At the AES Show in New York this week, TC Electronic announced software update version 1.25 for its DB2 loudness correction processor, continuing the company’s support of new loudness and true-peak level standards. Version 1.25 contains ITU BS.1770-2 based loudness adjustment, more processing and new presets, including dedicated new factory presets for stations conforming to either of the EBU R128, ATSC A/85, TR-B32 or OP59 standards.
The TC Electronic DB2 is a smaller version of DB4 and DB8 and an ideal choice for dual-mono or stereo operation in MPEG, AAC, AC3 or linear audio transmission and linking. Like the rest of the DB family, DB2 offers high-quality loudness correction without metadata dependence and is compatible with the latest ITU and EBU audio standards.
TC’s new version 1.25 software also introduces one-pass trickle-down processing from these new broadcast standards, which helps optimize simulcasts for mobile and IPTV. Trickle-down processing is a cost-effective, audio-conscious way of dealing with multiple broadcast platforms without increasing broadcaster workload.
The software upgrade also features a new Mobile preset bank, which offers high-resolution, on-the-fly conversion of content for mobile broadcast. The DB2’s 48-bit domain one-step process ensures mobile and iPod audio intelligibility at the highest possible quality, regardless of which data reduction codec is being used. Finally, its true-peak output limiter makes even decade-old data reduction, such as AC3 or MP3, sound remarkably good, and the already-low latency has been further reduced to only 0.8 ms.
The downloadable DB2 version 1.25 software is free of charge to users, and includes an update of the remote application, Icon.
