21 March 2005, Cleveland Ohio, USA

Surround broadcasting is clearly the hot topic at audio, consumer electronics, and computer shops throughout the world. Visit any of these locations and you’ll see plenty of surround audio set-ups that can only lead the man-on-the-street to concur that stereo is nearly obsolete. However, radio broadcasting has been absent from participation in the advance of surround listening.

Since radio’s business is uniquely dependent upon creating a satisfying aural experience for the listener, it’s time for radio to take the next logical step: developing “Studio Structures for Surround Broadcasting.” Telos Systems’ founder and CEO, Steve Church, along with Mike “Catfish” Dosch, president of Telos’ Axia Audio division, will present their white paper on this topic at the 2005 NAB Convention in Las Vegas on April 18th at 1:30 P.M.

The introduction of iBiquity’s HD Radio™ in the USA and the developing DAB technology in Europe offers the radio industry an opportunity to provide consumers with the quality digital surround they have already come to expect from movie theaters, DVD film, TV broadcasts, surround music disks, computer audio and portable players. Steve Church points out that today’s immersive, high-quality surround sound is far different from the “quad” formats of the Seventies: “Surround is being delivered to consumers digitally in the so-called 5.1 format, providing six discrete digital channels. Our modern systems offer a tremendous jump in quality over the early quadraphonic attempts to woo consumers.”

In their presentation, Church and Dosch will discuss the real-world practicality of upgrading a radio broadcast facility to surround. As Dosch tells it, broadcasters will “need to upgrade studio facilities to surround. Specifically, we need to store, network, and mix in the 2 + 5.1 format. We’ll examine what costs are associated with a surround upgrade, and how computer networking is a more capable, lower-cost substitute for obsolete analog and 20-year-old first-generation digital technologies.” Furthermore, Dosch adds, broadcasters may be surprised to learn that the “networked” console approach to upgrading for surround is much less expensive than conventional (router-based) systems for stereo studios.

“Studio Structures for Surround Broadcasting” will give attendees the specifics of what will be needed to build a modern 2 + 5.1 plant, with a careful eye towards costs and covering the routing and distribution infrastructure. The presentation will also touch on PC-based delivery systems, mixing console, surround encoding, dynamics processing, STLs and transmission.

To see this studio in live action, visit the Telos Systems / Omnia at Booth N2816 and Axia at Booth N3616. A full HD surround airchain from player to receiver will be on demonstration. Contact Caroline Dorsey at dorsey@OmniaAudio.com for more information.

Telos Systems, headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio with offices in Europe and Canada, is a leading manufacturer of ISDN, coded audio and telephone interface products for talk-shows, teleconferencing, audio production, remote broadcasts, and intercom applications.

Axia, a Telos company, builds Ethernet-based professional IP-Audio products for broadcast, production, sound-reinforcement and commercial applications. Products include digital audio routing switchers, DSP mixers and processors and software for configuring, managing, and interfacing IP-Audio systems.