Remote Access with Cris Alexander

Fewer engineers, responsible for more facilities - that gives rise to Remote Access to everything. Cris Alexander, Director of Engineering at Crawford Broadcasting, schools us about remote access, remote monitoring, and even making repairs and adjustments remotely. Plus David Bialik joins us for a look at the AES Expo in Los Angeles starting October 9th.

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Kirk: This Week in Radio Tech, episode 227, is brought to you by the Telos Hx1 and Hx2 Digital Telephone Hybrids. POTS line callers never sounded this good. By Lawo, maker of the new crystalCLEAR Virtual Radio Console. Intuitive progressive and focused. crystalCLEAR is the radio console with the multi touch touchscreen interface and by the line of Axia, IP audio consoles, intercoms and routing tools. Connecting to dozens of other brands of audio equipment. Only Axia connects to so much so easily.

Fewer engineers responsible for more facilities. Sound familiar? Well, that gives rise to remote access to everything. Cris Alexander, Director of Engineering, schools us about remote access, remote monitoring, and even making repairs and adjustment. Plus, David Bialik joins us for a look at the AES Expo in Los Angeles starting October 9th.

Hey welcome into This Week In Radio Tech. TWIRT, the show where we talk about radio technology. Anything from the microphone to the beacon at the top of the tower. I need to get my beacon back over here. It's over here in the corner of my office, but you know when I plug it in it just floods the room with red light. It doesn't look so good on television. I think I'll fit some smaller bulbs in there. And this is the show where we talk about technology, audio, R/F technology, how do broadcasters keep doing their jobs in tough economic times? Keeping audio quality high and always trying to get it better and such as that.

Sometimes we talk amongst ourselves and sometimes we have a guest. And today we have a guest. I'll bring him on in just a second. First let's bring in our usual co-host, the best dressed engineer in radio, from New York City, it's Chris Tobin. Hey Chris, hello.

Chris Tobin: Hello Kirk, I'm doing well and yes it's a nice day in New York City today. And next week we have the U.N. Sessions coming together so the neighborhood will be busy, chaos throughout. SO it'll be another busy normal day in New York. The only reason I say that is because this morning, as I was crossing the street and heading toward the subway, several vehicles drove by me that were just normal looking minivans, just normal family looking things with license plates from Idaho and Florida and Minnesota. However they had a small MagMount on the top of the roof top with a long wire and a little red plastic piece at the top and people talking into microphones. And it turned out to be the advanced crew for the diplomatic service.

Talked to a buddy at mine at a local precinct I say hey I've been noticing these vehicles with this particular recruitment on the top of the roof. He's like oh yeah, that's the advanced team. They've been here for the last week, so you'll see a lot of them running around the neighborhood.

Kirk: Interesting they look like mom and pop family minivans and they have out of state plates.

Chris Tobin: Yeah, yeah I know. It was just like wow you stand out like a sore thumb with a MagMount VHF antenna on top. So this doesn't look right and sure enough it was.

Kirk: I love to hear your stories about what you see in New York City when the UN is in session.

Chris Tobin: It is just, I'm telling you, the UN is in session, when the president decides to come to town and do a meeting with other dignitaries the amount of things that go on in advance is where the fun is. The day of the event, ah, routine. It's the advanced stuff. I have friends, I do have good friends who work in various federal agencies in law enforcement that do this kind work and some of the stories they tell me and some of the things they have to go through to, you know pretty much protect the dignitaries or protectees, both presidents, vice presidents, diplomats or whomever it may be, heads of states. It's just fascinating the things they have to look for or what they understand.

And when you walk around, whether it's New York City or Chicago, maybe even Los Angeles, or even Nashville. If you walk around and observe things the way they describe to me what they have to do, it takes on a whole different perspective. It's just like, wow, never thought of things like that. But it's a toughie though because they do close down streets and corral people to move certain way, foot traffic, pedestrian traffic.

Kirk: It would be so interesting to read their best practices.

Chris Tobin: I have read them. I can't leave the room with them, can't take pictures of them nor can I photocopy it but I have read a few of them and they're very interesting and it's pretty cool what they have to go through. I take it back it is very laborious what they have to go through. It is not easy and it does require a certain mindset and there are times when what they have to do to you and I would appear to be abrasive or wrong or insensitive. After reading the book you're like okay, I get it. I understand why. And it's a shame you can't really talk more about it because that really gives away your procedures to those that want to do nefarious activities.

Kirk: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Tobin: Definitely something you need to respect.

Kirk: We've talked about it multiple times, I wish we could do a whole episode on this but we'd probably have to bring us somebody who after he told us he'd have to kill us, so wouldn't work.

Chris Tobin: Right, right, yeah. I can neither confirm or deny that statement. Okay well, what about, that is the interview for the last 30 minutes. It's neither confirm or deny.

Kirk: Hey, listen we're short on time anyway for today so let's go ahead and bring in our guest. Chris Alexander. Cris, welcome in. You're the, are you the Director of Engineering for Crawford, do you have a title like that? Hey Cris, can you hear me?

Cris: That's right, Director of Engineering for the last 30 years, yes sir.

Kirk: Oh my goodness. Well, I don't see director of engineering on your title in your email so you're just very low key, hey Crawford Broadcasting. So tell me a little bit about Crawford Broadcasting, and by the way you and I have known each other I guess for over 10 years or so. I came to visit you a long time ago in Colorado. Tell us a little bit about Crawford and your role there.

Cris: Well, Crawford Broadcasting has been around since the 1950s. It actually has its roots back in the mid-1940s but in its current form, since 1959 and again I've been with the company since 1984. So just a little over 30 years now. We have 24 I think radio stations. So we're not a huge company. Right about 500 employees. We're in I believe 13 markets across the country, including Los Angeles where I seem to spend a lot of time, Chicago and Detroit and of course in your backyard there, Birmingham Alabama as well.

Kirk: Yeah, in fact your engineer there, Stephen Poole has been our guest. Hey Cris, we're going to disconnect and reconnect with you because we've got an enormous delay from your end so I'm just going to take care of that. In the meantime, yeah Stephen Poole was our guest in a show that I actually couldn't be here for. Chris Tobin, I do remember though that Stephen is quite the professional as are all the engineers at Crawford. Cris Alexander just seems to find really good guys and gals to do his engineering around the U.S.

By the way I want to point out a website, the engineering department at Crawford has their own page on the corporate website and so you can read about the staff there. What's really interesting, I'll give the URL. It's CrawfordBroadcasting.com/engineering.htm. So CrawfordBroadcasting.com and if you just go to Crawford Broadcasting there's an engineering link over on the left hand side.

