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Quote of Note
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak, and remove all doubt."
- Chinese Proverb
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NAB is coming!
We hope to see you in Las Vegas
 | | Look for the new Telos Alliance booth - it's the cool one with all the excited people gathered around it. |
As the year rushes along, it's hard to believe that in a matter of just a couple of short weeks, we'll be making the annual pilgrimage to the Nevada desert for the 2013 NAB Convention. Seems we were only just there, enjoying the sunny April skies, monorail trips and late-night Korean barbecue with friends.
This year, we're rested, relaxed and ready for Vegas, with our display booths buffed to a shine, our new products ready to unveil, and our carpet padding double-thick. Come see us, have a fresh cup of coffee and chat a while!
- If you're the Radio sort, come see Telos, Omnia, Axia and 25-Seven and our scads of phone, codec, audio processing and IP-Audio networking goodies in the Central Hall, Booth #C3007.
- On the Television side, you'll find Linear Acoustic with the industry's finest audio processing and monitoring technology for TV in the North Hall, Booth #N3438.
And be sure to mark your calendar for Wednesday, April 10, from 12 Noon to 2PM, when Omnia founder and Telos Alliance CEO Frank Foti receives the 2013 NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award at the annual luncheon in the Paradise Ballroom at the adjacent LVH Hotel (formerly the Hilton), which are "given to individuals for their significant contributions which have advanced the state of the art of broadcast engineering." If you're there, be sure to give Frank a high-five (but don't be surprised if your palm is covered with coal dust afterward).
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Get your knowledge on at NAB
Carroll, Harnack and Shay are at the lectern
 | | Get your smarts topped off with BEC sessions from Telos Alliance gurus. |
There's a lot of brain power at the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference sessions every year. We estimate that if you could harness all those MIPS, you would likely have enough energy to send a manned flight to Alpha Centauri and back (or to power Ryan Seacrest for about a week).
This year, the Telos Alliance has fielded an illustrious crew of presenters to lay some learnin' on you, including Linear Acoustic founder and Telos Alliance Chief Technology Officer Tim Carroll, Telos VP Kirk Harnack, and Chief Science Officer Greg Shay (yes, we love Star Trek. Why do you ask?) Be sure to add these dates and times to your "must see" NAB calendar:
- Tim Carroll will speak at two BEC sessions:
- On Monday, April 8, at 4:00 pm, he'll talk about "Practical Audio Issues for Mobile Digital Television" in Room S225/226.
- On Tuesday, April 9, at 9:30 am, the subject will be "Preventing CALM Compliance from Killing Audio Quality", in room S227.
- Kirk Harnack will speak Sunday, April 7, at 1:00 pm about "Audio Reliability over the Public Internet: Designing Robust IP Streaming for Outside Broadcasts, STL, and Program Distribution", in Room S227.
- Greg Shay talks about "Taking the Sting Out of the Evolving Digital Audio Networks" in Room S227 on Sunday, April 7 at 4:30 pm.
Bring a buddy and grab a seat - you won't want to miss these informative sessions. (Plus,we may have to rap your knuckles with a ruler if you do. It's in the by-laws.)
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Exactly how loud is "loud"?
Find the answer with Linear Acoustic's new LQ-1
 | | If your viewers' sets do this... your audio may be too loud. |
Long admonished as the cliché battle cry of overnight television infomercials and "as seen on TV" miracle products, the phrase "But wait, there's more!" has regained credibility thanks to the brand-new feature-packed LQ-1™ Loudness Meter from Linear Acoustic®.
OK, we're joking, but LQ-1 represents some seriously cool new tech. As you'd expect, it supports ITU-R BS.1770-1/2/3 loudness metering standards but we've also included Dolby® Dialogue Intelligence™ automatic speech gating which results in a metered value that not only agrees with standards and recommended practices such as ATSC A/85 and EBU R128 but accurately reflects listener perception as well.
Signal levels, measured loudness, and dialnorm metadata are always visible on the bright OLED display, giving instant verification of loudness compliance.
AES and balanced analog inputs are provided, or audio can be extracted from an applied HD/SD-SDI signal. The LQ-1 also features a TOSLINK optical input and can extract a selected PID from an applied MPEG transport stream thanks to DVB-ASI support.
The list of features doesn't stop there. LtRt or LoRo downmixed audio is available from AES and balanced analog outputs and a front-panel headphone connector. Metadata emulation and Associated Dialogue (AD or Visual Descriptive) mixing can also be auditioned on the downmix. Dolby Digital/Plus/E decoding and GPI/O support for alarms and control are standard, while a redundant power supply and SNMP for system monitoring or logging via Ethernet are optional.
But wait - there's more! (Fess up, you knew that was coming.) The LQ-1 is only 1RU high and sports a compact chassis, making it ideal for use in snug edit bays, and it's rugged enough to withstand life in an OB truck. It's also very affordable.
LQ-1 is shipping soon and will be displayed in the Linear Acoustic booth (N3438) at NAB 2013. You can also check out our website to find out more.
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News From the Field
Who's getting new gear?
- Cumulus Media Networks,
Miami, Florida - NEXT Media Group's WERV-FM, WCCQ-FM, WSSR-FM, WRXQ-FM & WJOL, Joliet, Illinois
- Entercom's WMYX-FM, WXSS-FM & WSSP,
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Omnia ONE AM makes AM sound AMazing at:
- Cumulus Media's KAYD, Beaumont, Texas
- Fort Wayne Catholic Radio's WLYV, Fort Wayne, Indiana
- Radio Panamericana's
JOVEM PAN, São Paulo, Brasil
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Get the NOW! catalog
100 pages of broadcast-y goodness.
