10 June 2002, Cleveland, OH USA

Talk America Radio Networks, major providers of syndicated talk programming and home to well-known personalities which include Bruce Williams, Doug Stephan and Barry Farber, has just completed its new multi-million dollar studio complex in Newark, New Jersey using Telos talkshow systems.

Talk America is a nationwide provider of live, interactive call-in shows that are fed to affiliates 24 hours a day. As such, Talk America needed a telephone solution that would deliver the highest quality audio on a round-the-clock basis, and a way of shipping audio to and from remote studios. They chose Telos TWOx12 ISDN talkshow systems and Zephyr Xstream ISDN Transceivers to do the job.“We’ve had a lot of comments on the improved audio quality since we moved into new studios. Certainly our Telos TWOx12 is a big part of that,” says Jerry McDonald, assistant engineer and recording studio consultant. “And we’re using Telos Zephyr Xstream codecs – about twelve of them – to bring in show hosts from around the country.”

Telos’ TWOx12 Talkshow System is unique because of its ability to connect to digital ISDN telephone lines, resulting in noticeably superior caller audio without the distortion, inducted noise and audio leaks that plague analog POTS phone circuits. In addition, exclusive Status Symbols™ instantly advise talent of line and caller with using clear, easy to read icons – a must for fast-paced talk shows.

Zephyr Xstream is part of the industry-standard Zephyr family of ISDN transceivers. In addition to standard MPEG Layer 3 (MP3) encoding, Zephyr Xstream includes Fraunhofer Fhg’s MPEG-AAC and Low Delay AAC-LD encoding algorithms (sometimes referred to as MP4). Many broadcasters now use AAC-LD in place of MP3, citing transmission delay reductions of up to 70% with quality comparable to that of Layer 3.

Telos Systems, with headquarters located in Cleveland, Ohio, and offices in Baltimore, Maryland; San Diego, California; and Freising, Germany is a leading manufacturer of ISDN, digital network and telephone interface products for talk-show programming, call-in radio segments, teleconferencing, audio production, remote broadcasts, and intercom applications. Omnia, a Telos company, is world-renowned for its innovative digital audio signal processing expertise. Its family of digital audio processors for FM, AM, TV, DAB, Internet, and broadcast audio production are setting new standards for audio quality in the broadcast and Internet industries worldwide.