Every month the engineers of Crawford Broadcasting submit a report and that report gets edited together into a newsletter. It's called The Local Oscillator. I've got to tell you folks this is some of the best reading in broadcast engineering that there is. You find out what projects are going on and how, this is key, how the engineers are handling these projects in each of their markets. And oh my goodness there's just a wealth of information there.

If you're not on their mailing list, and it's a publicly available newsletter, you can go to the Crawford Broadcasting engineering web page and there are all the back issues there going all the way back to 2007. So these would make good reading, they're PDF's, so they're easy to put on a tablet or a portable device and you can also search. If you want to look through their newsletters for something to do, say with a Burke remote controller or a Tieline Codec or an Omnia Processor, you can do that and see how things went smoothly installing it. Or some challenges that they had when troubleshooting it. Good, good resource. Chris Tobin do you happen to get this publication?

Chris Tobin: Yes. I've checked out the website and I've checked out a few of the P.D.F.s and they're very nice. And it's a shame we don't see more broadcast companies doing this kind of thing. I'm reading a book on the history of Bell Labs and innovation and I think next week I'll bring back the book and a few highlights about it and it's interesting, some of the things I've read in that book which date back to the 30s, 40s and 50s and to current date, Crawford Engineering seems to employ on a cursory level. So it's interesting to see where successes and failure take place and how they almost mirror what the Bell Labs folks did back in the day before things were even thought of, before quality control, before a lot of stuff we take for granted today, they developed the systems that we now use and take for granted.

Kirk: I want to bring us together on a point of commonality. There's a picture of Cris Alexander at a mountain pass and this picture has been all over the internet and in Radio World Magazine. Cris, tell us about this picture at Engineer Pass.

Cris: Well, Engineer Mountain is a peak in southwest Colorado down in the San Juans and since I was a little kid, we've been going to this area just about every summer. Even when I lived in Texas and we ATV this area, we Jeep it, we do whatever but we always go up and over Engineer Pass and there's a sign there at the top that says Engineer Pass, 12,800 feet so we always get a picture of Amanda and me leaning against a sign. Where else would you expect to find an engineer in Colorado except Engineer Pass, right?

Kirk: Exactly, so we were just chatting about The Local Oscillator. So how did this get started? And man you must edit this thing every month and what a great resource. And tell me about what keeps it going and how it got started.

Cris: Well, it got started back in the 80s I guess and I really developed it as a means for our engineers to share information within our company. At the time it was kind of low key. We only had six markets and half a dozen engineers or so, so it wasn't a big deal. We didn't have a whole lot of content. But it was kind of nice if a guy in one market was having trouble with a continental transmitter for instance, he'd write about it and the other engineers in the companies would see that and maybe they'd have something to add to that.

Anyway, Don Crawford the President of our company saw it and said that's a great idea, you should keep doing that. And it grew as we grew and somehow or another distribution started growing. It was just something that was mailed out and then probably the last 10 years anyway we started distributing it via the internet as P.D.F. and now I have no idea how many people read that. I'm guessing in the thousands. It's linked all over the place. I get emails all over the world on the thing.

Paul McLane did a little feature, I'm looking at a framed copy of it now on the back wall over there. It says Cris and The Local Oscillator. He probably did that 10 years ago and I appreciate that very much. He had some nice things to say about it and probably since then a lot more people have been reading it. And again I get emails from all over the world. So there you go. I should sell ad space.

Kirk: How was it distributed before the internet?

Cris: It was a mailing list and we had a list of 20, 25 people so we just ran our copies. And it was formatted so we stapled it together, folded it in half, put a little sticky on there, slapped on a mailing label and off it went.

Kirk: Ah, so not an envelope, just fold it in half and put a mailing label on it.

Cris: Yeah, in traditional junk mail style. It worked great.

Kirk: So you've got these, you've got 26 stations in what, seven markets? Is that how many cities?

Cris: No, I think it's, I think it's 24 in 13 markets.

Kirk: Oh, 13 markets. Okay.

Cris: Actually we may be 14 markets now. We just added San Diego.

Kirk: Ah, okay. I miscounted, sorry. So we were talking before the show about remote access. And this is becoming a necessity for engineers such as yourself or any engineer that covers geographically diverse stations. Tell me your thoughts about remote access. What are some of the things that you feel are absolute necessities to make sure you have remote or somebody has remote access to at a station operation.

Cris: Well, let's just use this Denver cluster as an example. Amanda Hopp, my daughter, she's been the chief engineer of this cluster for over the last seven or eight years I guess. And you know, there's five, five total sites with this cluster. There's day sites, night sites, of course studio locations and all of that. And the reality is when stuff happens, it tends to all happen at once. For instance, we get a big storm through here, we get a blizzard through here. And there's no way she can make the rounds, she can get around to fix these various things. So we have really placed an emphasis on remote access, remote control. And I'm not just talking about a Burke or [inaudible 00:14:46] or whatever remote control.

I'm talking much deeper than that. GUI interfaces with the transmitters, BNC kind of things at the transmitter sites. And we've linked all these things together with Part 101 microwave links that give us fairly high bandwidth paths to each of these sites. And so they actually are part of the studio network. And so now let's just rest and say we got a storm go through here, we got three stations that are down for various reasons. She can, from the comfort of her living room using her iPad tap into those things and figure out what's going on. And a lot of time she can correct those.

And we do this all over the company, although we haven't done it everywhere yet. Some places need it more than others, some places are simpler operations and we just don't really need it as badly. But this also gives me an opportunity to keep an eye on things for instance. I can log in and look at transmitters. This means the voltage and current power percentage. I can actually go in and look at the module temperatures for instance and see what's going on in there. I can look at the software room engine, I can look at the audio levels. I can look at the sub carriers, I can look at all these things from here.

And I try not to mess with things because that messes with chief engineers in the fields. I'm more likely to look at something and if I see something I missed then I would contact the chief engineer and say hey you need to fix this or do that and then let them take care of it as opposed to me messing with it from here and then the engineer wondering, gee I wondered what happened. You know, this changed since the last time I was here.

But this is the world we live in and I think this technology, since it's available I think we should use it, we should make a point of using it and it not only makes our job easier, it is economical and it really provides for a fast response time in an awful lot of situations.

Kirk: There we go. I want to get into more of this in a few minutes. More of the specific techniques that you use without giving away company secrets or anything. If you're using VPNs among sites, if you're all in the same virtual network and that type of thing. But first it's time to take a break and hear from one of our sponsors.

