Industry News

This week we’re featuring highlights of Radio World’s 2021 ebooks.

The online WorldDAB Automotive 2021 Conference in June provided looks at various aspects of digital radio in the car environment. Here’s a sampling of presentations, all viewable on WorldDAB’s YouTube channel. This story originally appeared in the ebook “Trends in Digital Radio 2021.”

Extra displays

“Co-driver” displays — those targeting the front-seat passenger — are among “mega trends” dominating the European automotive industry. Another is Android Automotive.

Martin Koch of Volkswagen CARIAD said the arrival of “co-driver” displays will increase the demand for high-quality visual content in the dash. This image shows a passenger display on the MBUX Hyperscreen, introduced by Mercedes-Benz in January.
MBUX Hyperscreen: Co-driver display

Radio has to act fast to respond to both of these trends, said Martin Koch, head of development entertainment & car functions at Volkswagen CARIAD, during his talk “What’s Driving the Automotive Industry?”

He said such displays are turning up now in high-end cars, and their arrival is spurring a demand for high-quality visuals, which can include sophisticated slideshows, full-motion videos, games and multimedia tied to “browsing through the latest releases of your favorite artists,” he said.

Unfortunately, only about only 20 radio stations in the world currently support online slideshows, he said.

“This is not enough to really talk about providing a brilliant visual experience to drivers and co-drivers. So my recommendation for the broadcast industry is to make use of the technologies we already have in place and to develop concepts for attractive visual content to accompany their audio programming,” Koch said.

“And it’s not only the station logo or weather information: It can be so much more that attracts your customers and keeps them listening to your station and not switching to another media source or other content.”

Further, the presence of Android Automotive apps into the car will compete with DAB+ in the space and could undermine broadcast radio if these apps do not incorporate DAB+ features. Koch’s advice is for radio stations to build their own apps on the Android Automotive platform and “provide them, through the relevant app stores, to the dash of the car.”

Android Automotive

During the presentation “Global, Open and Available: A Broadcaster-Led Initiative for Radio on Android Automotive,” Joe D’Angelo, Xperi’s senior vice president of broadcast radio, asked Guru Nagarajan, Google’s engineering manager with Android Automotive OS, about the progress being made to bring that OS into the world’s cars, and about broadcast radio’s place in it.

“The first cars with the Android Automotive OS were launched this past year, and they were on Volvo Polestars,” Nagarajan said. “We’ve been very pleased with the user feedback and the feedback that we’re getting from our partners.”

Through efforts like the one led by NAB PILOT, radio broadcasters are working to be present in Android Automotive, in order to preserve their traditional prominence in car/truck entertainment systems. Fortunately, Google seems enthusiastic about radio’s place in this new app-driven environment.

“We continue to be very excited about broadcast radio,” said Nagarajan. “We think we can bring in a lot more capabilities for broadcasters and provide a platform that allows partners like Xperi and others to innovate and bring in the best from a user experience perspective.”

He added that Google is developing an Android Automotive application programming interface, or API, that will allow radio stations to localize their content on the app, and to generally enhance the platform to work better for broadcast radio.

“We would like to continue working with the broadcast ecosystem in both developing as well as innovating in the [Android Automotive] platform, and helping you all accelerate what you are really good at, which is providing the best of services to our users,” Nagarajan said.

France moves ahead

At present, about 30% of France’s population can receive DAB+ over the air. By the end of 2022, that should hit 50%, and roadway multiplexes will play a big part in helping them listen in the car.

These points were raised by Jean-Marc Dubreuil during his presentation “France: Automakers and Broadcasters’ Preparations for National DAB+.”

Dubreuil is WorldDAB’s manager for France and a member of the French joint broadcaster/vehicle manufacturer working group.

According to Dubreuil, 25 of France’s national radios services will be available in DAB+ on the country’s roadways by this fall. This is no small feat: “That means almost 12,000 kilometers of highways and a little more than 10,000 kilometers of main roads to cover,” he said. “It’s quite a lot.”

