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This Davicom network monitoring and management system can monitor the complete site LAN as well as the remote WAN, ISP, studio and internet connection all the way back to the engineer’s home.

If they are to manage effectively, radio broadcast engineers need good, reliable data about all of their stations, including distant transmission sites.

As Matt Leland of Burk Technology puts it, “A modern remote control system enables engineers to focus their efforts on the most critical tasks, reducing off-air time and eliminating unnecessary travel to remote sites.”

How can you get the most out of this broadcast infrastructure tool, and how are remote controls evolving?

We asked several manufacturers.

Getting started

Nicolas Boulay, co-CEO of WorldCast Group, notes how far the technology has come.

“Twenty years ago it was wonderful to receive a simple SMS over GSM, alerting me which relay was OFF, even if that information was received five minutes after the event,” he said.

“Now technology offers much more, but the goal remains the same: to control and manage remotely.”

He thinks the most important point is to define the purpose of your remote control, to decide what kind of information is useful for each action, rather than just aggregating a lot of data.

“In the past, it was the opposite; it was the technology capacity that defined what the user could do. Today, it’s the user who defines what he or she wants, and can ask more or less for everything.”

Control dashboards are more sophisticated. This image of a KYBIO system from WorldCast Systems shows dynamic and contextual dashboards based on SVG files.

CircuitWerkes President Kyle Magrill said many factors go into selecting a remote control.

“First, make an ordered ‘wish list’ of features that you need and then add the features that you want,” he said.

“Second, make a list of features that you dislike and don’t want to have in your system.”

An example of desirable features might be multiple ways to connect to the product such as network, serial port and telco. An undesirable feature, Magrill said, might be the lack of an indication that the network connection to the user interface is lost, misleading you into thinking that you’re connected to the remote unit when you’re not.

“When deciding on the actual product, don’t waver on the ‘must have’ features, and try not to compromise on the more ‘desirable’ ones,” he continued.

“Remember that you will have to live with your choices, possibly for many years. For example, if you site is very remote, you may want to get a remote control that has both telco and internet capability, for redundancy. Don’t settle for one that has only one or the other. If you have multiple sites, it might be important to have a set of remote controls with the ability to be simultaneously monitored from your network operations computer.”

Bob Tarsio, president of Broadcast Devices, encourages customers to be well-informed both before and after purchase.

“The best way to have a good outcome is to read the technical manual thoroughly before planning the installation. This way you know what you need to do and in what order including information needed for setup, tools to have on hand and how to get the most out of customer support.”

Plan the installation for when you have time to do it right and have the resources you need when calling customer support.

“Things like having your laptop ready to go, a good internet connection and a good telephone to call for support when you need it,” Tarsio said. “This may sound basic, but all of these things go into a good experience for fast installation and easy setup.”

Ask your vendor what’s included, such as software and SNMP capability. Tarsio reminds customers to consider options that BDI offers such as expansion panels, premade cables for motorized switch interfaces, transmitter interface cables and accessories such as prewired temperature and pressure sensors.

Connectivity is another factor to ask about and understand. “Since our SWP-300 series are SNMP agents, they can be connected via our provided GUI or even the competition’s system. Just load our MIB into brand X or Y SNMP-based remote control and you have complete control and monitor capability of every parameter on one system. This also allows NOCs to easily interface to a site with one MIB file.” (Management Information Base, or MIB, is a text file that lists data objects used by a piece of SNMP equipment.)

The HTML-based Monitor and Control web page of a Broadcast Tools WVRC-8 Plus remote control.

Things to remember

At Broadcast Tools, Don Winget is founder and president, and Ben Nason handles product development, tech support and engineering.

“Start with the basics, which means setting up email alarms,” they wrote by email. “For broadcasters who are not necessarily IT experts, configuring a remote control to send email (SMTP) can be a little daunting, but it’s easy once you know what server settings to use.”

For those who don’t already have that information, they recommend using an SMTP service from third-party provider SMTP2Go, which features multiple authentication options as well as email tracking for more advanced users.

“Once you have alarms and email set up, you might want to delegate some local functions to the remote control,” they wrote.

“The easiest way to do this on our remote controls is with a feature we call the Event Action Sequencer, which uses a simple syntax for logic functions. All you need to do is fill in the blanks.”

For example, to trigger a relay output for one second when a high-temperature alarm occurs, the configuration would be: When (Temperature) is (in High Alarm) delay (0) seconds then engage for (1) second.

“The email inbox isn’t always the best mechanism to get people’s attention when the remote control detects a problem,” Winget and Nason noted.

“Luckily almost everyone has a cellphone, and the cellular carriers provide email-to-SMS text message gateways that make it easy to convert an email alarm message into a text message using a special email address with customer’s phone number in it.”

For more advanced users interested in getting started with SNMP, they recommend checking out MIB Browser from iReasoning, a cross-platform application for working with SNMP MIB files, SNMP traps and accessing data/controlling devices using SNMP GET and SET.

Think broadly

Matt Leland, the director of sales for Burk, recommends that you think of this whole process as managing your facility and not just the transmitter.

Remote control systems have expanded the meaning of “remote.” This is a Mosaic from Burk’s Arcadia remote access system displayed on a smartphone.

“Monitor your critical systems: tower lights, transmission line pressure, room temperature, air chain equipment, silence sensor, PPM to name a few,” Leland told Radio World. “Use timer channels to keep track of tube life or hours on the filter in your air handler.”

Burk clients can use the company’s Jet Active Flowcharts to automate site functions such as switching to the standby transmitter.

“Use remote data captures as an analytical tool, drilling down for additional detail related to alarms or equipment failures. Use virtual channels to calculate efficiency and to cross-check power metering by comparing measured power to calculated indirect power.”

Leland also recommends that you not set alarm notification thresholds too tight.

“Set each threshold at the point where you should take action. Use alarm roll-ups to consolidate notifications from a cascading event such as loss of power at your transmitter site.”

At Davicom, President John Ahern said a point of emphasis is the reduction of false or nuisance alarms.

“Having a remote control is supposed to reduce your workload,” he said, “but if it sends too many alarms, users will begin to mistrust it and their workload may actually increase! So fine-tuning thresholds and applying different measures to mitigate false alarms can go a long way towards making users more productive.”

Cloud thinking

We hear much these days about the cloud and the related subject of virtualization, so we asked the manufacturers how those conversations affect facility remote control planning or products.

Leland said Burk’s Arcadia is built for the virtual environment; it runs on an AWS Virtual Private Cloud instance or on an on-premises customer owned server, giving engineers access to their remote sites over one secure web link. Its graphical mobile interface presents high-level summary information with drill-down capability to access monitored equipment and functionality in the virtual and physical plant.

Davicom’s Ahern says moving to the cloud is a nice concept. “But consider Wikipedia’s definition: Cloud Computing operates on big data, while Edge Computing operates on instant data,” he said.

“I think that at the transmitter site, we’re talking more about Edge Computing and fast processing to react to issues like lightning strikes, equipment failure, network throughput reduction, to name just a few.”

Cloud computing requires an always-on link to the cloud, Ahern continued, but many transmitter sites may lose that link as soon as, for example, a UPS runs out at the cellular communications tower.

Although the cloud may be expanding slowly towards the transmission site, he said, a robust system should always have a smart Edge Computing device — the remote control — at the site to keep things running, or at least keep a log of what is going on, during bad situations.

“This Edge Computer should be capable of handling various tasks at the site, well beyond simply controlling the transmitter. The same device should be able to control and monitor subsystems like the HVAC, network, utility power and generator, antenna deicer, audio processors, backhaul links and of course, the transmitter.

“For example, it should be able to take control and try to restore connectivity to the studio (or the cloud) working from the remote end, while the station engineer is trying to restore things from the studio end.”

Asked about the cloud, Boulay at WorldCast Group noted that remote control designs naturally follow the evolution of infrastructure.

“At the beginning, remote control meant the management of physical I/O — analog, digital, relays. Then protocols like SNMP replaced I/O. And now, in the majority of cases, remote control means the management of API, including the cloud.

“So of course, technically speaking, tools for performing remote control are completely different. But the end goal is the same: to make sure your radio station or web radio is on-air or its stream is accessible, and to manage all the redundant processing automatically.”

For Winget and Nason of Broadcast Tools, the concept of “virtual” in this context means less focus on a central piece of hardware and more on remote control hardware as peripherals distributed throughout the studio and transmitter sites, tied together over the network with an SNMP manager that can collect, store and display data from devices all over the network.

“As a remote control hardware manufacturer our goal is to provide products with features that strike a balance between the need for local/standalone operation as well as network-based ‘virtual’ operation via SNMP,” they wrote.

“This is why we provide built-in features like a smartphone-compatible HTML-based web interface, a relay event scheduler, support for notification via email/texting and POTS telephone (on our WVRC-4 Plus and WVRC-8 Plus remote controls) in addition to support for SNMP.”

Screens pack more functionality, as in this SWP-300 Dashboard from Broadcast. Alarms and actions are noted; tabs allow detailed inspection of specific parameters. Basic macros for functions such as switch control are programmed; other macros can be programmed on a button or provide necessary action and alerts. Timed events can be programmed via macro functionality, and macros can be triggered within macros as well providing full feature programming capability.

Important trends

What about other notable trends?

Ahern says that because everything is becoming network-centric, there’s more need for network status and performance monitoring.

“Being able to ping different network branches and devices, and using that information to automatically re-route data or re-start network elements, will help to proactively manage network infrastructure to keep it operating smoothly.”

Winget and Nason wrote, “This may be a no-brainer for some folks, but as we rely more and more on virtual systems and IP networked devices in areas like remote control and audio, it’s important to plan for what will happen when the network — be it your LAN, WAN or internet service — fails.