Click here to get a copy mailed to you! |
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Radio Video
In these days of ongoing budget cuts at most international broadcasters, it's fun to look back at the golden age of the BBC. Here's an impression of twenty-four hours of an imaginary day in the life of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Great footage of vintage equipment in operation. The sound track consists entirely of the announcements, program music and the voices of artists and commentators and technical staff. Transmitted on the opening night of BBC Television Centre, June 29, 1960.
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NAB Passes?
We've got 'em for you
Believe it or not, NAB 2013 is just weeks away. April 6 - 11, 2013, are this year's dates, and as always we have complimentary exhibit-only passes for you.
Just visit www.NABShow.com and register for a FREE Exhibits Only Pass. Use these VIP Codes:
- If you're in radio, use the Telos-Omnia-Axia-25-Seven code LV4154.
- If you're in TV, use the Linear Acoustic code LV4168.
Be sure you have your registration in by March 22 to get your passes in time.
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"Hey, good lookin'... console!"
Axia shows up in photos from all over
We've been seeing Axia in photos everywhere lately - from smartphone games (see "Axia Enters Pop Culture"
in our last issue) to celebrity photo tweets. Recently, we received the photo above from Bob Page, Radio Broadcast Specialist at Universal Studios Orlando. You'll likely recognize actor and TV host Mario Lopez, and his lovely wife Courtney M. Lopez (Miss USA 2010), who tweeted the pic posing in front of that gorgeous console in the radio studios at Universal Studios, where they were shooting episodes of Extra!.
It's not the first time Universal Studios Radio has been in the news lately; their recent rebuild with Axia studio gear was reported on by Chriss Scherer in a recent issue of Radio magazine ( check out the article here
). These showcase studios play host to a huge variety of visiting radio hosts, who have the privilege of doing remote shows using Universal's gorgeous new studios.
 In the article above, photos were supplied by Jim Kuzman, Marketing Manager for the Telos Alliance's Linear Acoustic division. He's a whiz with the camera, and his photos of Universal Orlando are featured on the Axia Facebook page - check out the special photo gallery by clicking here.
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Tech Tip of the Month
Controlling an Axia Element console remotely with SoftSurface
 | | SoftSurface software lets you remote control Element consoles from a PC or Windows touchscreen tablet. |
A client who wishes to remain anonymous wrote us with this question: "I have a remote coming up and I would like to use SoftSurface in the field to control my Element studio console. Is this possible? If so, what port forwarding is needed at the studio?"
Axia software developer Oleg Krylov writes back: "To remote-control an Element from the field using SoftSurface, you need to open (forward) TCP port 2111 in your firewall or router. Nothing else is required."
One other note: SoftSurface can remotely-control any Element console, with either the PowerStation integrated console engine, or the Axia StudioEngine DSP mixing engine. But SoftSurface can also be used to create a "virtual console" by remotely-controlling a StudioEngine directly, without any physical Element console attached - great for small studios or OB vans - anyplace a full console is needed but space is minimal.
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Discrepancy Sheet
"Why do I need four speakers when I only have two ears?"
 | Telos' Clark Novak shows off a Quad
B.B. King Lp from 1974. |
All of us at the Telos Alliance share with our customers a fatal attraction to radio, as well as a passion for making great audio. But many of us have other hobbies and interests that might surprise you. From time to time, we'll profile members of the Telos Alliance and what they do when they're not inventing the next generation of broadcast audio gear.
Mention surround sound and most people think of 5.1, the digital standard for multi-channel audio in HDTV and HD radio. But for Clark Novak, the marketing guy in charge of the Telos and Axia brands (and a band of other retro techno geeks), surround sound also means Quad.
From the mid 1960s through the 1970s, four channel sound was the rave in high fidelity circles. There were FM quad broadcasts, quad vinyl, and four channel open reel and 8-track tapes. The pages of High Fidelity, Stereo Review and Popular Electronics were filled with reviews of four channel hi-fi equipment. By the late 1970s however, the quad movement had pretty well died off. What happened? Industry analysts blamed a lack of technical standards and poor marketing strategies.
"It was 1973 when I got my first quad 8-track tape of Simon & Garfunkel's 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'," recalls Novak. "Before that I was listening to a 1957 Magnavox system, so I went from mono to multitrack overnight, and bypassed stereo altogether." Today, he's got a collection of about 350 Quad Lps. For reproduction, there's a modest collection of gear, including some coveted Sansui QRX-series four channel receivers.
But one of the most rewarding parts of the hobby for Novak is bringing 1970s quad albums back to life on digital media, and he hangs out with a band of like-minded enthusiasts at QuadraphonicQuad, an Internet forum for multi-channel fiends. "Two of the three Quad LP formats were matrices that involved phase shifting," explains Novak. "Today, that technology is public domain, so you can take the matrix theory and translate it into scripts for Adobe Audition, and create quad DVDs. There's nothing like hearing vintage Carole King or Herbie Hancock 4-channel mixes through a modern home theater system."
If you're interested in finding out more about Quad, or modern 5.1 music technology, check out www.QuadraphonicQuad.com. "And if you happen to have an old Fosgate Tate II SQ decoder laying around," says Novak, "it's worthless. Send it to me immediately."
Clark Novak, Tom Vernon, Denny Sanders, Angi Roberson, Jim Kuzman and Wendy Tang
for Telos, Omnia, Axia, Linear Acoustic and 25-Seven
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About Us
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