Maximize Your Audience with Omnia.9AM 

My experience with the Omnia.9 for AM began when I was talking to one of the Telos people at a lunch which we were all attending. I mentioned that I had a client (WMEX in Boston) that could really use a nice new processor but I was not sure if they had the budget for such a purchase.

My initial reason for wanting a modern processor, aside from better sound, was power savings. I could see that the processor can have a distinct advantage in power savings because WMEX has a transmitter that uses MDCL, modulation dependent carrier level. With MDCL the higher the audio level, the lower the power output of a transmitter. So, it seemed to me that keeping the audio level as high as possible would reduce both electric costs and stress on the transmitter/antenna system.

The station owners agreed so I arranged a demo and installed an Omnia.9 at their transmitter. We ran the demo Omnia.9 for a little over a month.

WMEX is an independent station, not a big group. The station owners liked what they heard but were watching their pennies and decided that maybe the time wasn't right for the expenditure of the Omnia.9. So, they asked me to send it back saying “Hopefully we could buy it in the future”. 

After it went off, two things happened:  When I was driving away from the station, I was very sad simply because it was just nowhere near as good sounding as it was when the 9 was on. I had pulled the unit out and I was going to ship it back the following week. It was maybe four or five days later. Literally the day I was going to ship it back, I got an email saying, "Can we still get it?"

The owners changed their mind because they got complaints from numerous listeners (and sales staff). In fact, we had picked up new listeners because one of the pleasant side effects of the new processor is it made our coverage improve, our “listenability” coverage where people would find the station very listenable versus hearing some static or interference.  It’s basically better signal to noise ratio. Any AM engineer knows that louder is better for coverage, but this was pretty dramatic. I was very surprised how dramatic difference in the coverage was with the Omnia.9.

Of course, I’m not making the claim that the actual mileage range was extended but that the listenability signal to noise and dial impact, let's call it, was far more dramatic on the fringes and made the difference between a station that was listenable and a station that was not.

The coverage improvement was great but there was something else that was discovered.

I had felt that if we could keep the audio level as high as possible, we would reduce power usage, antenna systems, stress and cooling cost.   

It's been about three months, so it's a little bit of a limited sample, but it's got a good trend. You've got a 50,000-watt station like WMEX. So it's got a fairly high electric bill, but the best I can average out by comparing year to year is about $300 per month in savings. I can definitely tell that using the Omnia.9 with MDCL, the transmitter power output averages 3-4 kilowatts less. WMEX is a talk station but if this were a music station, there might be even more costs savings because there's more consistent modulation. Some people may think that over-modulating will create the same cost savings, but then you will suffer transmitter stress and start blowing power amplifier modules if you do that. This is the stress free and economical way of doing it.

So, as I see it, there are two, basic advantages to the Omnia.9 One of them is the power savings. If you do have MDCL, you certainly would want to keep that in mind. Second, even if you don’t have MDCL, our listenable signal on the fringes was dramatically improved.  I would suggest that station operators look at their signal prediction maps and say, "Am I almost making  a large population?” If you could push out your fringe a few miles, what would that do for you? If your signal isn't quite getting into a large population area, I think this is a very good thing to try. This quite possibly is going to make that city now part of your actual listening area as opposed to theoretical listening area.

Oh, and one more thing. Boston is a PPM market, of course, and the Omnia.9 provides an insert point for watermarking. That's another advantage in keeping the audio level up very high without letting the peaks go over 100% when the watermarking gets added to it. So, the insert point is another important feature. 

The Omnia.9 has proven to be a win, win, win for WMEX. The Owners are happy with reduced operating costs. The sales staff is happy that more potential clients can “hear it in their office.” I’m happy that my “golden ear” friends tell me how good it sounds.

In short, the Omnia.9 has a lot going for it for any AM station that is looking to maximize their listenable signal within an increasingly noisy environment and potentially save some money, too.

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.”