“This means being smart about implementing network failover and backup options like cellular modems or POTS lines so that you can maintain connectivity with your remote control when things go wrong.”

They also noted that web browser support for Adobe Flash Player is ending this year, which has obligated a number of manufacturers to develop updated web interfaces for their products.

“Several years ago we faced a similar situation with some of our products when web browser support for Java was significantly reduced. Like many others we chose to develop HTML-based web interfaces, which are now standard across our products. We feel that the shift to interfaces that use web standards like HTML5 has been a positive one for our customers, and as more manufacturers follow suit, that change benefits the industry as a whole in terms of accessibility.”

Bob Tarsio said that without question, SNMP has been a game changer.

“With Simple Network Management Protocol as a common standard, a user can interface different manufacturers’ equipment to a software or hardware platform easily with Cat-5 cables instead of a soldering iron and a crimping tool,” he said.

“We pioneered SNMP technology over 10 years ago with the DPS-100D power meter and the SWP-200 series motorized switch controller, which was the industry’s first SNMP RF switch controller.”

Now the company’s SWP-300 is SNMP-based and its software platforms all run with SNMP technology.

He said events and storage are a natural for cloud-based technology because the information can be obtained and stored off-site in case it is needed later. “Software platforms are undoubtedly going to be impacted by cloud technology as well. Software platforms can be run from the cloud from virtually anywhere to control anything anywhere else.”

Also, Tarsio said, Network Operations Centers are becoming more common. “Again, SNMP technology allows this to happen easily and provides flexibility in NOC location and capabilities.”

The “internet of things” is coming into the conversation. Matt Leland, while agreeing on the usefulness of SNMP for bringing in additional data, said, “Additionally, Burk is releasing API for ARC Plus, enabling our customers to bring data from a growing range of IoT devices into the AutoPilot environment,” he said.

“For example, the API could be used to integrate weather information from the internet as remote control channels with associated alarming and logging. This expands the scope of the remote control system beyond the limits of parallel wiring and SNMP.”

Nicolas Boulay mentioned the growing importance of compatibility with multiple protocols, given the number of manufacturers and brands and even generational differences in equipment found in a NOC.

“It must be able to do I/O, be compatible with fieldbus systems such as CAN, SNMP, advanced protocols and even proprietary protocols.”

Remote controls, he said, are being asked to provide a comprehensive view of infrastructures that are increasingly complex, even multi-format and multi-platform. They must also provide tools for action once the cause of a problem is identified.

Users also want automated action for better redundancy management. “This applies to a NOC level as well as on a local site level. This is extremely important. In the case of a connection loss between the NOC and the sites, it is crucial to have a local intelligence capable of automatically taking decisions without human interaction.”

On top of all this, Boulay added, users want their interfaces to be simple and intuitive, despite the complexity of the job being done by the system.

Remote control systems are tasked with managing increasingly complex site networks. Shown is a CircuitWerkes Sicon-8 system in multi-site mode.

Specialized devices

At CircuitWerkes, Magrill said, “We did see the trend for more internet-based stuff coming back in the early teens. For the past seven years, we have had a streaming audio option on our units that allows the user to stream confidence audio to them or allows the remote control to receive an audio stream as a backup STL.”

Magrill expects there will always be demand for new remote controls, especially where telco access or streaming audio are desirable, but says many smaller stations can get by with the built-in IP interface that is now part of many transmitters.

“In place of the traditional remote control comes an increased need for remote monitoring,” Magrill said.

“For example, many stations now have multiple audio sources feeding a variety of outlets originating from one, or more locations. There is a need to monitor either the audio or the streams and to sound the alarm if these are disrupted. Although similar to a traditional remote control, there are specialized devices out there, including some that we make, that are more adept at handling these specialized monitoring functions and reacting when something is wrong.”

Magrill feels audio failure seems to be a far more common problem than RF plant failure.

“I like to have a simple backup audio method available to keep the station on the air at all times. For example, many small stations stream program audio over the internet. They do so knowing that they are trading reliability, complexity and high cost for simplicity, low cost but less reliability.”

This can lead to extended silence periods or frequently disrupted audio during times of high traffic.

“One way to stay on the air is to have a backup audio source at the transmitter site. I personally prefer a local PC running a freeware automation program so that it can play the legal IDs and jingles, but I’ve done this with just a local MP3 player, as well.

“When the audio monitor detects silence, it switches the backup source to the air, thus keeping the station on the air. Note that care must be taken when used with AM/translator combos to not accidentally end up with the AM playing one thing and the FM another. Proper design can avoid that problem.

“If using an onsite PC as a backup, I also like to wire the power switch out to a relay so that I can reboot the PC remotely.”

In closing

As Matt Leland noted at the beginning of this article, a modern remote control system can do a great deal.

“Trends can be identified and reported automatically by comparing current values with initial values in virtual channels,” he wrote. “Predictive analytics compares multiple parameters and highlights variations in data patterns to spot the need for maintenance. Timer channels track maintenance intervals, automatically scheduling the next service date when each task is completed.”

Remote controls enable engineers to focus on the most critical tasks, reduce off-air time and eliminate unnecessary travel.

And these manufacturers were agreed that remote controls systems will continue to evolve to serve radio’s changing infrastructures. Also, because many offer more than one type or flavor of control system, it’s important to do your homework about how each works, to understand the various levels of capability for different architectures, and to evaluate each company for its customer service because you want them available should a problem arise.

To learn more about this topic, start with the websites of the manufacturers quoted. Among the resources you’ll find are webinars, blog posts, “how to” and maintenance tips, application notes and white papers.

Vendor YouTube channels and Facebook pages can also be an excellent resource; as Bob Tarsio of Broadcast Devices put it, “Social media has revolutionized how customers can be informed, educated and sometimes entertained.”

The post How to Get the Most Out of Your Remote Control appeared first on Radio World.

As the nation recovers, so do radio listening levels in many markets around the country. That’s the consensus of a new research report from Nielsen titled “Audio Today: On the Road to Recovery with AM/FM Radio.”

Audio usage in 2020 has certainly been interesting, said Brad Kelly, managing director of Nielsen Audio. Despite conventional wisdom, radio listening did not dissolve when commuting patterns changed. Instead, some of that drive-time listening migrated into home listening via to digital assistants like Alexa and Google Dot. “Audio usage continues to evolve and morph in new ways,” Kelly said in the report. “COVID-19 didn’t change that — it just accelerated it.”

[Read: Bouvard: More People Are “Ready to Go”]

The data is also telling another story about a group of American consumers who have remained mobile through the pandemic, a group Nielsen dubbed the Ready to Go consumer group. “For these people, radio is more than a distraction, it’s a lifeline,” Kelly said. Nielsen found that this group is more ready to engage, eager to make major purchases sooner and typically has a more optimistic view on the future.

More often than not these highly mobile people are essential workers who are have consistently tuned into radio throughout the pandemic, the report found. “[T]he people we now rely on most, they rely on radio,” he said.

“As you look at trendlines in the first few graphs and your eye naturally gravitates to the ‘lockdown’ low spot, be sure to keep in mind the foundational underpinning of these audience numbers and who was doing the heavy lifting,” Kelly said, referring to the essential workers who were on the job throughout the pandemic and continued to consume radio. “And remember to thank one of those folks the next time you see them.”

The report breaks down radio listening into specific subcategories: pre-COVID, lockdown, reopening, summer stability and fall growth. Nielsen said that with the onset of fall, changes in working and commuting patterns — along with a return to school in some areas — are sparking growth in radio listening.

Nielsen tracked the past eight months of data in the top 50 radio markets as measured by Nielsen’s Portable People Meter and found that radio’s weekly reach through early October recovered to within three points of March levels. This continues an upward trend that began during the reopening period in June and July.

The report does not address, however, what the impact the rising number of coronavirus cases in late October and November will have after a term of summertime stability.

Through early October, Nielsen found that radio’s weekly reach was 97% of March levels. Along those same lines, the report found that radio’s AQH in October 2020 is now 95% of March levels.

The report also revealed that drive time recovery continues as commuting increases. “At the beginning of the pandemic, radio use during traditional commute times initially declined, but it has grown each month since then, with significant recovery in October,” the report revealed. “Morning drive in particular increased by 11% from September to October, while weekends have now moved ahead of March levels.”

The report also found that nearly 70% of AQH (average quarter hour) listening is at out-of-home locations. In April, those figures dropped to 58% from a pre-COVID high of 71%. As of October, those figures were back up to 69%. That may be attributable to the fact that radio is on as parents commute their children to school. The report found that 62% of those who drive their children to class have their radio always on, followed by 35% who say that the radio is sometimes on. Those figures far outweigh those drivers who say their radio is rarely on (3%) or never on (1%).

“[This report tells] a story of how radio usage has changed during the course of the 2020 rollercoaster ride and how it’s tracking in-sync with the recovery,” Kelly said.

 

The post Tracking Radio’s Road to Recovery appeared first on Radio World.

Ben Dawson — whose name is associated with more than a hundred medium-wave, UHF and VHF broadcasting antenna and transmission system projects in the United States and abroad — is the recipient of a notable honor from the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society.

The BTS chose Dawson to receive its Jules Cohen Outstanding Achievement Award.

“Although we could not present Ben with the award in person, he attended the October virtual BTS Adcom meeting as an invited guest, where President Ralph Hogan virtually presented him with the award,” the society said in an announcement.

Dawson has five decades of experience in telecommunications engineering, and specializes in antenna and propagation design and analysis. (For a sampler of his many projects, see below.)

“Ben received numerous nominations from many colleagues throughout the industry,” the IEEE BTS stated. “One nominator stated ‘If Ben Dawson is associated with a project, it has instant credibility.’ Another nominator stated ‘Ben has always been a fabulous mentor.’”

Dawson taught himself calculus in high school to better understand antennas, according to a Radio World profile story in 2006.

“When I was 15, I began working an air shift during the summers for a radio station in Salem, Ore., but when the transmitter broke — an old RCA 250L — I was the only one who could fix it,” he recalled at the time. “Then my parents moved to Portland, Ore., and I started work for KUIK(AM), which was half-owned by Harold Singleton, who was a consulting engineer. Once Harold realized I could fix things I became his go-fer.”

After college, where he was chief engineer of Harvard’s student FM station WHRB for a year or so, and after stops as the chief of several West Coast radio stations, Dawson formed Hatfield & Dawson in 1973 along with Jim Hatfield Jr., and Maury Hatfield.

The Cohen award is given to “exemplify outstanding work in the field of broadcasting, focusing on Integrity, professionalism, quality, extent, reach and thoroughness of the candidates work as well as commitment to client success.” Last year’s recipient was Gary Cavell.

It is named after Jules Cohen, who among other contributions played a major role in developing the rules governing assignment of stations in the noncommercial educational portion of the FM band.

Ben Dawson received the National Association of Broadcasters Radio Engineering Achievement Award in 2006, with his longtime project partner Ron Rackley. He has produced numerous policy analyses and technical research for private clients as well as local, state, federal and foreign governments. He’s a past delegate to study groups of the International Telecommunications Union.

He’s a professional electrical engineer who is a member of several IEEE societies, as well as the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers and the Society of American Military Engineers.

Check out Ben’s favorites

Radio World asked Ben Dawson to list some of of his favorite or more interesting jobs. He replied by email:

1.  Diplexing 620 Portland on the 1190 antenna when the Port of Portland destroyed the beautifully designed 620 antenna (designed/implemented by Harold Singleton), ironic since 1190 had originally been at the 620 site.

2.  The three-station frequency swap in the Miami area that Ron Rackley and I did, establishing the 1040 operation in Miami with 50 kW.

3.  Designing the 900 MHz point-to-multipoint delivery system in the L.A. basin for City News Service of L.A.

4.  Design (with Harris Broadcast engineering staff) of the conversion of the Loran antenna in western Iceland to LF broadcast, and designing the new LF broadcast antenna system in eastern Iceland.

5.  Designing the adjacent-frequency two-site operation (954 kHz, 963 kHz) of what was then Radio Liberty in London, providing citywide coverage despite the unnecessarily restrictive allocation policies of the then-UK regulator (who’ve since been replaced by OFCOM).

6.  Obtaining FCC authorization for the first fulltime slant-wire fed grounded AM antenna in several decades.

7. Designing and implementing the rebuild of the 1 megawatt VOA (USAGM now) antenna in Thailand so it would handle the peak modulation from a modern solid-state (DX-1000) transmitter.

The post Ben Dawson Honored With IEEE BTS Award appeared first on Radio World.

The author is sales engineer for Wheatstone.

If you’re new to AoIP topologies, you have probably heard it’s best to set up a central core stack of switches in the TOC with edge switches at each studio or group of studios.

There are two good reasons to do this:

First, should a studio lose connectivity with the central stack for any reason — fire in the TOC, flood, power outage — individual studios can continue to operate independently via their local switches.

Cisco has a topology called Stackwise, where the back planes of multiple switches in a TOC, for example, can be joined at very high bandwidth (somewhere on the order of 160 gigabits-per-second links) in a daisy chain configuration, as shown above.

If any one of the switches should drop out of the stack, the other stack members can still communicate with each other.

Second, all local I/O is handled by the edge switches, which provides a more efficient networking and traffic control by cutting down the number of “home runs” from the studio to the central core stack.

Click to view in detail.

Shown above are smaller, 12-port edge switches that handle the local I/O for the studio and have a trunk connection back to the central stack. (Click the image to view in detail.)

For additional redundancy, you can take a baseband connection out of one of the local I/O nodes (or BLADEs, in the case of Wheatstone) in the studio and run it into the rack room.

This gives you a baseband audio connection directly from the studio to the TOC in case you need to quickly patch programming into the RF chain.

Learn more about Wheatstone AoIP technology.

The post Best Switch Topology for AoIP Redundancy appeared first on Radio World.

The author is with Telos Alliance.

Processing is as important for podcasts as it is for live radio. However, your challenges and your goals are going to be slightly different.

Radio needs to have that larger-than-life sound to stand out. It’s broadcasting and the challenges are much different.

Just for starters, processing for FM has to take into consideration pre-emphasis, limiting, stereo pilot and multi-path. Most radio stations are a combination of music and voice, and the processing needs to bring out the best in both. Consider the amount of time a lot of processing gurus spend listening to one clip from one song to make sure that the cowbells really sound like cowbells when the radio listener hears it (yes, I am talking about Omnia founder Frank Foti).

The processing also needs to be adjusted for a wider variety of content and voices than a podcast.

Could you have the same processing preset for both an FM radio station and your podcast? Not really, because you will not have pre-emphasis or a final clipper to deal with.

But just as many radio stations have managed to get their streams having similar sonic signatures for their FM and streams, developing a core processing recipe for your podcasts and your FM station can and should be a goal.

After all, if your listeners love your radio station and they recognize the same sonic signature on your podcasts, you already have a fan.

One thing both have in common is the objective: To make sure the listener stays with you and loves your sound. Here are five tips to process your podcasts that will do just that.

#1 Test Your Podcast’s Processed Sound in a Variety of Environments

The other thing podcasting and radio have in common is that you don’t know where your listener is doing the listening. It may be in a car, using earbuds on public transportation, or at home, whether it be on an FM radio or smart speakers.

For both FM and podcasting, you have to create a sonic signature that works across all devices and environments. And we highly recommended that you test your podcast’s processed sound across a variety of devices.

We learned from many years of experience that what may sound great in one environment doesn’t always translate to others. In other words, don’t listen on the most beautiful speakers you have and think “Eureka!” The person listening on a really small smart speaker may not have the same experience at all.

#2 Process Based on Voice

Most podcasts are voice-only with only occasional music beds. A podcast should be processed depending on that voice. The processing adjustments you make will be to try to make the voice sound as good as it can.

This is critically important to keep in mind. The podcaster may have a great story but not the greatest voice, and processing can be used to add a bit more “oomph” to that voice or get rid of issues with over sibilance. What type of mic the podcaster uses can also affect how you process the audio.

#3 Consider Your Format and Audience

Your podcast’s desired sound also depends on what type of podcast you are producing.

A fast-paced podcast geared towards a young audience including lots of music beds can be processed very aggressively. But even at that, if you are going to maximize the loudness, it will need to be at a lower loudness level overall, because it will need to fit in with the rest of the content on a smart speaker or other podcasts. Very little irritates people more than audio content that is much louder than other content.

Using that same aggressive type of audio processing on a cooking show geared towards a more mature audience is a mistake. That audience doesn’t need to hear something über-compressed. Your goal with that type of show is probably a much more open sound.

#4 Podcast Processing & Audio Codecs

Processing for podcasting is  similar to processing for streaming. You do not have the same issues you need to deal with in FM processing.

Both podcasts and streams do have the challenges of audible artifacts caused by audio codecs as well. The good news is that you do not have to deal with a final clipper which can cause issues with audio codecs.

#5 Get Intimate with Your Audience

It is also worth considering that podcasting by its nature is a much more intimate one-on-one experience. It is a podcaster sharing information or a story with its audience one at a time. Often people are listening on ear buds. Processing needs to have that intimate feel.

For more on this topic, see the Telos Alliance webinar “Podcast Audio Quality.”

Also read the new Radio World ebook “Trends in Processing for Radio” at the Radio World Resources page.

The post 5 Tips for Processing Your Podcast appeared first on Radio World.

The “Now Playing” tab of the Inovonics Sofia 568

The author is chief engineer of KTIS(AM/FM), KDNW(FM), KDNI(FM) and KRFG(FM).

Artist Experience via HD Radio has been around for quite a few years now, but KTIS(FM) just implemented station logo and album artwork about two years ago.

At the time, the only ways to verify whether or not the images were going out over the air properly were various car stereos (built into the vehicles, so not very convenient for rack room monitoring), or the Sparc SHD-T750 Tabletop HD Radio.

Because the SPARC was the only indoor option, we purchased a few units — one for engineering, one for promotions, and one for the assistant PD.

We quickly discovered, however, the limitations (bugs?) of the Sparc unit. Strange unpredictable caching of station logos (why is the old logo still showing up on my radio?) and apparently no logo or artwork functionality on the HD4 channel. And even though they’re still being sold on Amazon and promoted on Grace Digital’s website, it seems to be an abandoned product that won’t be receiving any updates or bug fixes.

Enter the Inovonics Sofia 568 SiteStreamer+. It is a veritable toolbox for FM/HD Radio broadcasters to make sure that what you’re intending to put on the air is exactly what’s going on the air.

If you’ve used any of Inovonics’ recent equipment, starting with the Aaron 650 and popular INOmini SiteStreamer line, you will recognize the web interface. It’s organized and divided into sections that make sense. The “Now Playing” tab gives you an overview of your signal condition and various alarms, along with the option to tune the audio output of the unit to whichever station you’d like.

What the listener sees

The “Listener Experience” tab is where the real fun starts.

The “Listener Experience” tab

This tab gives an overview of every single active HD subchannel on the currently-tuned frequency, along with all the metadata and Artist Experience images, while also highlighting which image should be currently displayed on listener’s radios.

