Advantages of MPX over AES highlighted
12 August 2013, Cleveland, OH USA
The first Omnia Direct webinar on August 1 was so well attended and participants had so many questions that we ran out of time, so Omnia's Frank Foti and Nautel's Chuck Kelly will be conducting a second Omnia Direct webinar this Wednesday (8-14-13) at 12 noon EDT.
Register at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/740300482 and have your questions ready.
Omnia Direct, a joint project and co-creation of Omnia Audio and Nautel, digitally transfers the composite output of an audio processor directly to an FM broadcast transmitter.
The technology was the recipient of two major awards at the 2013 NAB for pioneering achievement.
"Nautel and Omnia continually strive to maximize the performance of their respective products," said Peter Conlon, Nautel President and CEO. "As a result, both companies are recognized as bold innovators, constantly pushing the boundaries, even during these tough economic times. This exciting cooperation between our companies will benefit our customers by delivering the finest in sound quality to help them dominate the dial".
In the past, stations concerned about maximum modulation needed to use an analog composite signal. This was primarily due to the required high sample rate of A/D converters used to create discrete left/right inputs to the digital exciter. With the Omnia Direct interface, a single AES-EBU cable between the Omnia 11 and the Nautel NV Series transmitter carries the baseband signal in digital form. This 100% digital path eliminates the noise and distortion of A/D converters and reduces potential overshoots, while ensuring full FCC mask compliance.
"With Omnia Direct, we finally have the digital equivalent of the analog BNC-to-BNC composite (mpx) connection, where we can take the output of the audio processor's stereo generator and couple it directly to the modulator of the exciter. This enables the exciter to modulate, with precision, whatever the processor delivers," said Frank Foti, Telos Alliance CEO and Omnia Audio founder.
Initially, the Omnia Direct functionality is available on Nautel NV series transmitters from 3.5kW to 44kW. New transmitters are shipping with the feature as standard, as is the Omnia.11, and older NV series transmitters may be upgraded with the NV software release 4.0 which will soon be made available.
The archived version of the August 1 session is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwDhtxFWtBs.