Are Broadcasters Ready To Produce 5.1 Audio For DTV?DTV Audio Seminar Educates Engineers And Broadcasters

Las Vegas, April 17, 1999 ñ The first annual DTV Audio Seminar was held Saturaday, April 17, 1999 at the Alexis Park Hotel in Las Vegas just prior to the opening of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) annual convention. The seminar was sponsored by the trade journal Surround Profession and co-sponsored by Pro Sound News, Videography, Government Video and Television Broadcast trade magazines. Tomlinson Holman, Founding Editor of Surround Professional, and President of TMH Corporation and Professor of Cinema Television at the University of Southern California, was the instructor. A small but high stature group of post mixers, facility engineers, program developers, network engineers, design engineers and others involved in audio for television attended the seminar. Gary Reber, Editor and Publisher of Widescreen Review also attended.""This was an incredibly instructional 10-hour seminar which explored the workings of Dolby Digital encoding related primarily to 5.1 format audio,"" said Reber. ""Such in-depth areas covered included the basics of dialog normalization, proven bass management techniques, level settings and mixing techniques, sound systems and acoustics for multichannel monitoring, center channel application, console facilities and out board gear requirements, sweetening and re-recording multichannel sound, and audio-production-related aspects of the ATSC A/52 digital audio standard. Much of the information covered was unique to this seminar including a 200-page workbook packed with information and articles, plus the AC-3 Coder Parameter chart.""DTV is a reality and audio engineers must prepare for the new disciplines, techniques, and technologies that are expanding the role sound will play in broadcast television in the years ahead. ""It was obvious that the intensive curriculum of this seminar was a revelation to the engineers attending who are being challenged by the need to understand the parameters for producing sound for multichannel audio delivery,"" said Reber. ""It was a revelation to me just how complex the matter of implementing production and distribution of Dolby Digital 5.1 audio is and the complex mechanisms involved with Dolby E to implement such delivery throughout a broadcast facility and deliver 5.1 Dolby Digital-encoded bitstreams to the DTV audience. Mastering the terminology to converse about such topics will be a challenge in and of itself for engineers not familiar with multichannel production and post-production.""Seminar attendees during breaks and lunch commented on learning about ""dialog management, phase issues, and levels in post and user applications,"" ""mix level information and comparison of different miking techniques,"" ""decode settings and their effects on listening levels,"" ""surround speaker setup, room acoustics, monitoring and equipment,"" ""ëbig fat mono,í""and ""techniques being applied to achieve 5.1 material from stereo."" Among the in-depth article topics were ATSC Standards: Main and Associated Services, Audio Coding Modes, Audio Inputs, Production Information, Dialog Normalization, Dynamic Range Compression and Heavy Compression, Downmixing, plus other topics pertaining to acoustics, sound systems, test tapes and discs and a complete reference bibliography.""This was a powerful learning experience,"" said Reber, ""which sets the stage for further learning and honing of engineering skills to achieve competence in multichannel DTV 5.1 sound production and delivery.""Other DTV Audio Seminars are being planned for 1999. For more information contact Surround Professional at 516 944 5940 or fax 516 767 1745 and visit www.surroundpro.com.