Industry News

The DTS Connected Radio platform that Xperi has been working on for some time is coming to market now and will be part of the sophisticated MBUX multimedia car platform, the company announced.

The Daimler MB User Experience, or “MBUX,” is featured in the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class line.

DTS Connected Radio is a hybrid radio system that combines reception of broadcast signals with IP-delivered metadata; the company says it is now available in 48 countries. Hybrid systems provide a transition for a listener from broadcast to internet as a car drives out of range of a station OTA signal.

[Related: “Hybrid Radio Picks Up Momentum”]

The company also said its content comes from 48,000 radio stations and millions of tracks, albums and artist bios. DTS believes it has the world’s largest database of broadcast metadata.

It stated in the press release: “DTS Connected Radio features big beautiful art, comprehensive artist and album information and imagery, songs, playlists, content recommendations, lyrics, local events, podcasts, and more, enriching broadcasts from thousands of radio stations around the world.”

Xperi General Manager of Automotive Jeff Jury described the relationship as “partnering with Daimler to help make what they call the ‘Third Place’ — a refuge between home and workspace — more delightful.”

In a Radio World interview in July, Jury was asked what was notable about the MBUX system.

“First, Daimler [the parent of Mercedes] is not just handing over the dash to Apple or Google,” he said at the time. “They are innovating for their customers. This is a great outcome for the radio industry because it means not all entertainment needs to be behind a car play or android for auto wall.

“Second, the main screen has radio as a separate icon (and apps as a separate icon). This shows that radio is compelling, and importantly, a standalone infotainment source for Daimler buyers. Again, good for the radio industry because radio is a main option, not one of many apps in the dash.”

DTS highlights research that says radio remains a “must have” dashboard feature and reaches more adults 25–54 than other audio sources. Jury said those consumers want radio “to be as rich and engaging as other media platforms and experiences, particularly a mobile experience.”

DTS promotes its platform to carmakers as a global one, compatible with analog AM/FM and global digital radio formats including DAB, DAB+ and its own HD Radio technology. It said the platform enables OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers to create better user interfaces without consuming a lot of data and computer resources in the vehicle.

Xperi is also the parent of DTS AutoSense, which monitors drivers and occupants; and HD Radio.

[Related: “Jeff Jury Highlights Further Personalization of the Dash”]

The post DTS Joins the MBUX Multimedia Platform appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page: Family Life Radio station KFLR(FM) in Phoenix, Ariz., took delivery this fall of a new Nautel GV30N-D FM transmitter.

Shown is Michael Bove, chief engineer for Family Life Radio in Tucson and Phoenix, with their new box, which supports the station’s addition of HD Radio with –12/–14 HD injection.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Effective radiated power is 100 kW. Its TPO is 21.566 kW, of which HD Radio is 1.066.

The station broadcasts with an ERI medium-power half-wave-spaced four-bay directional antenna mounted to a top pole on Tower 12 South Mountain Phoenix.

Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post A Nautel Transmitter for KFLR appeared first on Radio World.

Chuck Weber, proprietor of Weber Climbing Services in Elizabethtown, Ind., is often asked for an opinion about a tower company or to recommend one. He answers that a company is only as good as its climbers.

Chuck shared some thoughts to help you get more value out of your next tower re-lamp job.

Ask the climbers to do a visual inspection and perform simple repairs on the way up and during their rest stops. It is an opportunity to gather some information that might save you thousands of dollars, so a little prep work may pay off big.

Some repairs, of course, will be limited by the climber’s knowledge and experience, but most will be commonsense.

A little small talk and a free lunch will make that initial conversation easier. You might also put together a small tool bag for the climber to take up. You can find a canvas bag and carabiner clip at a surplus or outdoor supply store.

In Chuck’s personal re-lamp tool bag, you’ll find a two-way radio as well as a cellphone. Never underestimate the importance of a means of quick and easy vocal contact, even if it’s just asking for AC power to check all the bulbs on the way down the tower.

The cellphone is not only a backup to the radio but it provides a camera to take photos of things that need attention and to document work done.

Also put a roll of quality electrical tape in the bag. Choose multi-use tape. It’s the “duct tape for the tower world,” and worth its weight in gold; it may mean the difference between doing a simple repair now and enduring a expensive failure later.

The electrical tape can provide temporary repairs for situations like the one here where an AC cable became separated from a radome heater.

Another “must-have” is a tube of Aquaseal urethane repair adhesive and sealant.