You're watching the 227th episode of This Week In Radio Tech and this is brought to you in part by the folks at Lawo. L-A-W-O and Lawo.com. And they are the maker of the crystalCLEAR Virtual Radio Mixing Console. And I saw this thing NAB, and it's cool, it really is. Mike Dosh is doing a demo of it, you can see that on the website if you go to Lawo.com and go to products and radio consoles and then click on crystalCLEAR. You'll see this page that Andrew is showing you right now.

The basis of the console is it's a rack mount DSP engine and that's where all your audio goes into and comes back out of. And that's where the RAVENNA and AES67 functionality comes into and out of as well. But the actual control surface is a multi-touch touchscreen. It's being run by a small computer. Actually the computer's built into the back of the touchscreen. And multi touch means that you can touch several faders at once. You can be sliding two faders up and down and hit an on or an off.

There's Mike Dosh describing how the console works. That video is linkable on the same page we're looking at here. And the, since the console is all software set up, it's all software defined. You get context sensitive buttons. So when you are in a given mode you push a button and it pops up the things that you need to know about right then what that button can do. It doesn't lead you down a rat hole of other functionalities that you don't want or don't need to mess with.

So that's a very cool thing. The faders again are all on the touchscreen. It does have three stereo mixing groups. Program one, program two and a separate record mixing bus. Integrated CUE or PFL, prefader level with metering, they have programmable scenes in there. So you have maybe a talk show in the morning, music shows in the midday, you can adjust how the faders work and what sources are coming in on those faders in each of those day parts. There's a panic button that clears any changes back to the current scene so if you fat fingered something on the touchscreen, you can get right back to where it should be.

Advanced DSP for microphones. It'll let you set up with an auto gain, it will let you set up for each individual talent. And different mics have different output levels, and certainly different people using the mics have different output levels so you can press the auto gain while the person is talking and the preamp gain will be set optimally for that speaker and that microphone. Of course it has analog and AESEBU inputs and outputs, an optional RAVENNA AOIP interface. And that's AES67 compliant. Power supply redundancy and even GPIO for ON AIR lamps and for cutting the speakers off and things like that. Amplified headphone outputs are part of the deal as well. And there you go.

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All right, this is episode 227 of This Week in Radio Tech, our guest is Cris Alexander, Chris Tobin is along and we were just getting ready to get into a little deeper on the remote access thing. Cris, I have some stations in Mississippi and American Samoa. My remote access consists of either using TeamViewer or using VNC, and I've got ports, odd numbered, crazy port numbers forwarded and translated into various P.C.s and other pieces of hardware there in Mississippi and in American Samoa. To me that's not a really elegant way to do it but it works. I don't have a VPN amongst myself and those stations. Tell me a little bit about your best practice. How are you guys getting these things connected?

Cris: Well, if we have the infrastructure in place, again we use Part 101 licensed broadband microwave links. And it works out just like having a piece of CAT5 wire from a central hub, say the studio, and all the transmitter sites. And so they end up being on a network at the studio, and we generally set these up on a separate network and we employ a software firewall, something like ClearOS to keep the bad guys out and to take care of port forwarding and so forth, and that also gives us our way in from the outside world.

For instance we would just connect with a browser to an IP address and a port that then is forwarded to a particular device. Maybe it's a translator, maybe it's a codec, somewhere in the facilitator. Maybe it's an Omnia. By the way we have our Omnias on this thing as well so we usually get directly into the user interface of these devices and that's the best way we do it.

In other markets we don't have the infrastructure in place and instead we rely on the public internet. And then we would have an internet connection at the transmitter site and have another one at the studio and then we would employ port forwarding on a router to get us there, and use a hardware firewall and a router. And again that's a little bit inelegant, but as you say, it works.

Kirk: Got you, got you. For my remote access, I just have to keep a whole list of shortcuts for various places. Is there something that maybe I should try that would be a bit more elegant than that? And by the way I also use a lot of, since we don't pay for static IP addresses, or when we do they don't seem to be very static, I use NoIP.com to always have a persistent U.R.I. to get to someplace. Is that a good option or should I look at something a bit more elegant?

Cris: Well, I think it just depends on where you are and what's available. I just spent the last couple of weeks in San Diego. You would think San Diego would have a little better infrastructure than it does but I had the hardest time getting stuff to work down there and AT&T was about my only option, at least in the area where I was working and they do things a little differently when it comes to static IPs. You can buy a block of five and they'll give you your block of five, they'll give you your gateway, they'll give you their DNS and pretty much it's like you're on your own, goodnight. And you're left to figure it out on your own. It's a little difficult sometimes.

And I actually had to make a trip back there, I ran out of time last week. And I just got back again yesterday after making a trip back out there to finish things. And I had to figure out their router and so forth, some things that we would think let's put the router in the bridge mode so we can then use our router to do all these, all the heavy lifting. Except they don't have a bridge mode. If you dig deep enough you find something called IP pass through. And if you enable that in a certain way with a certain number of options, things start working.

But you need good static IPs and in various places, they're more available. Like here in Denver it's great. I guess Denver is pretty cutting edge in terms of technology and we just don't have any problem at all getting static IPs, and they're not just sticking they're stuck and so we don't have any issues at all from here. But other places you do. You kind of have to improvise.

Kirk: Chris Tobin, let's have you ring in. Tell us about remote access that you help people set up.

Chris Tobin: I try to avoid background noise for everybody.

Kirk: I know we're so polite here with our mic muting.

Chris Tobin: I have to get a cough button. For remote access I do a case by case. I agree with Chris, static IP is definitely the best way to go. But some cases you don't have that luxury so you have to do a dynamic D.N.S. approach like you say, NoIP and a few others that are out there. The hardest part with remote access is providing the proper security and making sure you don't make it much of an elegant solution and all of a sudden becomes a set it and forget it, people start clicking box that says remember where I've been last. So I tend to use VPN application that require a timeout so if you walk away from your computer, no activity, no data transfer's taken place logs you out. That kind of thing.

Cisco has some nice what they call quick VPN for their products. So if you're using a Cisco appliance it works out well. Or you can do Open VPN, set up a complete system with that. It's, it really is a case by case, as Chris pointed out. You know they've got a Part 101 link that connects everything so they can do a lot with that. But then their locations they don't have that luxury, they got to rely on the internet or maybe other methods. And that's when you have to really be careful.