While this work is proceeding, challenges remain in coordinating the DAB+ rollout between broadcasters and car manufacturers. Specifically, carmakers and radios don’t necessarily understand their respective business model, said Dubreuil, nor the need to ensure that the in-car digital radios are kept up to date.

For instance, he said, “Radio stations were surprised not to see their logos on the dashboard of cars because the logos are sometimes burned into the receiver and often obsolete — because those radios were designed in 2014,” he said.

“Since then, life has moved on. The logo has changed.”

Meanwhile, the complexity of the French radio landscape, with its more than 1,000 FM stations and “a few hundreds of DAB+ services,” can make coordinating seamless coverage difficult. This is why it is important for all players in the French DAB+ ecosystem to work together, said Dubreuil.

Radioplayer hybrid app

WorldDAB has produced a set of User Experience guidelines for automotive manufacturers and broadcasters to help them offer provide the best digital radio interfaces for motorists.

An image from Radioplayer’s presentation of its hybrid radio app that combines DAB+ and FM broadcast radio with online streams in the Android Automotive Operating System. It was developed with technology supplier Panasonic Automotive Systems Europe. Radioplayer said the app “has a single, multi-platform station list that hides the platform from the user and allows them to select a radio station from the strongest available signal, prioritizing DAB+, then FM, followed by streaming, and automatically switching between platforms if the car moves out of coverage.”

In the presentation “From Principle to Product: Bringing the WorldDAB UX Guidelines to Life in a Hybrid Radio App,” Radioplayer’s Caroline Grazé and Laurence Harrison described using these guidelines to guide the design and development of their hybrid radio app for the Android Automotive platform.

Grazé is managing director of Radioplayer Germany, Harrison is director of automotive partnerships at Radioplayer Worldwide.

“One of our main aims in building the app was to learn about Android Automotive and work with Google and others to improve the standard radio experience and make sure that it becomes hybrid,” said Harrison. When thinking about the user interface “the foundation of our design principles were taken from the WorldDAB UX guidelines.”

Ease of use is fundamental to the Radioplayer hybrid app design, Grazé said.

“The goal that is the most important one for the listener is ‘What am I listening to?’ I need to know. (And) I need to navigate simply through the UX.’” The app’s tuning database also has to be able to decode listener voice commands, including requests for stations that don’t use official call signs.

At an early stage in the user interface design, Radioplayer tested it on the road with consumers. By doing so, “you learn a huge amount about how intuitive the design is and also about the different positions of certain icons, and the features that people really value,” said Harrison.

The Radioplayer app now provides a “great hybrid radio experience,” he added, and “is being made available to car manufacturers to use on their Android Automotive platforms.”

Swiss DAB+ Retrofits

Switzerland’s plan to turn off FM by 2023 is driving DAB+ car radio retrofits, according to the presentation “Case Study: Switzerland, Getting Ready for FM Switchoff With the Auto Supply Chain.”

Speaking with host Ernst Werder of Weer GmbH, Jeremy Arztmann of Exclusive Car HiFi and Hans-Peter Saar of Robert Bosch AG described strong consumer demand for DAB+ adaptors to work with existing analog radios, as well as full DAB+ system replacements.

To ensure that Swiss motorists are satisfied with their DAB+ radio upgrades, Executive Car HiFi road-tests products before selling them to consumers.

“Since most larger auto importers are our customers, it’s usually very easy for us to get our hands on vehicles where we can test the products in order to ensure that the product is good and fine,” said Arztmann.

“Our company has been focusing on DAB+ for quite a long time, and we offer workshops with our partners so that all this technical know-how has grown continuously.”

Robert Bosch AG has been working with aftermarket partners such as Executive Car HiFi to meet the demand for DAB+ radio retrofits, said Hans-Peter Saar. In Switzerland, this market is geared towards higher-quality vehicles whose drivers don’t want to see adaptors and other devices detracting from original interior decors.

“The end user wants to use the OEM radio like he’s used to, and he wants his buttons on the steering wheel to work as he is used to,” said Saar. At the same time, they want to see song titles and other graphics, “on their regular radio screen and not on the small adaptor screen.”