Use it to fix a poor or missing STL connector weather seal, or squeeze it into a poorly fit wire entry in a junction box. Like the electrical tape, the sealant can save you from early failures on many fronts.

In your bag, also include a coiled length of #14 solid conductor THHN wire, three to five feet of it. Rarely has Chuck been on a tower for a re-lamp and not found a section of coax hanging loose. The wire can be cut to length to create “copper tie wraps” that will last virtually forever.

Be sure to include a multi-tool/screwdriver combo, like the ones made by SOG, to tighten cable clamps or remove the base of a broken bulb from its fixture.

Finally, Chuck suggests that you supply extra bulbs to take up, at least one beacon and one side-lamp. Even new bulbs may fail when powered up; a few are bad out of the box.

You want the re-lamp to be done — with all new bulbs, not leaving an old bulb left in place because a new one failed. Having extras is cheap insurance, and any left over can be shelved for future use.

Thanks, Chuck, for helping us get our money’s worth out of the next re-lamp!

Basics Training

Frequent contributor Dan Slentz has been surfing the web again; he writes about a neat site called “Interesting Engineering” at www.interestingengineering.com.

The site offers an “Ultimate Electrical Engineering Master Class Bundle” that comprises five courses with more than 250 in-depth lessons. It promises to provide a solid understanding of electrical engineering tools and practices. The courses teach simple and complex circuits, as well as repair of household appliances; there’s even a course dedicated to the planning, installation and maintenance of solar power sources.

At this writing, the course is offered for $25

Dan adds that he did not have formal education in electronics; his training has come through the “school of hard knocks,” a Radio Shack 100-in-1 project kit, his antique Knight Kit “lab,” and attending programs such as the Sony school for U-Matic tape decks, Christie projection school and the Harris RF school.

He also has learned from reading sources like Radio World, TV Technology, the late Broadcast Engineering magazine and the super new online material provided by the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

By the way, Dan still uses a cardboard three-wheel Radio Shack resistor value guide, because all he remembers of the resistor colors is “But Violet Goes Willingly.”

If you sign up for those courses or can recommend any others, share your experience by emailing me at johnpbisset@gmail.com.

John Bisset has spent over 50 years in the broadcasting industry. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He holds CPBE certification with the Society of Broadcast Engineers and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award. Workbench submissions are encouraged, qualify for SBE Recertification, and can be emailed to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Get More Out of Your Tower Re-Lamp appeared first on Radio World.

The author operates J.R. Richardson Electronics, a contract engineering firm in Westminster, Md.

The first time I saw a USB device with an antenna connection, I said there was no way to have a complete spectrum analyzer on that device; when I saw what it would do, I was hooked.

When you look at the Broadcast Electronics Avatar Test Receiver, you get the same first impression. However, when you load the software, hook up an antenna and plug the USB cable into the computer, a new world opens up.

The Avatar allows you to analyze not only your signal but all the signals on the FM radio band. Here is the list:

1. RF spectrum and waterfall displays of your signal;
2. Multiplex spectrum display;
3. Modulation power (how “loud” the station is);
4. RDS — see all the transmitted information;
5. Instantaneous deviation;
6. Deviation history;
7. Deviation histogram;
8. Audio spectrum: L & R, plus peak and average;
9. Stereo Lissajous display — see the relative phase and amplitude of the L&R;
10. Stereo quality;
11. Audio S/N (even without cutting modulation).

The Avatar’s ability to look at all of those parameters on a computer gives the technician the look-see at what is happening. Much of the work that we perform involves questions like “Am I over-modulating,” “Is someone interfering with the signal,” “What is my RDS sending out” and “Do I have good stereo separation?”

The RF spectrum shows where your signal is in the FM band, and your spectral occupancy. The MPX spectrum gives you a look at your L+R, L–R pilot, RDS and any SCAs you may have. Modulation power shows a relative indication of how loud you are and of course the RDS analysis shows what is being transmitted.

Something I really like is that the device looks for the stereo pilot and if it is not there, it shows the mono signal on the stereo quality signal.

Practical considerations

My Avatar is set up with an external antenna in my office, so that I can monitor several of the stations that I contract for. You have to be careful about multipath, which can cause apparent overmodulation to be displayed. For clean measurements, use the RF pickup tap on your transmitter.

I will be arranging a remote pickup site for my unit at one of my backup sites. I would consider two antennas, one omni and the other with a high-gain directional antenna on a rotor. I could then log in with a remote desktop connection and get a good reading.