So that's what I've been doing. I mean here at the office I've got a VPN appliance and I set everything up and I can just use any computer I want with a little U.S.B. key I have and pop in, get my VPN tunnel and whether it's a hotel, airport or somebody else's office I'm off to the races.

Kirk: Got you, got you. Cris, any more thoughts, any of your engineers in the various cities come up with other interesting remote access ideas? I guess a lot of times our best ideas come from people that work for us.

Cris: A lot of times they do. And I got to tell you I lean heavily on our Birmingham crew. Those guys are phenomenal. They're IT experts in every sense of the phrase and I don't pretend to know a whole lot about IP, but I do make a lot of phone calls to Birmingham when I'm on the road and those guys are really, really good at helping me at that. But no, I can't really say I have any other tricks. I will say this. This is a trend I've noticed over the last few years and probably a lot of people have too. As technology advances, as operating systems progress, as we make things smarter, we're making them harder.

Just this last week, as I was dealing with some of this San Diego stuff, I was using various [inaudible 00:28:56] that years ago you'd pop into a configuration screen that you'd pop into a Cisco router for instance and it was no issue at all to set up port forwarding and so forth. Now it's hard to even find that kind of thing on the menu. It's in there, but where is it? You know and I find them in weird places. And the same can be true for just changing an IP address on a computer. It was fairly easy on an X.P. machine. It took an extra step or two on a Windows 7 machine. I don't even know how to put in Windows 8. Good luck, I'm sure it can be done but I'll let Stephen and the guys or Amanda down the hall make those IP address changes. Anyways that's the trend that I've found and it's just really hard to stay up on top of this and I just find myself wasting a lot of time, a lot of my time learning things that are probably going to change before I do it again. So just an observation for what it's worth.

Chris Tobin: Oh, looks like we may have lost Kirk. I don't know. Well, any case, we'll continue on with the conversation. So with remote access, I'm curious do you find that a lot of time it becomes a crutch for some of the engineers in the group and they do it more often than they probably should? I know when I worked in a couple of radio station network groups, the IT guys I worked with, they do a lot of remote access and it started to cause problems. Because they would just automatically assume oh we'll just dial in from the restaurant we're at or we'll dial in from the beach or some other location. It's not really the best place for focusing on a problem. Do you ever run into that or have you, maybe no one talks about it but I'm just curious if that's something that comes up in conversations amongst the group?

Cris: I'm sure it happens. I haven't really run into it first hand, and I'll tell you why I think. It's because our guys are so busy they don't have time to goof off and you know, use remote access as a crutch. Instead, it's a tool. It's almost like I could walk or I could drive the car, but I really don't have time to walk to get there so I'm going to use the car every time. So they do use the remote access every time if it's available to them.

Of course they're expected to follow up with an in person visit, especially if there's something that looks like it needs some kind of personal on site attention. But they're so busy with other things, and you know what I'm talking about here. We expect people to do more and more with less and less all the time.

I just think back well 30 years ago when I was doing allocation studies and so forth, I would fill up a whole legal pad, not a page but a whole pad with calculations for doing a night limit study or whatever. And it would take days to do something like that. And now I do it with just a couple clicks with my computer and it spits it out to the printer and I'm finished.

And the same is true in the field with broadcasting engineers. Thinks we used to spend a day working on now can be done a lot of times with a few clicks on the screen. But we have more stations to deal with. Instead of having one station, maybe two, some of these guys have five, maybe six stations to deal with and so they're just really, really busy and I just haven't really observed them using this as a crutch. It's absolutely a tool. Now that may change, but for right now no sir, it's not happening.

Chris Tobin: I wasn't implying the guys were goofing off. I totally agree, I've been there I know what it means to do a lot of work and be tasked with doing more with less. I get that, I was just curious if you ever run into situations where the guys would just be like well I could probably do it this way but that's cool. Your explanation, your answer was exactly what I expected and I'm not looking to, you guys, I should say Crawford Broadcasting company, the corporation, when I met engineers around the country from your group, they are very focused, they know when to play, when to work, and they know how to draw the line and I was just curious if you ever ran into situations where guys were forced to use remote access because they were running between things.

But that's cool, I wasn't implying anything negative to the guys and I've met a few of them and they're really sharp folks and I applaud the way you're running the group and the atmosphere you're creating, it's spot on. Kirk, you there?

Kirk: We've got time for about one more question and I'm curious as to, what Cris, what you think is going to be happening in the future for technology and your group of radio stations. is there a technology we're using now that you just see as you know, blossoming even more and moving on ahead. Whether it's H.D. radio or IP technology or streaming or SIP or something we haven't even talked about yet, and where do you see engineers needing to focus their time, attention, and learning over the next few years.

Cris: Well, we're certainly into more and more IP world so a lot of, especially us old school guys you know, we learned on Cartmaster cart machines and reel to reel tapes and we actually had turntables, things like that. And here we are having to learn things like subnets and VPNs and acronyms, things that go with it.

So of course, a lot of the guys are really going to have to make an effort to learn those things. And there's been some resistance to that. Even within our own company a little bit. And it's not been overt resistance, it's just things that these guys don't really understand and so they're a little afraid of it and if they have a resource they can lean on sometimes they'd rather use that. But for the most part what's been pushing me [inaudible 00:35:22], they really take off.

But to really answer your question certainly, audio over IP. We're heading that way company-wide here. We're already that way to a large degree, but we're really going to expand on that in years to come. And so these guys are going to have to learn it's a whole new world. Instead of a whole bunch of audio ins and outs, it's all here we go again, IP addresses and cats fixed cable.

Kirk: Well, you're talking to two guys who have done a lot of that. Both Chris Tobin and me, and of course yourself too, along with your group. That's awesome. We're going to need to wrap up this part of the interview. Cris Alexander, Crawford Broadcasting, I sure appreciate you taking the time out to talk to us and I hope you don't mind if we end up chatting with a few of your market engineers over the next few months as well.

Cris: I think that would be great. I think they would very much enjoy visiting with you and they have some ideas to share that are probably better than my own. So feel free to grab any of them.

Kirk: Alright, Well, I look forward to it, see, hey will you be at either SBE or AES in the next few weeks?

Cris: No, you probably won't see me again until April.

Kirk: Well, I'll see you in April then. Hey, our show is brought to you in part by the folks at Telos. Telos Hx1 and Hx2. By the way, I want to encourage you to stay tuned. David Bialik is coming up next with our interview about the AES show in Los Angeles, a little bit about how you can get in for free and what some of the cool sessions are if you want to educate yourself as to what's current in technology, stick around for that.

The Hx1 and Hx2, these are POTS hybrid, I know POTS sounds like old fashioned technology but my goodness it's still everywhere. And I just got a really nice note from a guy name John Harper. John is the morning talent at the Relevant Radio Network and he sent me this on Facebook just actually this morning. He says Kirk, quick note as I host Morning Air from my home studio on Relevant Radio Network of stations.

I have a guest on the air right now going through my Hx2, that's a dual line POTS hybrid. I continue to be astounded by the quality of the Hx2. Wow, these are John Harper's words, I can't imagine doing a morning show without Telos. In fact, he says, I had a Telos Delta 100 written into a contract a long time ago before he worked at a station, they had to have a Telos Delta 100.

Well, the Delta 100 was like a third generation hybrid. The Telos Hx1 and 2 were 5th generation hybrids. We've made two more sets of improvements on the telephone hybrid technology since back in the Delta 100. One of the things people like about the Telos Hx1 and 2, it's economically priced. They're really low priced hybrids and especially if you buy the Hx2, you get two hybrids for under $1400 U.S. and that's the list price. So they'll probably be a little less than that at your favorite dealer. The Hx2 will not only handle two individual POTS line but it can conference those two POTS line together. You can hook it to your console in such a way that the console either is providing two mix minuses to the two callers, or if your console can only provide one mix minus to the callers, then the Hx2 can conference those two together, letting each one hear the other along with the mix minus.

Now that may sound like gobbledygook if you don't know what a mix minus is but trust me, it's a great and easy way to connect two phone lines into your audio console if you don't need a big full six line or 12 line talk show system.

So each of the hybrids, each of the Hx1 and Hx2 come with dynamic E.Q. and that means it has automatic bass and automatic treble controls to try to keep the callers sounding similar in timber from call to call to call. Also it has Omnia audio processing in it and this makes the caller levels consistent call after call after call. You can have a 10, 12, even 15 dB variation in the actual the caller level and they'll come out just about the same from the caller output on the Hx1 and Hx2. You can get these with analog inputs, that's the standard way. But you can pay a little bit more and get an AES adapter card that goes inside the box and will let you feed AES audio in and out of your Telos hybrid, the Hx1 and Hx2.

There's one more feature to be aware of. These are designed to work in any country in the world. Yeah I know POTS ought to be POTS anywhere in the world, but guess what? The beauty of standards, there's so many of them. And this has set ups for something like 70 different country for the small variations in POTS battery voltage, the period of time that something can go off hook before the dial tone appears, how long is a hook flash, all kinds of things like that. Also auto answer is built into these. Let me encourage you to check them out on the web at Telos-systems.com and look for the Hx1 and Hx2 Telephone Hybrids.

Chris Tobin, thanks for being here. Also Cris Alexander, if you're still here I really appreciate you being here as well. We're going to move in now to an interview I did with David Bialik just yesterday about the AES. So Andrew, if you're ready, let's roll it.

Hey, welcome back to This Week in Radio Tech, I'm Kirk Harnack and I'm joined by a guy that almost everybody knows because he knows everybody. Let me present, ladies and gentleman, David Bialik. Hey David, joining us from your office in New York, hi.

David Bialik: Hi Kirk, how are you?

Kirk: I'm good, I'm good, glad to see you. And you join us every few months to talk about the Audio Engineering Society and what is coming up and my goodness, you've just outdone yourself again. You've put together a broadcast and streaming media track at the AES in Los Angeles. I don't mean to steal your thunder but you have plenty of thunder left. This is just amazing the sessions you've put together. Anybody in broadcast and interested in streaming media heads up right now, perk your ears up, perk your eyes up, listen to David Bialik as he tells us what's going on. David, it's all yours.

David Bialik: First off, this session, this track has been going on for well over 20 years. I basically said we need a convention that's going to have a place where we can get educated instead of just sit through sells presentations and everybody dared me to do it because no one wanted to and somehow I started doing it and for 20 years now I haven't been able to get anyone to take over. So this is my passion, unfortunately I can't figure out a way to make money doing this. But we have a really good track and if anyone wants to they can go to AESBroadcast.com and it'll take you directly to the broadcast and streaming track of the Audio Engineering Society convention.

Kirk: Let's repeat that, AESBroadcast.com.

David Bialik: dot com.

Kirk: That just links you to the regular AES site but the right page is there.

David Bialik: Correct.

Kirk: So AESBroadcast.com, bookmark that.

David Bialik: This year the convention's going to be in Los Angeles and it's going to go from Thursday October 9th to Sunday the 12th. I had to check to make sure it was the 12th. And we have some amazing sessions. I'm just going to go down the list and tell you about some of the amazing people that are participating in these sessions.

Kirk: I want to emphasize, we throw the words around like awesome, amazing, incredible, these really are amazing. I want to emphasize amazing. The best people in the industry are sharing and participating in these panels and making demonstrations and talks and white papers and it's all, this isn't you know, technology from five or ten years ago. This is all what's happening on the cutting edge right now, what engineers need to know.

David Bialik: Okay, first session and all the sessions are started with a B, so session B1 is Facility Design: To Move, or Not to Move? Contrasting Solutions--Two West Coast FM Stations Address Shifting Listener Needs. Now the people on this session, you have John Storyk of Walter Storyk Design Group and you have Eddie Kramer. Think about it for a second, Eddie Kramer was Jimi Hendrix' producer. John Storyk designed the Electric Lady and we also have Mark Torres from Pacific Radio Archives on this session. And they're talking about K.P.F.K. They're doing a studio upgrade and Eddie's doing the design work and John's working with him and it's just going to be really cool.

And then they're also talking about K.E.X.P. which is preparing to move into a 21st century broadcast facilities. SO they're going to talk about these two different stations with two different needs and it should be a really phenomenal session. That's going to be Thursday, October 9th at 10:45 till 12:45 and if you are ever planning on building a studio or just upgrading one, you really need to sit in on John Storyk's sessions. They're amazing.

Next, after our opening ceremonies and everything, we have at 2:15 session B2. Loudness For Streaming And Radio. There is a movement in some of the European companies like in Denmark and so forth that there's, they want to actually put regulations out, similar to a CALM Act. John Kean of N.P.R. has done some major studies that he's going to talk about there and the panel is Tom Box from D.T.S., Frank Foti from, what's the name of that company again? The Telos Alliance?

