A television engineer once told me that he’d been in the industry long enough to remember when audio was the simple part of TV: “If you turned up the volume and heard sound, you were all set.” The transition to DTV changed all of that as broadcasters wrapped their heads around multichannel audio as well as loudness and compliance issues, and now the emergence of immersive audio and the deployment of ATSC 3.0 has introduced an entirely new television audio lexicon. We thought it might be time to help untangle the ball of TV audio twine.

It’s been nearly six years since the CALM Act – the bill passed to address the issue of loud television commercials – was put into effect in the U.S. We thought it a good time to re-examine the loudness issue in a series of blog posts. Here in Part 1 we’ll explore whether or not these legislative mandates have been effective and find out if content producers and broadcasters are still struggling with managing loudness in traditional OTA  and OTT distribution.

Much like the television industry at large, the requirements for TV audio continue to evolve and change, and keeping up can be a challenge. The number of content sources and file types are increasing; the number of formats, languages and edit variations is increasing; and the number of distribution channels is increasing. The only things not increasing are your resources and the amount of time allotted to get the job done!

How AoIP Helps Future-Proof Your Facility

5 Takeaways to Share with your Team

A particularly hot topic right now is the recently approved SMPTE ST 2110 suite of standards for “professional Media over Managed IP Networks.” The ST 2110 standards suite specifies the carriage, synchronization and description of separate video, audio and data streams over professional IP networks in real time for live production, play-out and other professional media applications.

SIMPLER DAYS
One of my most memorable observations in television engineering came at the end of a rather lengthy telephone call a couple of years ago that involved helping a customer with an unusually complex requirement who said, “I remember when the audio was the easy part!”

Indeed, the days when the mere presence of sound on the aural carrier qualified as a thorough QC of the audio chain are long gone. The transition from analog to digital elevated television audio to something with which TV engineers had to make friends, and if they didn’t reach out to embrace it on their own, regulations like the CALM Act forced them to shake hands.

Omnia.9sg just got a major, free software update, v.3.16.52 (available on the Omnia.9sg page in the sidebar). While the 9sg has always been way more than a stereo generator, this software update gives it that much more functionality, including Livewire+ AES67 for total compliance with the standard and a new clipper designed by Hans van Zutphen, along with dozens of other features. Here, we get into the background of what exactly a stereo generator does, and how the processor-agnostic Omnia.9sg can benefit any station with final-stage processing that is your processor's secret weapon. 

Everyone knows a bad reference can cost you a promotion or a job opportunity, but it can also be the source of frustrating intermittent television audio problems.

The widespread use of embedded SDI signals in lieu of discrete AES I/O makes dealing with clock reference a bit easier since the reference is an inherent part of the SDI bundle, but it doesn’t eliminate clock-related issues altogether.

Ask anyone what they think of first when they hear “Las Vegas” and they’re likely to mention the retina-searing lights of the famous Vegas strip, the dazzling casinos, the over-the-top luxury hotels, the glitzy shows, and if they’re old enough, maybe even the Rat Pack at The Sands.