The Avatar works well on a desktop computer or on my portable laptop in the truck. For this location, I have a whip antenna with a magnetic base, which would give you the same signal as if you were listening on the truck radio.

Using the Avatar for new installations, I’d suggest you do a screen grab and have a reference for future use. I have suggested the Avatar to a group that has a station in Key West, Fla., while their home office is in Valdosta, Ga. With remote access via PCAnywhere, LogMeIn or VNC they can monitor the station constantly .

The Avatar RF spectrum display shows the HD sidebands but does not decode them. Audio is analog. The unit also has an input for the AM frequency band, and can display the spectrum on that band, but the software currently does not support AM station analysis.

You are able to switch between 10 presets that you can program. You are also able to label the tabs with the call letters of the station.

The unit is very small and is powered by the USB cable, it fits easily in your toolbox.

Would I buy another Broadcast Electronics Avatar? At the price of $1,495 it is well worth it.

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 about this product, contact Frank Grundstein at 1-610-353-1970 or for Latin America sales Daniel Bizet at 1-217-592-4225 or visit http://www.bdcast.com.

The post User Report: BE Avatar Reveals Just About Everything appeared first on Radio World.

Have you recently stopped to think about how much energy your radio broadcasts use?

That was the question the BBC has attempted to answer about both its radio and TV energy consumption in a  recently published research report, “The Energy Footprint of BBC Radio Services: Now and in the Future.” The report, which explores the energy footprint of BBC radio services, was initiated to try and understand and improve the environmental impact of BBC services.

The study considered energy use across all available platforms — AM, FM, DAB, digital television and internet streaming — to discover which ones had the largest footprints. The BBC also compared energy use at various stages in the radio chain, including playout, encoding, distribution and audience consumption of content.

“This highlighted the key energy hotspots in the BBC radio system and where best to focus our efforts if we want to reduce our energy footprint,” the BBC said in its announcement.

The research was meant to discover how much electricity is currently used by BBC radio services, the comparative energy use per platform, how this use may change over time and which parts of the system are consuming the most energy.

The BBC found that the total energy required to prepare, distribute and consume radio in its 2018 baseline test was estimated to be 325 GWh, equivalent to 0.1% of U.K. electricity use that year. Of all five platforms, FM was found to have the biggest footprint overall at 100 GWh (31%) and AM the lowest at 25 GWh (8%), with IP (79 GWh; 24%), DAB (65 GWh; 20%) and DTV (56 GWh; 17%) falling in-between.

Not all radio platforms are consumed equally, however. The research found that listening hours on FM and DAB were up to 11 times higher than on AM and DTV. The BBC also calculated the electricity consumption per device hour to find the energy intensity of each platform. This painted a slightly different picture where DTV had the largest footprint at 81 watt hour per device-hour, followed by AM (29 watt-hour/device-hour), IP (23 watt-hour/device-hour), FM (13 watt-hour/device-hour) and lastly DAB which had the smallest at 9 watt-hour/device-hour.

Overall, the BBC found that consumption had the biggest footprint, quite a bit larger than preparation and distribution. Consumer devices used around 73% of the total energy in 2018 compared to 27% for distribution, with preparation using less than 0.1% overall.

“Despite similar findings in our television research, we were again surprised by this result as the transmitter networks for radio services collectively use more power than that for digital terrestrial television,” the BBC said in its report. “However, with the tens of millions of consumer devices which can access radio across the U.K., even low-power audio devices add up.”

According to BBC R&D, the research is the first of its kind to analyze radio energy use. The work piggybacks on the research the company released earlier this year about the environmental impact of BBC television.

The BBC attracts more than 30 million listeners in the U.K. per week through live stations, podcasts and on-demand content. Those radio services are being accessed on a range of consumer devices including smart speakers, smartphones and car audio.

The post BBC Quantifies How Much Energy Needed to Deliver and Listen to Radio appeared first on Radio World.

Here’s the latest pic from our “Engineers at Work” feature:

The National Association of Broadcasters and Xperi Corp. are working to test the performance of HD Radio’s MA3 mode in electric vehicles. As part of that effort, Russ Mundschenk of Xperi and Dave Kolesar of Hubbard’s WWFD(AM) took this selfie while driving around to help document the Core and Core+Enhanced coverage of the station. (Clearly, these guys are NRSC-5 RF Mask Compliant!)

The two were in a gasoline-powered control car, a Hubbard-owned 2015 Subaru Crosstrek.

WWFD is the all-digital AM station in Frederick, Md., that has been operating under experimental authority. The FCC this week opened the all-digital option to all AM stations in the United States.