John Kean from National Public Radio Labs, Thomas Lund from T.C. Electronic and Thomas is actually chairing the section, Scott Norcross from Dolby Labs and Robert Orban who is also a legend and to have him and Frank on the panel together, you've got two of the most influential technical people in broadcast radio today. I think that's a pretty good definition of the two of them, wouldn't you say Kirk?

Kirk: Absolutely, yeah, yeah.

David Bialik: So that's the session. Then at 4:30 on Thursday, we have Routing Audio in a Broadcast Facility. Mike DaSilva, who is the Market Chief Engineer for C.B.S. Radio in Sacramento is chairing the panel and we have on it Andreas Hildebrand, A.L.C., Andreas Hilmer from Lawo, Jeff Keith from Wheatstone, Al Salci from S.A.S. and Greg Shay from Telos Alliance.

If you have any questions about putting your audio out there into cat5, I think this is the place to go.

Kirk: You know we're actually having a meeting here in Nashville actually later tonight if you think that this is airing on Thursday, the 18th, our AES meeting is at the Nash Facility here in Nashville and we're talking about AOIP routing, both live wire AES67 so that's a hot topic and they're going to have a whole session on that there at AES with the people you mentioned. Some of the best in the business right there. Greg Shay, the guy who patented it, he came up with the stuff that patented some of the things that is done in live wire. So this guy has got a couple patents on that. Go ahead, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you.

David Bialik:

No, that's right. And I have to say the Nashville section of AES is a very action section and they've done things that other sections around the world are jealous of. So if you can ever go to the Nashville AES you should.

On Friday, October 10th we have session, we start at 9 in the morning with Session B4, Audio Issues for 4k and 8k TV. We've got HDTV and a lot of you have seen 4K TV and at the NAB this year, they were showing 8K TV No one is really talking about a lot of the audio issues because we're talking surround, we're talking immersive audio. Fred Willard, who is with Univision is chairing that session and it's going to be great. I don't want to keep saying amazing but I'm really proud of a lot of the stuff that's going on here.

Then at 11:15 we continue with The Streaming Experience. One of the things you really have to worry about in streaming is the audience experience and how it's being played, how it's being viewed and Dave Wilson of the Consumer Electronics Association is chairing that section and we have on it again a great bunch of people. Don Backus from B.E./Commotion, Frank Foti again, Philip Generali from RCS, Rusty Hodge from SomaFM, Greg Ogonowski, from Orban, and Geir Skaaden from DTS. So it's a diverse group and it's going to touch a lot and I think it's going to bring more questions than anything else.

Then at 2:00, this is a session that I have really taken into my own for the last ten years or so I've pushed it and built it up from a topic no one wanted to talk to. It's called Listener Fatigue and Retention. Worst title you can possibly have. The thing that no one wants to talk about.

Kirk: Well, it's kind of negative. Listener fatigue and retention, that's where they send you if you want to cancel your cable, they send you to the retention department.

David Bialik: Well, it is. The problem is that we have to, I think one of the missions of the Audio Engineering Society, and any audio engineer is to make audio exciting and appealing. And that's why I can never come up with a better title but we have many people on the session and this year I asked Marvin Caesar, the former President of Aphex to chair it. I have on it Dr. John Galvin who's with the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine. We have J.J. Johnson, one of the inventors of MP3. He and Karlheinz Brandenburg invented MP3. Sean Olive of Harman International. Greg Ogonowski again.

Robert Reams of Psyx Research who has actually been on the panel before. And actually he was encouraged to do some work and actually come up with a product and so forth from past listener fatigue sessions so he's got something to talk about.

And [inaudible 00:52:09] Walker from the G.T.S. will also be on the panel. And they're going to discuss the psychological and physiological aspects of listener fatigue and its causes. The short and long term impact on people who produce and amplify broadcast stream as well as consumer audio. So I think-

Kirk: I think your room thinks you haven't moved enough.

David Bialik: Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. Lights went off then on.

Kirk: Do you have to keep moving? Do you have a motion sensor on the left?

David Bialik: You know, I've been in this office now for two weeks, I guess we do. I didn't know that.

Kirk: It's okay man, it happens, you're green.

David Bialik: That, and afterwards I'll have to show you the view. I have the best view of the Empire State Building anyone could have.

Kirk: Oh I should just come visit you in your office.

David Bialik: You're always welcome. Back at 3:30 on Friday, October 10th, we're having a session on MPEG-DASH-What about Audio?

Kirk: Oh my goodness, yes, yes. This is important.

David Bialik: This is going to be groundbreaking this session. Jan Nordmann from Fraunhofer is chairing it. We got Rupert Brun from the B.B.C., Ronny Katz from D.T.S., and of course Greg Ogonowski again. And that is going to be an amazing session. And I know I'm saying amazing a lot and you can hit me later. I was never designed to be in front of the microphone.

After that, Audio Issues And HTML5. Got to worry about how your audio is played and considering that most of the playing is coming off the internet, Valerie Tyler has assembled a great panel. Dale Curtis from Google, Greg again from Orban, Alex Schoepel from DTS, Jerry Smith from Microsoft, and Charles Van Winkle from Adobe. And, I think anything and everything you wanted to know about web audio will be there.

Okay, so Friday night we're done at 6:30 and we're going to go out and party and the parties at AES are amazing.

Kirk: I wouldn't know, I'm usually too busy working on my presentation for the next day to get out to a party.

David Bialik: My favorite thing to day is, around, it must have been 10 or 15 years ago, I got stuck in an elevator for a good 20 minutes with Rupert Neve. We were just talking consoles the whole time, it was really cool.

Kirk: What happens Saturday? Highlights.

David Bialik: Okay. B9. Sound Design and Storytelling: How to Create the Environments and Sounds Needed to Enhance Any Tale. These people are fully artist, they're going to show us sound effects and how they create the sound to create the audio you want for movies, television, and even radio drama. They are great. Sue Zizza and David Shinn are chairing that session. And that is, it's a reason to wake up on Saturday morning at 9 in the morning.

Then at 10:30, Compliance with CALM Act. Okay, we have to talk about all these TV guides and how we can avoid getting speeding tickets. We have Florian Camerer, Tim Carroll, Fadi Malek from DTS, Scott Norcross from Dolby, and Skip Pizzi is chairing that session. And so, I mean I think you know all those people. Especially that guy Tim.

Kirk: I do, and normally when people say compliance and CALM Act, I'm like *yawns*, but I got to tell you, if Skip Pizzi and Tim Carroll, and I know those guys certainly, if they're on a panel, it's going to be interesting no doubt. And I don't know all about all the other guys, but Tim Carroll has his way of getting to the meat of the subject and telling you the way it is-

David Bialik: Oh yeah, he is a great speaker and Florian Camerer from Europe talking about PLoud which is their version of CALM, it's really a great thing.