It will also tell you if your station logo has an “image issue” relating to the requirements specified by iBiquity Digital/Xperi for the station image logo.

On my particular unit, I’m noticing that my HD2 station logo isn’t currently working for some reason, and that my HD3 station logo seems to have an “issue.” This doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t work over the air, but that for best results, you should look into its formatting and resolution, and that it’s totally cleared of all EXIF data before being loaded into the Importer/Exporter/MSAC Client.

The Sofia 568 has many options for audio outputs — analog, AES3, streaming via the web interface, and AES67 via a separate Dante network jack. So far, the most useful of these has absolutely been the webstream. It’s a quick and easy way to verify things are on the air and sounding normal.

Alarms can be configured to send out an email for audio loss, low signal, RDS issues, pilot issues, HD carrier issues, and HD Artist Experience issues. Also, there are four GPOs on the rear that can be configured as any of those alarms for local signaling to an external monitoring or remote alerting system.

As usual, Inovonics has been extremely helpful in supporting and updating the unit for functionality and bug fixes ever since the original purchase. Overall, having the Sofia 568 in our facility has been a valuable addition to our HD Radio troubleshooting, diagnostic and monitoring toolbox, providing much information that was not otherwise available to us.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

For information, contact Gary Luhrman at Inovonics in California at 1-831-458-0552 or visit http://www.inovonicsbroadcast.com.

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There’s a new organization focused on supporting the needs of independent radio broadcasters.

The concept of the new Independent Broadcasters Association (IBA) started as the brainchild of the independent radio operator Ron Stone. After sitting in on a session at an annual NAB conference two years ago, Stone walked out realizing that none of the issues covered were focused on independent radio companies at all.

“When you go to those events, you want to improve your organization and sales. It just seemed like everything was focused on the larger companies,” said Stone, who is founder, president and executive director of IBA and also owner 24 stations in five markets as part of the Adams Radio Group. “I was disheartened. And from there, I thought about what an association can do if it is formed in the right way.”

Fast forward to today and the new Independent Broadcasters Association has found support from 1,200 independent radio members. The association’s goals are to provide independent operators with ways to drive revenue and achieve cost benefits cannot be achieved alone. It will also meet needs not be served by other organizations, such as through educational webinars, conferences, access to group health insurance and admittance to jobs board.

On the heels of this, the IBA also plans to roll out a news service for independent broadcasters. “If you go back into the 1800s when [the Associated Press] started, it began as a co-op with other papers,” Stone said. “What we’re trying to do is to have all independents of the IBA contribute stories and images and [make that news accessible so that] any member can use it.”

Stone wanted to make it clear that stations who are part of the IBA are not trying to compete with other umbrella organizations. “We’re trying to take away from anyone else’s organization,” he said. “And we’re not trying to displace anyone else. Ours is highly focused on operational cost and revenue.”

Other offerings include the ability for independent broadcasters to participate in a financial review of their organization. IBA recently announced an association with dk east associates, a media specialty accounting firm, who will conduct a financial analysis of independent broadcasters’ operations. Participation in the financial report is free but stations must be a member of the IBA.

“We see a lot of information about the industry, but typically it only speaks to larger public companies and it is difficult to use in a meaningful way for local operations,” Stone said when the announcement was made. “The IBA was formed to bring shared resources like this to independent broadcasters, along with revenue-generation and cost-saving opportunities.”

For example, the IBA-dk east associates report will allow members to compare and contrast their operations to others of similar size and will provide quarterly data against 2019 to allow members to gauge their own performance against similar operations during the COVID-19 crisis.

Why did Stone see the need for this type of organization now? “Bigger companies have taken control of what is going on in our country,” he said. “They’ve had control since consolidation in the ’90s. And if you look at revenue, in 1996 we were something like a $15 billion industry. This year, we’re a $10 billion industry; compared to 1996 valuations, that’s more like $8 million. So we’ve lost 50% of the revenue that we used to have. Half our revenue is gone.

“We can keep doing the same things and you can see what the next 10 years is going to look like,” he said. “Or we can make a decision to bind together and find a path together.”

The entire radio industry is facing big challenges, he said. If we lose our position in the car, for example, we lose in a big way, he said. “Part of our plans is to create an app so that we, too, can go to the car manufacturers and argue ‘there’s a reason this app should be on your dashboard.’”

Stone said the organization is also in talks to create its own real-time, app-based ratings service.

A look at the IBA’s current board shows a mix of CEOs, GMs and independent owners with a mix of industry attorneys and digital companies serving as board advisors. The 501(c)(6) nonprofit company will require one third of the board to vacate their seat in December 2021 to keep ideas and mindsets fresh. Varied voices are important, Stone said. “We don’t want to see the same board members serving or 30 years,” he said.