Finally, some DAB+ equipment upgrades have been tailored for tasteful installations in older vehicles, including those that have achieved “vintage” status, built in 1991 or earlier.

“We have developed a solution where you can mount or install the DAB+ radio in a way that the vehicle doesn’t lose its vintage status or its historic status,” said Arztmann.

Localization and personalization

In the final WorldDAB Automotive 2021 presentation, “In-Vehicle Localization and Personalization: What They Mean for Radio Today and in the Future,” Swedish Radio Head of Digital Partnerships Tomas Granryd spoke with Francis Goffin, special adviser to the CEO of RTBF in Belgium, and Chris Ambrozic, TiVo’s VP of discovery, about using DAB+ to localize and personalize content to improve listener experiences, and to keep them listening longer.

In Belgium, RTBF, the country’s French-speaking public radio-TV broadcaster, is using DAB+’s localization capability to provide enhanced program choice to its VivaCité regional radio audiences.

For instance, this capability allows RTBF to provide seven different radio feeds, historically carried on seven separate FM stations, over four DAB+ regional multiplexes.

“Thanks to DAB+, listeners can choose to listen two different regional morning programs,” said Goffin. “This is impossible in FM, where they can only listen to the morning show that is available in their region.”

Localization is also allowing VivaCité to give listeners choices between live sports and non-sports programming over DAB+, which is not possible on FM.

RTBF and the private radio networks in the Belgian French-speaking digital radio alliance maRadio.be are looking at offering personalized radio programs to listeners using IP feeds triggered by inaudible tones in over-the-air DAB+ broadcasts. This platform could include “addressable radio advertising, just like the addressable TV advertising that started in Belgium last year,” Goffin said. It would do so using some kind of DAB+/IP hybrid platform that has yet to be developed by a new working group of RadioDNS, the hybrid radio open standard proponent.

TiVo’s Chris Ambrozic spoke about applying the TiVo TV “carousel” model of program choice, using titled images of actual TV programs, to in-car DAB+ to boost listener engagement and loyalty.

Picking up on the personalization thread, TiVo’s Chris Ambrozic spoke about applying the TiVo TV “carousel” model of program choice, using titled images of actual TV programs, to in-car DAB+ to boost listener engagement and loyalty.

“When personalization is utilized, we see very significant changes in viewer behavior,” Ambrozic said. “We see people watching about 25% more content on the video side. We see people churning away from their suppliers of content to the tune of about three times less.”

TiVo hopes to achieve the same results on DAB+ vehicle displays. “We’re taking that concept over into the car and to deliver a series of carousels, algorithmically driven with an understanding of what the person enjoys listening to,” he said.

A DAB+ content provider who takes this approach to in-car listening “is going to be able to monetize and deliver the right type of experience, not only from what to listen to, but also from an advertisement point of view.”

The post Passenger Displays, Apps and FM Switchoffs appeared first on Radio World.

The PreSonus PD-70 dynamic broadcast microphone is specifically designed for capturing the human voice and improving intelligibility, even in acoustically unfriendly spaces. The cardioid pickup pattern reduces the amount of extraneous and unwanted background noise entering the mic’s sides and back while focusing on voices in front of it—just what you want for podcasts or radio broadcasts.

The all-metal PD-70 is an end-address dynamic mic with an integrated (yet removable) foam windscreen and a simple, compact mechanical design that will fit and look great on the smallest of desktops.

PreSonus PD-70 Dynamic Broadcast Microphone

You can thread the mount onto a standard mic desk stand or boom, and connect a cable to any preamp using its gold-pinned XLR output jack. It comes ready to use with a gimbal-style integrated yoke mount that allows tilting the mic up or down to aim it precisely. Once in position, it has a single knob to lock it down. It does not get any simpler than this!

