Linear Acoustic to demo AERO.soft TV audio processor
Linear Acoustic is demonstrating its AERO.soft, the first enterprise-class television audio processor at IBC 2015 (Stand 8.D47). AERO.soft features Linear Acoustic processing engines identical to those in the AERO.100/1000/2000, with optional Dolby coding while supporting the ongoing transition to Audio over IP (AoIP).
“Now, trusted Linear Acoustic AEROMAX loudness control, UPMAX upmixing, and ITU-R BS.1770 metering and logging, supporting ATSC and EBU, plus available Dolby encoding and decoding, are available as an enterprise solution, enabling an expandable number of audio processors to serve an entire facility,” says Chris Shaw, Vice President of Global Sales, Television, for Linear Acoustic. “AERO.soft enables both audio signal processing and I/O to be tailored to a facility’s changing needs, expanding only as needed. The Linear Acoustic SDI xNode or any of the Axia AES or analog xNodes enable integration into a ‘traditional’ non-AoIP environment, while also fitting seamlessly into any existing AoIP system.”
AERO.soft with its fully customisable I/O, gold standard audio and loudness control and logging make configuration and maintenance easier than ever before. The AERO.soft Engine can host eight AEROMAX 5.1 (5.1+2+2) or AEROMAX 2.0 (2+2+2) processing instances. This innovative approach to audio processing allows simple and future-resistant upgrades to support additional program channels, or new features and technology like personalised and immersive audio.
Adoption of AoIP is accelerating in television broadcast plants around the world, building on the proven success from the radio broadcast industry where it has been commonplace for well over a decade, supporting thousands of on-air facilities every day. AERO.soft uses the established Livewire+ AoIP format to interconnect with nodes used to convert AoIP to and from SDI, AES, and even analog signals. Livewire+ is the next generation of Livewire, developed by Telos in 2003 and which forms the basis of the open AES67 AoIP standard.
A typical AERO.soft implementation would include an AERO.soft Engine, an AoIP-grade switch such as the Axia xSwitch, and one or more nodes, such as the Linear Acoustic SDI xNode or the Axia AES or analog xNodes to support connectivity to baseband signals. The AERO.soft Engine can be supplied pre-configured and can drop into an existing AoIP network, or can be the basis for a new one. Control is via the extensive Linear Acoustic Nf Remote application, which is compatible with all current Linear Acoustic and Omnia products, or via the built-in HTTP server. Expansion is possible at any time via purchased software keys or by adding additional xNodes for more I/O.