In Broadcast - January 2015 - 68

68

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 1 | January 2015

InSound

Sound Monitoring Moves cont'd...
Standards
Howard Twine, Senior Sales Manager
of ﬁle-based QC specialist Vidcheck
agrees. "In the last eight months
knowing more about the content and
the ability to intelligently correct
it has become a priority," he says,
"especially if the facility doesn't have
the luxury of the client being in the
QC suite at the time. Monitoring and
QC are coming closer together, as
are audio and video. But the biggest
problem, certainly in the US, is that
networks don't always know for sure
what they're getting."
Twine explains that while the UK
has formalised ﬁle-based delivery
for broadcast through speciﬁcations
drawn up the Digital Production
Partnership (DPP), there is not as yet a
similar scheme in America.
"I was at a national network there
that had received some commercials,

Sonifex RM-4C8
reference monitor with Dolby

which were meant to be 5.1 surround,"
he recalls. "We put them through our
system and in a couple of seconds
identiﬁed it as MPEG1 dual stereo. With
tools like that broadcasters can make
more informed decisions about what
to do."
Loudness is now ﬁrmly part of
the monitoring and QC processes.
Although the main standards are
established and in use, they are still
being developed and extended to
cover all aspects of production. At the
end of last year the EBU was preparing
to issue a supplement to R128, which
will cover momentary and short-term
loudness for commercials and promos.
"Those are the most obvious areas
that people need to look at and have
the ability to correct," says Twine.
Vidcheck also supports ITU BS 1770
1-3, as does Plura Broadcast with its
range of video display panels. These
monitors also show LKFS (Loudness,
K-weighted, relative
to Full Scale) and
are used for both
live
transmissions
and receiving prerecorded programmes.

Don
Cardone,
Managing Director of
DMC Broadcast Group,
which represents Plura
among other brands,
says that monitoring
and QC are "pretty
hot right now". He
adds that although the
systems only handle
PCM embedded audio
at the moment they offer 16-channel
capability in addition to loudness.
Complexity
Despite the growing complexity
of audio formats and networking,
there is still a need for more basic
monitoring to ensure the sound is
there and going where it is expected.
BCD Audio produces the AMU (Audio
Monitor Unit), which is traditional in
presentation, offering a loudspeaker,
headphone
socket,
bar
graph
metering, source processing and phase
indication.
BCD Managing Director Mike Law
says the AMU is intended to be a
straightforward monitor unit for TV
galleries that can deal with embedded
audio in HD from two sources, plus
AES-3 and analogue. "We've kept it

Vidchecker - monitoring
and QC

simple, so loudness and fancy screens
are deliberately not present," he
comments.
The Sonifex range of RM-4C8
reference monitors is also aimed at
more basic requirements. German
systems integrator SonoVTS used
these units for facilities it built and
shipped to Brazil for last year's World
Cup. Of the 110 installed, 60% featured
a RM-HD1 card to allow de-embedding
of an HD-SDI stream for monitoring
embedded audio channels.
Whatever the level of sophistication
of the monitor being used, the overall
message is that this continues to be a
critical part of the broadcast chain, in
both the analytical and importance
senses of the word.

Building Audio Monitoring Into
Broadcast Infrastructure Devices
By Werner Drews,
Managing Director, 2wcom

T

he best of today's broadcast
infrastructures achieve classleading efﬁciency through a high
degree of component autonomy and
the ability to self-monitor.
Support for IP and SNMP allows
devices to integrate readily into an
operator's wider command and control
network, and with built-in monitoring
capabilities, these devices are doubly
valuable to broadcasters.
Encapsulating 2wcom's expertise in
FM and RDS monitoring into a single
unit, the FM02 FM Receiver Solution
is an example of the new breed of
multi-role self-monitoring devices.
The FM02 combines the functionality
for demodulation, source-switching
for FM backup and FM/RDS parameter
monitoring, and can be used in a
variety of ways to meet a range of
broadcasting scenarios.

For audio monitoring, dual-channel
capability is important, allowing
reception of one FM signal for rebroadcasting, while monitoring a
second FM signal with the second
tuner; or the same signal can
be received on both tuners with
one acting as a backup. Robust
performance is provided by the unit's
ability to loop through the signal even
during a power failure. Extending
the versatility of the unit still further,
the FM02 can be used as part of a
monitoring solution for both FM and
RDS parameters.
Versatility
is
important
to
broadcasters,
especially
when
infrastructure
is
changed
and
improved on a frequent basis. So too is
autonomy - the ability of infrastructure
devices to operate trouble-free, and
give detailed remote reporting of

status to the operations centre. The
FM02 therefore supports remote audio
quality monitoring through its built-in
mp3 streaming capability. Audio can
be streamed from the unit to an audio
player such as VLC, allowing operators
to hear the current output of the audio
programme, and the stream can be
saved for later analysis.
The unit also monitors and displays
all the most important FM and RDS
parameters, such as RF level, stereo
blend, L/R audio level, MPX level,
and RDS Data (PI,PS,TP,TA,PTY). If
problems occur, alerts by e-mail (SMS),
SNMP, or Web are sent to maintenance
staff.
In order to prove that the FM
transmission
meets
regulatory
requirements, the FM02 will measure
MPX-Power
and
MPX-Deviation

and display the values graphical
form. The values can be stored and
retrieved later for presentation to the
broadcaster's regulation authority.
Upcoming development of the FM02
will allow scanning of a larger number
of FM stations, analysing the spectrum
to show all available FM-Stations with
each station's signal strength, and
channel monitoring even on smart
phones. All values will be stored on
the unit's integrated memory, with RT+
and TMC messages displayed in plain
text.
For operators with monitoring
systems integrated into a larger
network management system, the
FM02 can be incorporated easily into
the NMS environment via its SNMP
capabilities.
2wcom's FM02 FM Receiver
http://www.inbroadcast.com http://www.vidcheck.com/products/vidchecker.php http://www.sonifex.co.uk/refmon/rm4c8.shtml http://www.2wcom.com/en/products/fm-solutions/flexmon-fm02-fm-demodulator.html
In Broadcast - January 2015

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