I tried the PD-70 in my studio as a vocal mic feeding a Retro Instruments 500PRE preamp; I also put it up for a Zoom meeting into an SSL 2 USB Audio Interface.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

The PD-70 has a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz with a shelving boost starting at about 1.5 kHz and extending out to 10. I can hear that little boost in the midrange — especially on small computer speakers — and it does impart a certain gravitas and authority to speaking voices. I found it helpful for somber-sounding online speakers, as long as they stayed close in front of the mic to maintain a fat-sounding “lift in the bass” due to the cardioid proximity effect.

At the same time, the PD-70 suppresses p-pops better than some other dynamic mic I have, with or without a pop filter. Removing the foam windscreen, you can see a resemblance to the internal mechanical design of the Shure SM7B dynamic mic.

Paired with the 500PRE (tube-based preamp), the sound was rich and noise-free, and I would have no issues using the PD-70 for a loud lead vocal track — provided the singer could stay aimed at the mic. The SSL 2 USB preamp worked well except for very quiet singing, when that unit starts to run out of available mic gain.

The PreSonus PD-70 wins as a workhorse of a mic that will improve the sound of anyone doing online podcasting, internet radio or hosting/participating in Zoom meetings.

This article originally appeared in our sister publication Mix. Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post PreSonus PD-70 Designed to Improve Intelligibility appeared first on Radio World.

BOSTON — American Tower Corporation has closed its acquisition of CoreSite Realty Corporation.

It follows the completion of its previously announced tender offer for all outstanding shares of common stock of CoreSite.

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Add a Class B 1kw AM facility at 1600 on the dial, serving the Beaumont-Port Arthur, Tex., since 1948, to the list of senior-band radio stations that will be calling it quits instead of carrying on into 2022 and beyond.

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The high-profile cancellations of in-person expo hall booths at next week’s CES 2022 by some of the world’s biggest companies hit a new crescendo on Tuesday. One of the biggest advocates of radio advertising is cancelling its full-scale conference and expo plans as the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to cause air transportation headaches alongside case surges in key locales — including Clark County, Nev.

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Despite the upheaval associated with the pandemic, COVID-19 continues to bring to everyone’s day-to-day lives television. It remains a primary source of news and entertainment, with U.S. viewers consuming on average more than three hours of TV per day, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Even with the growing number of viewing options available, including streaming and on- demand via smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other devices that can fragment audiences, WideOrbit Chief Product Officer Will Offerman can’t speak higher about broadcast TV. In his view, it is still the most effective method for reaching large numbers of consumers.

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A Class A FM radio station and its AM sibling with 1,000 watts of power, both of which serve the Missouri communities of Bonne Terre and Farmington, are being transferred to a new owner.

Thanks to a modified agreement between the buyer and seller, we now know how much more valuable the land, building, improvements and towers are, compared to the licenses and permits tied to the AM/FM combo.

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For a bit of holiday fun, Ken Deutsch, former jingle magnate and longtime Radio World contributor, has unleashed the latest in his series of airchecks of “Wonderful WORM,” a 1960s radio station that exists in his head.

Featuring the misadventures of DJ Johnny Lizard, the parody series is available for your listening pleasure.

Get ready for radio news item groaners like “A giant fly was seen attacking the Pomona Police Station. This morning the SWAT team had to be called in.” But it’s also an audio treat for those who loved the sound of AM radio in the 1950s and ’60s. Sound effects and audio drop-ins were sourced from films and records in his collection, and custom jingles for Wonderful WORM were again recorded.

Deutsch, aka Ken R., is former owner of recording studio in Ohio that for 20 years produced “re-sings” of PAMS jingles. He grew up a self-described jingle freak who started collecting jingles in 1964 and later lucked into the purchase of more than 3,000 reels of PAMS jingles, including the instrumental backing tracks.

The website JingleSamplers.com has more on that history and numerous jingle samplers.

 

The post Wonderful WORM Is Back appeared first on Radio World.

The Independent Broadcasters Association’s (IBA) Board of Directors has elected officers for the 2022-2023 term.

Founder Ron Stone was re-elected for a second term as President and Executive Director of the IBA. Two of the other officers were also re-elected: Darrell Calton, Chairman and Assistant Secretary; and Allen Dick, VP and Treasurer.