Kirk: Alright, what's next?

David Bialik: Now we have B11. A session being chaired by a guy named Kirk Harnack. It's going to be co-sponsored by the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and open to any badge including the exhibits only badge, and it's called Troubleshooting and Maintenance of Equipment and I'll let that guy Kirk tell us all about it.

Kirk: Well, we've done a similar session in the past and as engineers, we're not just charged with plugging things together and configuring them. Sometimes we've got to figure out what's wrong with it. And that used to be to the component level back when equipment was a lot simpler. Now, often times it's not. So we've got some of the best minds in the business. John Bisset for example who has that monthly, that column in Radio World called Workbench. Kim Sacks and, is Bill Sacks on our panel?

David Bialik: Bill Sacks is there and basically I want to see how you and John are even going to get a word in edge wise because even though Bill and Kim are the best engineers, they're also married and you can always tell Bill will get into the nooks and crannies of circuit design and how to make a circuit better and Kim will say hey, Bill, we just have to fix the problem. So.

Kirk: Well, as a team, they end up doing both. But we're going to focus on some of the larger ideas of where do you divide and conquer? How do you know something's not working right? What does right operation look like. So we'll cover the gamut from the soldering iron and that level, but we'll also cover it from the identifying the problem or at least the area where a problem is and this is great information for people who are charged with taking care of systems.

So we'll do that. What's next, and you mentioned, all badge holders. That means even if you have an exhibits only badge that you have gotten for free from one of the sponsors of the AES or one of the publications or magazines you're going to see some of those available at no charge or at low charge in the next few days. That badge will get you in. You do not have to pay the full price for the sessions at all to get into that troubleshooting session.

David Bialik: I'm hoping that by giving out this sample that people are going to want to go to the sessions. Because if you haven't sat in a class in the last few years, you can go in there and you're going to come out and say I learned something. I challenge anyone to tell me they didn't learn anything out at AES You walk out with at least one piece of knowledge.

Now at 1:30, something that every chief engineer of every radio station should go to even though they think they know it all. Understanding Audio Processing-How to Use the Audio Processor. And we have Tracy Teagarden chairing this session.

Kirk: Interesting.

David Bialik: Tracy is the Market Engineer for C.B.S. Radio in Los Vegas and listen to this session. You've got Sunil Bharitkar from Dolby, Tim Carroll from Telos Alliance, Frank Foti from The Telos Alliance, Jean-Marc Jot from D.T.S., Jeff Keith from Wheatstone, Greg Ogonowski from Orban, and because we have two Telos people we have to have two Orban people so we have Rob Orban from Orban there. And it is going to be great because we're talking about how to use the processor. We're not talking about different algorithms. We're saying hey, this is how you want to achieve certain things and the one piece of advice I always tell everyone with an audio processor is use it lightly, don't use it harsh because the lighter you use it, the better off you are. And as Frank has always joked, he makes the gun but it doesn't tell you how to shoot it.

Okay, for our next session we have B13. It's co-sponsored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Audio Issues for Live Television--Overcoming the Challenges of Live Television Broadcast in Today's Wild, Wild World. Now we have Mike Abbot, Bruce Arledge, Kevin Cleary, Ed Greene, Hugh Healy, and Salvador Hernandez all on this panel discussing how to mix live audio for television. These are people that have won Emmys and this session has so much I had to extend the session. It's a two hour session where most of our sessions are 90 minutes. This is great.

Now after this session's over, you're going to be in a real quandary. Because if you're really into mixing, you're going to want to go to one of the other sessions and not a broadcast session because right after this they're going to do An Afternoon with Geoff Emerick, the man who mixed the Beatles. But, right after the TV broadcast one, against the Beatle one is our friend Chris Tobin who is doing B14 Telephony and IP Codecs: How to Choose What Is Best for You. This puts you in a real quandary, doesn't it? Because you have Chris chairing the session, then you have a guy name Kirk Harnack, Tom Harnett, Doug Irwin, and Joe Talbott on that panel. And I'll tell you, you're going to be torn on which direction to go.

Kirk: Well, I'm going to go to the IP codec one cause my name's there. But so many broadcast engineers have questions and they're wondering Tieline? Comrex? Is it something else? What algorithms. How can I use these things? How can I make sure my guys going out in the field can use them easily? That's the kind of questions we're going to be addressing in that panel. I'm looking forward to it.

David Bialik: And the big question is how do you order I.S.D.N. and get it right? Okay, Sunday. Sunday is a light day on the broadcast sessions mainly because Saturday, if you look from 9 o'clock in the morning until 6:30 at night there's not a break. I wanted to make sure people had time to go to the exhibit floor. Also we have a session that is open to all badges once again called Troubleshooting Software Issues. IF you're not troubleshooting hardware, you're definitely troubleshooting software. And Jon Abrams of Nutmeg post has, Mark Fassler of Avid and Charles Van Winkle of Adobe and I believe he's trying to get more people. And they're going to talk about how to solve your software problems. And that's a big issue.

Kirk: Alan Parsons, all right.

David Bialik: I mean, AES is a phenomenal place. I remember walking around and just getting into a conversation about acoustics with Leo Beranek. Talking with George Martin about the Beatles. All the stars. Karlheinz Brandenburg got to know me by name from the AES we talk all the time there and heck, we're Facebook friends and things like that. I highly encourage everybody to go to AES.org and if you want to look at the broadcast sessions it's AESBroadcast.com.

And please, we can only continue to have such a great technical program by attendance. And the nice thing is, for the last 10 years consecutively, the AES has seen improvement on attendance and this has brought more and more interest. I've been doing these sessions now for over 25 years and attendance has only gone up and I really want this to be my legacy that we were able to do technical program where we're studying technology and technique, we're not doing sales presentations.

Kirk: Yeah.

David Bialik: All right.

Kirk: David, that's excellent. Now this is, folks, be reminded of what David said and find out more at AESBroadcast.com that'll redirect you to the right pages on the AES.org website. But if you're in broadcast and you're interested in these sessions we talked about, AESbroadcast.com. You can register. There are going to be ways to get in for free for expo only passes. Most conventions do that, and certainly AES does and you'll still be able to go to the troubleshooting session on Saturday that I'm part of and glad to be there.

David Bialik: And I actually heard there's a giveaway on that, in that Kirk Harnack is going to give out autographs.

