by sticking to its core values and by anticipating some of the supply issues that have plagued many manufacturers. That is to say, we’ve managed to keep product on the shelf and broadcasters have responded to our fast deliveries, quality of our products, and excellent tech support.

Inovonics Booth: W4622

The post Exhibitor Preview: Inovonics at NAB Show appeared first on Radio World.

The author is co-founder of Telos Alliance and Syndicate of Sounds.

A number of years ago, 2003 or so, Steve Church and I had an idea to enhance HD Radio for FM. To our ears, the HD system for FM lacked a “wow” factor, as the conventional HD signal sounded very similar to the FM-Stereo counterpart.

Just as HDTV offered an incredible advance in visual resolution, we felt the listener needed to experience something similar, with HD broadcast audio. Basically, provide a significant reason why HD Radio was the next step beyond FM-Stereo.

At that time, the record label/audio industry was in the midst of promoting a couple of newer audiophile formats: SACD (Super Audio CD) and DVD-A (DVD Audio). Both of them allowed higher sampling rates, as well as offering discrete, linear 5.1 surround sound.

Record labels began reissuing older catalog material in newly produced 5.1 surround sound. Most were of the rock and classical genre, along with some box sets of complete album catalogs of well-known artists.

We found this exciting for a few reasons, as we were able to hear incredible recordings, by favorite artists, in a whole new light. Also, we got an idea of how to enable this on FM radio.

The new HD Radio platform was still fairly new, and looking for a means to attract consumers of the new tech. As mentioned we felt there was not a significant sonic reason why a consumer would be drawn to this — until we heard music in surround.

We’ve been very fortunate to have maintained a strong business and collegial relationship with the crew at the Frauhofer Institute (FhG), in Germany. On account of this, we learned they had recently developed a new method to transport 5.1 surround within a coded audio environment. This is known as MPEG-Surround.

A simple description explains the usage of the left/right stereo channels for audio transport coding, and at the same time data reducing the surround cues, which are transported alongside the main stereo audio. Then, during the decoding process, the surround cues will properly assign and derive each of the surround channels accordingly. This method provides discrete 5.1 surround and operates within a coded environment platform. The surround cues require very little data, normally around 5 kbps.

Given the data rate of the HD Radio system, MPEG-Surround was the perfect fit for FM broadcast. Automotive listening is the perfect experience for this, and it would surely add the needed “wow” factor to HD Radio, or so we thought.

Telos, along with FhG, built an operating prototype of this system, complete with demonstrations inside a BMW automobile at a couple of NAB Shows in Las Vegas. Anyone who heard the demo was blown away.

So, what happened?
Two mitigating circumstances negatively impacted this innovative idea: the record labels were too quick to pull the plug on producing more surround content, and broadcasters were reluctant to invest in the infrastructure changed needed to add this transmission method to their facilities — even though the Telos Alliance made this all easy and affordable via their AoIP tech, which allows 5.1 surround to easily coexist with stereo signals.

The lack of content was quite possibly the biggest challenge. It would have been very confusing to consumers as to whether their reception was stereo of surround.

Given all that has been expressed here, there has always been a concept that intrigued me. Would it be possible to render discrete 5.1 surround from existing stereo material?

Relevance to radio
This idea is not new, and there have been various upmixing applications available, which will output a “surround” signal.

Most, if not all, of these render surround using some form of simulation, or trickery to generate the added sound field. Most of them employ time delay, phase manipulation, reverb or switching to derive surround.

My goal was to develop an upmixer algorithm that operates in real time, without any of the aforementioned gimmicks — find a linear method that preserves original production integrity and creates discrete surround.

After much research into managing sound fields, I was able to develop a method that creates discrete surround, as it expands the original stereo stage into discrete Left, Right, Center, Left-Surround, Right-Surround, and LFE (Low Frequency Enhancement) or sub-woofer for short.

[Read More Guest Commentaries Here]

This method is now known as Déjà Vu and is marketed through Syndicate of Sounds. The accompanying image is a basic illustration.

The system has been vetted out by some of the biggest names in the recording industry: Gary Katz, Hugh Padgham, Frank Filipetti, Giles Martin and Jean-Michel Jarre to name a few. Each of them has provided the proverbial “thumbs up” to the tech.

So, how does this apply for streaming? Well, after all that background information provided here, it’s really very simple. All of the work done for the HD Radio application ports over 100% to streaming! After all, HD Radio is basically another streaming platform, except we’re not dealing with transmitters and receivers.

Instead of the need to rely on discrete produced 5.1 material, all we need is a great-sounding discrete upmixer for 5.1, and a transport mechanism, like MPEG-Surround, and we are good to go! For the consumer, just about any player app will automatically provide 5.1 surround if an MPEG-Surround signal is present. The players default to this now.

For the streaming installation, all that is needed is a transport codec that both employs the Déjà Vu upmixer and contains MPEG-Surround as a streaming selection. Basically, a stereo audio connection in, and the output is both stereo and surround, all neatly packaged in a standard streaming format.

For broadcasters who stream, this is an excellent way to add a truly amazing wow factor to your online signal, and it does not require any change to your existing infrastructure. Now all content can be presented in true discrete 5.1 surround.

As of early February, the Telos Alliance is finalizing a software update that will enable their streaming product to offer both the Déjà Vu upmixing function, coupled with MPEG-Surround for the transport stream.

Find out more about this topic at syndicateofsounds.com.

The post Déjà Vu: The Streaming “Wow” Factor appeared first on Radio World.

BOCA RATON, FLA. — A South Florida Democrat who in recent years emerged as a major proponent of legislation that would impose new artist royalty payments on broadcast radio stations in the U.S. has announced that he will step down following the Congressional recess for the 2022 midterm elections.

It’s a major blow to groups including musicFIRST and SoundExchange and perhaps a sign that the NAB-supported “Local Radio Freedom Act” has proven successful on Capitol Hill.

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The “streaming war” continues, with players like Netflix facing stiff competition from ad-supported and ad-supported hybrids such as Hulu and Discovery+. It’s a story the digital video PR machine churns out every day in a bid to declare victory over linear television.

While some believe the OTT story is overblown and a bubble could pop in just months, the ad spend for OTT seen in 2021 as determined by MediaRadar is something everyone in broadcast media should take note of.

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How vital is it for marketers to “bridge the gap” between linear television and streaming?

Just ask HDRadio and Tivo parent Xperi Corp., and a cross-channel TV advertising firm that has planned and executed successful TV campaigns for hundreds of brands.

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BOCA RATON, FLA. — The largest private owner and operator of communications infrastructure in the United States has announced that it has successfully issued $1.368 billion of tower revenue notes secured by its portfolio of 3,526 tower sites.

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