Copyright ©1996, RF Specialties Group.
Desert Storm taught us a thing or two about rating wars. Namely, to always strike from the air with your best audio processing artillery, the latest of which is digital.
No doubt, digital audio processing can be an advantage, if striking the optimum balance between loudness and audio quality has anything to do with ratings. Digital affords stations more average audio energy with less discernable artifacts than analog, according to Chuck Adams of CRL, whose company recently announced a new FM digital audio processor based on next-generation DSP technology. "Given comparable compression and limiting settings, our new digital box is running about three to four dB louder than our analog box," he said of CRL's new DP100 FM digital audio processor. Jesse Maxenchs of Orban, which blazed new trails in digital audio processing with its Optimod-FM 8200, also made the association between digital and loudness clarity. "We're able to still do the same amount of processing, but now we're doing it in the digital domain and the nice thing about digital is the transparency," he said.
Why is digital better at striking the balance between loudness and quality? "All analog components have some tolerance errors which, when added up, can distort filtering and processing characteristics," explained Adams. "Digital, on the other hand, uses software to make those calculations and for that reason is far more accurate in its representation of processed audio." This attribute is one reason why digital audio processing is becoming a sure-fire hit in rating wars.
There are other reasons, to be sure. For one, digital audio processing is more flexible, both in how it's set up initially (both the Orban Optimod-FM 8200 and CRL DP100 have user-friendly menus and come with factory settings based on format) and how it can be used in the future. Because digital is primarily software based, with few hardware restrictions, said Adams, "the broadcaster isn't limited to a four-band or a five-band processor. You can load software into it to make it any kind of audio processor - or word processor, for that matter!"
Moreover, digital audio processing completes the concept of the all-digital radio station. The new DP100 has built-in AES/EBU interface with asynchronous sample rate converter to accept and send out 32kHz through 48kHz digital feeds along with analog feeds. The Optimod-FM 8200 also has optional AES/EBU input and output cards, so both processors can take a digital feed direct from a studio CD player or automation system and output the same to a digital STL. Additionally, both audio processors are able to generate test signals heretofore unavailable in the analog world.
But the true test of digital audio processing is its price tag. DSPs have dropped significantly in price of recent, which has lowered the cost of digital audio processing to the $10,000 mark - one of the few remaining similarities between analog and digital audio processors. Call RF Specialties for full details on the Optimod-FM 8200 and the new CRL DP100 digital FM processors.