Kirk: We want people to come, not leave, not stay away. It's going on October 8th through 12th, 8th through 12 of October.

David Bialik: 9th through 12th.

Kirk: Oh, 9th through 12th. In Los Angeles California, at the Los Angeles Convention Center right?

David Bialik: Correct.

Kirk: Okay, good deal.

David Bialik: All right.

Kirk: David, thank you so much for being with us, I appreciate it and we'll look forward to having you back on another episode of This Week In Radio Tech. Hey, Chris Tobin, you're going to in this Broadcast and Streaming Media, Telephony and IP Codecs: How To Choose What's Best For You, is that what you're chairing?

Chris Tobin: That's the chair, I believe I have Joe Talbot, did you, no you have Joe in your place, so you're coming?

Kirk: I think we're both going to be there.

Chris Tobin: That's what I thought, I was just checking. I have to get the emails out this week. I'm a little behind because of some things. Well, it's been a crazy last couple of months with some family stuff so I've been a little distracted. But it's about, telephony and IP codecs and what Dave was asking I guess from feedback from folks was to talk about telephony, where it's been, where it has started from, where it's gone to and where it's evolving over to now with SIP, with what you call voice over IP, the whole business. The stuff that Telos has worked on. I was trying to get the folks from Comrex to talk as well with their experience with telephony but their schedules have conflicted so I'm still trying to convince somebody from there to talk with us somehow. And I'll add my two cents in as well.

And we have Doug Irwin who's a local Clear Channel Chief Engineer who works the stations in L.A. who will be talking also along the same topic line but from the perspective of an end user. So I thought it would be nice to have you and Joe on one side and then Doug on the other so you could sort of get the questions and answers back and forth and the experiences.

And Doug is really good at some of the technologies that a lot of us just take for granted so I had the pleasure of crossing paths with him over the years here in New York City, and he's moved back to the west coast. He writes articles also in many of the trades so you read about the stuff he touches and he tells the story, tells the topic, the technology from the standpoint of hey, I'm using it, here's what I tried to do with it, it blew up with my face and here's why and I realized the mistake I made. Or hey I used it, it worked the way I expected and now I'm going to evolve to the next level with it. So I thought it'd be a great mix of folks to have.

Kirk: And Doug's been on This Week in Radio Tech a couple of times before. Good guy.

Chris Tobin: Yeah, yeah.

Kirk: Say, we're about out of time but if you hit the website AESBroadcast.com, that'll forward you to exactly the right spot on the AES.org website. Sometimes things are, it's a big website, things are hard to find. But if you go to AESBroadcast.com you'll get right there. We'll a little more about that in the coming weeks. It's going to be here before you know it, but the thing you need to know is you, if you're planning, ah, it's so expensive to get in these big conventions, you can get in, you can get free badges for the expo only and for some of the sessions including the troubleshooting session we're doing on Saturday afternoon. Chris, thanks for being with us.

We got to real quick hit the folks from Axia. I want to talk about our sponsor Axia Audio. They practically invented AOIP about 11 or 12 years ago now. The range of products from Axia lets you put together a whole broadcast plan. Whether you need a great big huge console with 40 faders on it or just a small console with eight faders or six or maybe even two faders, Axia has got what you need to do to build a broadcast facility, a broadcast console.

And a lot of things go into this as well like do you need intercom? Well, there are IP intercoms, both hardware and software intercoms that are just part of the Axia live wire ecosystem so if you've never had intercom before in your facility and say hey, we need to talk back and forth with producers or the newsroom or maybe to somebody at facilities, a newsroom across town or a state capitol, Axia can help you get that done.

In fact one of the cool things we were doing with Cumulus Radio at some of these red carpet events if they're using Axia intercom and then piping it over an iPort from one city to another like from Los Angeles back to Dallas, giving them instant intercom with producers back in Dallas at the headquarters there where they're uplinking all this from and the people out in the field at the red carpet events.

So just all kinds of ways to use Axia routing, live wire, consoles, intercom, plug a phone system in and guess what, you don't have to buy any more inputs and outputs, it's all there. You plug a Telos phone system into an Axia system and bam one cable and it's all connected. All the routing that you need may need to do, let's say you're still firmly stuck with using some older consoles or non IP audio consoles like they were at WQXR, Rodney Belizaire was pretty well stuck with his consoles but wanted to upgrade his routing, no problem. He added an Axia routing system and really made his life easier there at WQXR, David Antoine, our guest last week was there to help him along with that.

So if you would, go to the Axia website, check out the products page and you'll see a list of these different products and how they all fit together in a really convenient ecosystem that lets you build radio stations and do other functions that broadcasters need to do. Intercom being just one of those. Thanks to our friends at Axia Audio for sponsoring this portion of This Week in Radio Tech. And by the way, I just installed you know, a big Axia system, big for me, in Greenville Mississippi at my stations there. We'll give a tour of that in the coming months. I've got to get back there and shoot a lot of video and it's just all IP audio for four stations and a rather small operation, but it's a very cool and kind of big system.

All right, folks, that's going to do it for This Week in Radio Tech for this week, next week we'll have another fabulous guest. In fact next week our guest is going to be Ted Schober. We tried to have him on a few weeks ago, that was when the studio caught on fire. So Ted will be back with us next week on This Week on Radio Tech. Thanks to our sponsors, Telos, Lawo and Axia and thanks to Andrew Zarian who magically puts the whole show together for us there in New York at the GFQ Network. We'll see you next week. Oh and thanks Chris Tobin. See you next week on This Week in Radio Tech. Bye-bye.

Telos Alliance has led the audio industry’s innovation in Broadcast Audio, Digital Mixing & Mastering, Audio Processors & Compression, Broadcast Mixing Consoles, Audio Interfaces, AoIP & VoIP for over three decades. The Telos Alliance family of products include Telos® Systems, Omnia® Audio, Axia® Audio, Linear Acoustic®, 25-Seven® Systems, Minnetonka™ Audio and Jünger Audio. Covering all ranges of Audio Applications for Radio & Television from Telos Infinity IP Intercom Systems, Jünger Audio AIXpressor Audio Processor, Omnia 11 Radio Processors, Axia Networked Quasar Broadcast Mixing Consoles and Linear Acoustic AMS Audio Quality Loudness Monitoring and 25-Seven TVC-15 Watermark Analyzer & Monitor. Telos Alliance offers audio solutions for any and every Radio, Television, Live Events, Podcast & Live Streaming Studio With Telos Alliance “Broadcast Without Limits.”