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Wheatstone Baseband Interface

OmniaDirect has been on-air for over a month in a Top-Ten market. Due to competitive reasons, we're not at liberty to say where. As for being the first, good question. Probably more important is that this method was brought to life by Omnia and Nautel. Seeing that everyone else clamored so fast to do this, just further reinforced the validity of our joint innovative work.

-Frank Foti
 
It's cool tech. Congratulations on being first Frank.
Still, I'm curious about the transmitter being used in this air chain.
It is not mentioned in the article.
 
Was Omnia connected to the Nautel using their new digital connection method?  And then the Omnia was unplugged and the Vorsis attached?  If so, wouldn't Omnia have been first to transmit using the digital transmission path?  Or did this happen a different way?

I am no longer with Telos so I have no dog in this race.  I'm just curious.  The Wheatstone press release claims that Vorsis was first with a digital broadcast last week.  Yet Omnia has been talking about this since NAB.  Everyone keeping their marketeers honest?  ;)
 
Telosian said:
Was Omnia connected to the Nautel using their new digital connection method? And then the Omnia was unplugged and the Vorsis attached? If so, wouldn't Omnia have been first to transmit using the digital transmission path? Or did this happen a different way?

I am no longer with Telos so I have no dog in this race. I'm just curious. The Wheatstone press release claims that Vorsis was first with a digital broadcast last week. Yet Omnia has been talking about this since NAB. Everyone keeping their marketeers honest? ;)
Click to expand...

If you read the press release, it doesn't sound like the Omnia was ever connected using the new method.

If you used to work at Telos, why not contact the people involved?
 
If you read the press release, it doesn't sound like the Omnia was ever connected using the new method.

You're right. Maybe it never was connected using digital. In which case, I guess Wheatstone won the race. Congrats to you!

If you used to work at Telos, why not contact the people involved?

Oh, I'm sure someone will ring in on this and straighten us out one way or the other.
 
To our way of thinking, the more stations that go with an all-digital air chain the better it is for the industry in terms of quality broadcasts.

We don’t know of any stations doing this until last week. We do know that at that time (Thursday night) KTWN-FM went on the air with a 100% digital air chain – made possible by a Wheatstone AirAura X3 processor equipped with a baseband192 interface providing an AES/EBU output to the FM transmitter – and KTWN-FM is, of course, still on the air now broadcasting in this manner.

The technology that makes this possible has been part of our AirAura processor for years. Now that transmitter manufacturers are ready to go, we are happy to report that baseband192 has been enabled as a standard feature in the AirAura X3, FM-531HD and VP-8IP audio processors shipping from our factory right now.

Our hope is that other manufacturers will follow suit, which can only benefit all of us in the industry.
 
DeeMcVicker said:
The technology that makes this possible has been part of our AirAura processor for years. Now that transmitter manufacturers are ready to go, we are happy to report that baseband192 has been enabled as a standard feature in the AirAura X3, FM-531HD and VP-8IP audio processors shipping from our factory right now.

Our hope is that other manufacturers will follow suit, which can only benefit all of us in the industry.
Click to expand...

Omnia and Nautel announced this at NAB. Then you come along and claim you did it first and hope others will follow. I am always impressed by bold marketing. Kudos to you guys for winning this round! I'm glad to watch this match from the cheap seats. Catfish
 
Can someone design a retrofit module for the Digit? I'll bet that would sell like crazy and breathe some life into the tons of them that are still out there. Sure would be nice to go AES composite into it instead of either analog or regular AES. No matter what, the overshoots on the AES in are there. That's why the "composite limiter" was put in... which is a terrible implementation of a composite "clipper".
 
Telosian said:
Omnia and Nautel announced this at NAB. Then you come along and claim you did it first and hope others will follow. I am always impressed by bold marketing. Kudos to you guys for winning this round! I'm glad to watch this match from the cheap seats. Catfish
Click to expand...

All the credit goes to engineering, Mike. That's what made this happen, both on the transmitter side and our side. Wheatstone's baseband192 works, it's on the air, and it's in production. Nothing marketing about that.
 
Don't sell the marketing short Dee.  You got your story out quickly and effectively.  Your press release made me curious enough to start this thread, which of course has brought more attention to the achievement.  Regarding the engineering, a tip of the hat to Jeff and the gang. 
 
Telosian said:
Don't sell the marketing short Dee. You got your story out quickly and effectively.
Click to expand...

Well, not quickly enough, apparently. Might have been nice to send out a release back at NAB when the transmitter manufacturers were ready with their part, but the Wheat guys like to have a product in use and shipping before they talk.
 
IIRC, the air aura had the 192 baseband long before the 11 which had 96.So i guess the 11 had to uplink to 192.Clearly the air aura won the race. another concern i would have is will the 11's in the field have to be sent back to cleveland for a hardware update? Like Mike,I don't have a dog in the race either.But either way this is one heck of an innovation.Kudos to both developers.
 
oldiesstation said:
IIRC, the air aura had the 192 baseband long before the 11 which had 96.So i guess the 11 had to uplink to 192.Clearly the air aura won the race. another concern i would have is will the 11's in the field have to be sent back to cleveland for a hardware update? Like Mike,I don't have a dog in the race either.But either way this is one heck of an innovation.Kudos to both developers.
Click to expand...

The above statement is not correct, as the MPX signal requires a minimum sampling rate of 106kHz, which is needed to support the 53kHz composite bandwidth. The MPX signal in Omnia.11 has always operated at a minimum of 192kHz sampling.

We made an engineering decision to add a dedicated AES output for the MPX signal, which allows the product to maintain the other AES connections for flexibility reasons, as compared to re-assigning an existing connector. This enables more options for the broadcaster, which are sorely needed in today's technical landscape. IIRC: Something of the same is required for the 8600's MPX over AES functionality. It boils down to designer preference and what we, or another feels is important to the marketplace.

As stated the other day, we've been on-air with MPX over AES for awhile now. The important aspect here is this is something beneficial for broadcasting, not who did it first. It just so happens that Omnia and Nautel brought the idea to life. For that, we are the innovators of the concept. I'm happy that others are following the path of which we created.

-Frank Foti
 
oldiesstation said:
IIRC, the air aura had the 192 baseband long before the 11 which had 96.So i guess the 11 had to uplink to 192.Clearly the air aura won the race. another concern i would have is will the 11's in the field have to be sent back to cleveland for a hardware update? Like Mike,I don't have a dog in the race either.But either way this is one heck of an innovation.Kudos to both developers.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if it's back to the factory or not for those 11s. I'm sure Omnia will chime in. For AirAura, it's just a matter of a software update, so that makes it easy. That's because of the original AirAura design, as you alluded to, oldiesstation. And, yes, agreed: this is one heck of an innovation that is going to benefit broadcasters immediately.
 
Isn't this just moving the digital-to-analog conversion from the audio processor to the transmitter? Harris tried doing that on AM a decade ago with their 3DX series, and I've never heard anyone say that it actually sounds better than feeding the transmitter with analog audio. I'd rather trust the DAC to a company whose entire business is audio processing, rather than to a transmitter manufacturer whose main concern is RF, not audio.
 
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