Everything Audio at the BEC

The Society of Broadcast Engineers will be hard to miss this year at NAB2007, the annual spring convention in Las Vegas. SBE has teamed up with NAB to produce the Broadcast Engineering Conference and will be an active exhibitor in this year’s convention, which runs from April 14–19. SBE will present the Ennes Workshop and a number of meetings, including the SBE spring Membership Meeting.

SBE is proud to be partnering again with NAB to produce the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference (BEC). The conference features a special Saturday in-depth Ennes Workshop plus more than 20 informative sessions covering the latest in broadcast technology from Sunday through Thursday.

This year, the conference committee is chaired by SBE member, Lew Zager of PBS. Also serving on the committee are Talmadge Ball of Bonneville International; Dave Converse, of ABC/Disney Television Stations Group; Steve Fluker of Cox Radio, Orlando; Al Grossniklaus, of WTHR-TV, Indianapolis; Gary Kline, CBNT of Cumulus Media; Wayne Kube of Belo Corporation; John Merrill of KPHO-TV, Phoenix; Paul Shulins, CBRE of Greater Media – Boston and Jeffrey Smith, CEA, CBT, CBNT.

This year’s Ennes Workshop is titled, “Everything Audio — Radio and TV,” and is produced by Ennes Trustee and Education Director Frederick Baumgartner, CPBE, director of broadcast engineering at Qualcomm MediaFLO.

The Ennes workshop will begin at 8 a.m. and conclude by 5:15 p.m. on April 14. Attendees must be full NAB conference registrants to attend the workshop.

Starting the day off at 8:00 a.m. is the workshop “Tutorial: Audio 101 – A Brush-up for Broadcast Engineers.” Frederick Baumgartner will cover the basic applications of audio production through transmission. Following at 9:00 a.m., SBE Executive Director John Poray will make his opening remarks for the workshop. At 9:10 a.m. Stephen Lampen, technology specialist for Belden Cable, follows with “One-Hundred Things You Should Know about Audio Wiring.” This hour-long session will cover a vast array of topics, touching on everything a broadcast engineer needs to know about their radio or TV facility’s wiring infrastructure. At 10:10 a.m., there will be a 15-minute break featuring the presentation, “The State of Broadcast Audio 2007 – A Quick Tour of the Second City.”

Picking up from the break is “Dolby Broadcast Technologies,” presented by Dolby Laboratories Director of Broadcast Productions Rocky Graham. Beginning at 10:25 a.m., it will cover some basic audio technologies used in broadcast today, including Dolby E and Dolby Digital. Graham will spend about an hour discussing common applications and issues faced in a broadcast infrastructure. From 11:25 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Steve Church, president of Telos Systems and Axia Audio, will present “Building Broadcast Audio on IP,” how to harness IP’s broad range of uses for broadcast application.

Following lunch will be “Audio for High Definition TV,” from Tim Carroll, the founder and president of Linear Acoustic. Carroll will lead this 60-minute discussion on the state of audio in DTV, 14 years after the publishing of ATSC standards, and in light of the upcoming end of analog. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. is “Audio Metadata Demystified” with Mike Babbitt, customer support manager for Dolby Laboratories. He will discuss the basics of working with metadata as well as the consequences of setting incorrect parameters. This session will last until 3:45 p.m. “The Trials and Tribulation of Managing Multi-Channel Audio in a DTV Facility” will be presented by Chairman and CTO Birney Dayton, and Director of Product Management Jay Kuca, both from NVISION, Inc., on their ideas surrounding the strengths and weaknesses of procedures for sending IFB for ENG operations and live radio remotes. “Everything Audio…” closes with “Managing the Transition to 5.1 Audio for HD” from Roger Charlesworth, a technology consultant with Charlesworth Media.

Throughout the show members can also connect with the SBE staff, board certification committee at the SBE exhibit booth. This year’s Membership Meeting, at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 17, is being sponsored once again by SBE Sustaining Member, Microwave Radio Communications (MRC).

Brian Smith, managing editor for the Web at IMAS Publishing Inc. contributed to this report.