Retiring a king, and crowning a new one

There are probably very few broadcasters active today who haven’t used a Telos ONE hybrid at one time or another. After all, they’re everywhere – newsrooms, remote vans, editing booths, conference rooms, production suites, home studios; you name it. So it’s worth a tip of the hat as the ONE, a watershed product that’s served broadcasters well since 1993, rides off into the sunset.

There were several factors that made Telos ONE a radio favorite. ONE hybrids sound superb, and were the lowest-priced auto-nulling all-digital hybrids on the market for many years. The combination of our Digital Dynamic EQ (a DSP implementation which became rightly famous), digital acoustic ducking to help talent better control the conversation, and a genius way of using the input as a control signal for output gain processing, made the ONE a hard number to beat.

Don’t be too sorry for the ONE’s retirement, though. Its successors, the new Telos Hx1 (single-line) and Hx2 (dual-line) POTS hybrids, are ready to fill its shoes – and then some.

First of all, we’ve learned a whole lot about POTS hybrids in the last 20 years. Advances in DSP have been pretty great, as well. We’ve used every bit of knowledge gained to make the hybrid built into the Hx1 and Hx2 the best, most advanced POTS hybrid we’ve ever made, without much doubt.

Some noteworthy improvements in the Hx1 and Hx2:

• Greatly improved trans-hybrid loss of >55dB – a nearly 40% improvement over that of the ONE – means dramatically better audio output. (Trans-hybrid loss measures the amount of input signal that leaks through the hybrid to its audio output. Bigger numbers mean cleaner, more discrete audio.)
• Much better spectral consistency. The DSP horsepower available to run Hx’s DDEQ is several orders of magnitude greater than what was available when the ONE was launched, which means that Hx does a superb job of matching the audio quality of callers’ voices from call to call.
• Sophisticated Omnia audio processing is built right into the Hx hybrid to make caller audio sound as sweet as possible. This is something we could only dream of in 1993.
• Auto-answer capability is built-in. Nothing extra to buy or add-on.
• You can opt for AES/EBU inputs and outputs, something the ONE never offered.

Finally, Moore’s Law is in full effect when it comes to DSP platforms: at just $795, a new Hx1 costs almost 20% less than its predecessor, and the Hx2 at $1395 beats the old ONE+One by a whopping 45%, while the DSP muscle contained in each new unit dwarfs the amount in their older counterparts.

Sure, there’s a pang in watching an old friend fade away. But we’re cheered considerably by the knowledge that its progeny is more than up to the task.

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.”