Mundschenk and Kolesar also are the two most recent recipients of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award.

Radio World wants photos of yourself and your interesting radio facilities, projects and adventures. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post A Different Kind of Digital Radio Mask appeared first on Radio World.

In the Oct. 14 KDKA feature the question is twice asked — including in a Page 21 photo caption — “Did engineer Donald Little invent and fabricate the world’s first transducer for turning record groove modulations into a varying voltage?”

The answer is: Decidedly not. The honor for that advance goes to Gianni Bettini, an Italian army lieutenant who made his fortune in the U.S.A but died and remains back in Italy, having patented electrical recording in 1902.

[Read: Constructing the First “Real” Radio Station]

Bettini took a Berliner microphone, manufactured by Bell’s Western Electric Co. and of the type that went into all the world’s telephones for 100 years (which includes KDKA’s in 1920), pushed a needle through the center of its diaphragm and turned it into a phonograph pickup. Bell, Edison and even disc record “revolutionizer” (no pun intended) Emile Berliner missed it. Had any one of them paid attention we’d have had electrical recording two decades before Western Electric introduced it when they created motion picture sound in 1926 (or was it ’25?).

For Radio World readers it should be noted that the broadcasting business quickly adopted WECo’s 33 1/3 rpm 16-inch disc which inaugurated the quarter-century era of recorded-program dissemination on discs. Interestingly, the four networks — NBC (Red), NBC-Blue, CBS and Mutual (the least heralded yet with the most affiliated stations of all) — engaged my friend Harry Bryant’s Radio Recorders in Hollywood to create what came to be called “transcriptions” for delayed broadcast on the “coast” of shows coming in “live” from New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Detroit.

The post Filling Out a Gap in Radio Tech History appeared first on Radio World.

Nielsen PPM encoding is now built into the Optimod XPN-AM processor from Orban Labs, at no additional charge, according to the company.

Users who already have an Optimod XPN-AM can contact the company for information on a free upgrade.

Orban Labs issued a press release saying that stations that are now handling Nielsen PPM encoding via XPN-AM include KHTK in Sacramento, KSL in Salt Lake City, KKYX in San Antonio and WSB in Atlanta.

The announcement included endorsements from Bonneville’s Jason Ornellas, director of engineering for Sacramento, and Aaron Farnham, its DOE in Salt Lake City.

[Read: User Report: Orban XPN-AM Improves Coverage for Rural AMs]

“We are broadcasting HD Radio AM using MDCL that gives us additional power savings [at KSL],” Farnham told Orban, highlighting cost savings of having Nielsen encoding built in. “It gives you the ability to process and then encode so you don’t damage the quality of the encoding.”

The XPN-AM Audio Processor is based upon an AM-optimized version of Orban’s MX limiter technology. Orban highlights its ability to generate greater density with lower distortion, saying this can significantly reduce power consumption for users of transmitters equipped with Modulation Dependent Carrier Level. The processor is available in AM and AM/HD Radio versions.

The post Orban Ships XPN-AMs With Nielsen PPM Encoders appeared first on Radio World.

A Florida AM radio station plans to go all-digital soon, now that the Federal Communications Commission has allowed such transitions.

WMGG is owned by NIA Broadcasting; it’s a Class B station in Egypt Lake, Fla., near Tampa, airing a directional signal via a diplexed array. It has 2.8 kW power by day and 800 watts at night, and airs on 1470 kHz.

The company also owns several other AM, FM and TV properties.

President Neal Ardman told Radio World he is in the process of ordering a Nautel HD Radio transmitter to make the change.

“It is time,” he wrote in an email, adding that he is “not worried” about losing analog listening.

WMGG has an FM translator on 101.9 MHz. Both signals are part of “96.1 FM Caliente,” the radio home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Spanish-language network.

The post Florida AM Station Plans to Go All-Digital appeared first on Radio World.

Radio World’s new ebook explores trends in processing for radio, including the management of over-the-air and streamed signals.

Broadcasters now prepare and deliver content over numerous platforms, to listeners in numerous environments including far beyond their local markets.

What are the most important developments in the design of processors for radio’s needs? Have we reached a state of unchanging hypercompression for OTA signals? How will the concepts of the cloud, virtualization and software as a service affect the processing marketplace?

Find out through Q&As and commentaries from a dozen industry users, engineering leaders and manufacturers.

It’s free … and our new streamlined registration process makes it simpler for you to access this material!

Read it here.

The post Trends in Audio Processing for Radio appeared first on Radio World.