There are several ways to join the IBA, one of which includes a way to make membership financially feasible to all stations. One option is a barter-based plan that includes a per station $100 annual fee plus one 60-second daily barter advertising spot. If they choose the membership barter option, that inventory is sold to fund their membership, Stone said. A second option is $600 annually per station with no barter.

Stone believes that the more independent members that the IBA has, the stronger the association will be. “The more members we have, the more voice we have in the matter. There is every reason to have every [independent station] be part of us.

“I want to know that when our generation hands it over [to the next generation], it will be in good shape,” he said. “But it takes every independent to make that happen.”

 

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RTBF’s Francis Goffin is the recipient of the WorldDAB Outstanding Service award.

WorldDAB cited Goffin’s work with the French-speaking operations of the Belgian public broadcaster along with his promotion of transition to digital broadcasting.

[Read: WorldDAB’s First Virtual General Assembly Approaches]

He said, “I would like to thank WorldDAB Pres. Patrick Hannon and the entire WorldDAB community for giving me this wonderful award which underlines my involvement in the promotion of DAB+ for almost 10 years now.”

Goffin added, “I believe this award also honors the entire Belgian radio sector, which has collectively embarked on the digital migration from analog FM to DAB+ digital radio with great enthusiasm.”

The WorldDAB 2020 general assembly is this week.

 

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KSUR website image

Longtime broadcaster Saul Levine thinks the FCC’s decision to allow all-digital on the AM band is “a breakthrough,” and he’s encouraging his fellow AM station owners to invest in new equipment and programming with an eye on eventually going all-digital.

For now, the president of Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters Inc. has just spent a quarter of a million dollars on a new AM transmitting system at his oldies-formatted station KSUR(AM) in Los Angeles.

Saul Levine at his office in 2012.

And he has turned on hybrid AM HD Radio as an interim step, making him one of the few U.S. broadcasters to add fresh AM HD Radio service in recent years.

The project involves a new 25 kW Nautel main transmitter and a 12 kW Nautel standby, plus four new 200-foot towers and ground systems.

He said that KSUR has a “significant” existing audience, so he views using hybrid mode as a compromise that lays groundwork for going 100% digital, which he anticipates doing in 12 to 18 months.

KSUR is a Class B directional station with 20 kW daytime power and a translator at 98.3 FM.

in 1959, Levine put KBCA(FM) on the air at 105.1, broadcasting from more than a mile above downtown Los Angeles as one of the first FM stations on Mount Wilson. “I placed FM 105.1 on the air in 1959 when FM set penetration was only about 25 percent,” he recalled. “It was a difficult time for FM, and the station did not become profitable for 10 years.

“I suggest AM owners who do not have a passion for radio and are looking for fast profits get out of the AM ownership business,” he continued. “Ultimately 100% AM digital will prevail and be successful. Initially, we have elected to go with hybrid HD digital/analog technology. The reason is that this allows continued analog listening while making the transition to all-digital AM.”

He said his analog AM sounds good and the digital component “is significantly noise-free, and provides stereo. KSUR 1260 is also simulcast in HD on our 105.1 FM facility with 100-mile coverage from 6,000-foot-high Mount Wilson.”

Levine told Radio World, “I see the recent FCC decision to approve all digital AM transmission as a breakthrough for the AM service [that will] will lead to financially successful AM stations. In my opinion initial operation with hybrid technology is a fast way to generate a positive outlook for the AM band, and lead to 100% digital technology within a few years.

“In the interim, I urge AM station owners to invest in AM with new equipment, and invest in unique programming to provide the audience with a reason to tune in, plus perceive digital AM radio as I did with FM 62 years ago.” He  says if an AM station plans to go to a new format or needs a kickstart, “I recommend all-digital now. But install the digital equipment now,” regardless.

Read our 2007 article “Levine’s KKGO/KMZT Embrace HD Radio”

 

 

 

 

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FCC Chairman Ajit Pai issued a statement on the centennial Monday of the famous KDKA broadcast.

This is the text:

“Today we celebrate the 100th anniversary of our nation’s first widely recognized commercial radio broadcast that took place on November 2, 1920. The broadcast, which aired in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on KDKA, Westinghouse Electric’s newly established station, relayed the results of the 1920 presidential election and set the stage for a long line of radio broadcasts that have shaped the story of America.

As the earliest electronic mass communications medium, radio has allowed us to listen in on some of the most momentous occasions in American history, from President Roosevelt’s famous ‘fireside chats’ to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.  It has entertained us, from The War of the Worlds to The Jack Benny Program to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem to The Steve Harvey Morning Show.  And radio still keeps millions of Americans company on long drives, enthralls us with coverage of our favorite sports teams, and when disaster strikes, is one of the most valuable resources for life-saving information.

Radio has given us a way to come together in times of strife and times of triumph.

On behalf of myself and the FCC’s dedicated staff, it is my honor to join all Americans in recognizing this milestone. Congratulations to radio broadcasters on a century of excellence. We look forward to the stories that radio will continue to tell!

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