Tony Renda was elected as Secretary and Assistant Treasurer, replacing Mike Flood.

“I am very excited to have Tony Renda as one of our leaders in the next term,” Stone said. “Tony has been instrumental in helping the IBA with many of the initiatives we took on in our first two years. The IBA has succeeded in its first 18 months delivering many new ways for its members to save on operational cost, create new revenues, and benefit from all the professionals in the industry that are working with us. We have said from the beginning that a large independent membership provides scale and with scale we can deliver many great things for independent broadcasters. I am looking forward to working with our management team to establish new goals for the IBA for 2022 and 2023.”

For streamers the big concern is latency. You may ask what is it? Simply defined, latency is the time it takes to get from here to there.

Now to put it in the context for streaming, it is the time content leaves the source and is played out by the intended audience. For sports, low latency is desirable and necessary. Nobody wants someone knowing about a sports play before anybody else, even if we are talking minutes.

An example of very bad latency was in the 1973 film The Sting. The gambling house knew the results of the horse race before the bets were placed. Yes, that is not good nor desirable.

For streamers, latency develops as the content passes through devices on its transport to the audience.

Let’s consider a simple audio file. First, it is played out, then the audio is processed, and next it is encoded with metadata. Then the file is sent through the network switches and routers out to the internet.

Depending on your connection, the packets may make some additional stops before reaching the CDN, which then transcodes the packets and streams them to the audience’s network connection and finally to your audience.

Yes, this takes time!

[Related: “Loudness Recommendations Honored by AES”]

Because of this time, the audience can hear a delay. It is noticeable, especially if they are comparing the stream to over-the-air content. The trick is to get the amount of latency down to the point of acceptance.

To try to lessen the inherent delay, you can use the Softvelum Low Delay Protocol (SLDP). This is a last-mile delivery protocol.

Whether you are encoding an RTMP, SRT, RTSP, NDI, MPEG-TS, HLS, Icecast or SHOUTcast stream, the SLDP protocol at the player side will pass the content to the audience with sub-second delay. SLDP is supported by modern browsers that support Media Source Extensions (MSE).

SLDP is proprietary and must be decoded with a free HTML5 player and dedicated mobile application. A custom mobile app experience can be created by subscribing to a mobile specific SDK.

The SLDP protocol also allows for synchronized playback across devices, ensuring that all members of your audience are viewing the same media at the same time. This can be incredibly important for second screen usage at live events or for any kind of real-time broadcast that both low-latency and consistent experience are important.

With sports as a key example again, imagine two viewers in a room together watching on their own devices, both getting 1- to 2-second delays, but with one about half a second ahead of the other. Each exciting play or devastating mistake spoiled for the other viewer as the quicker of the two reacts first.

Synchronized low-latency not only gives your audience a great experience compared to traditional over-the-air broadcast, but also ensures you maintain the shared experience that would otherwise be lost when viewing streamed content.

Another way is to use WebRTC, which stands for Web-based Real Time Communications. WebRTC operates very similarly to SLDP, but the issue with this Google-developed open-source solution is there is not a standard implementation. Different services are not deploying it in the same way.

WebRTC is fast. A real-time latency could be below 500 milliseconds. WebRTC is also supported by many browsers and is native to iOS.

According to StreamGuys the advantage of SLDP is the standardization of deployment.

According to Eduardo Martinez, director of technology for StreamGuys, “When you use a purpose-built protocol for ultra-low latency streaming you can significantly cut down on the delay inherent in traditional segmented streaming protocols.”

When it comes to streaming of events, mainly sports and breaking news, the audience will not tolerate high latency. In this world of multiple streams, the streamer does not want to be slower than an over-the-air broadcast. To quote Tom Petty, the waiting is the hardest part.

The author is a consultant who has held technical broadcast and streaming positions for companies like Entercom and CBS Radio. He is co-chair of the AES Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery and chair of the Metadata Usage Working Group of the National Radio Systems Committee. Contact him at dkbialik@erols.com or 845-634-6595. His commentaries are a recurring feature at radioworld.com.

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