Prism Sound's loudness test suite allows broadcasters to deliver compliant audio
Feb 9, 2012 11:30 AM
With the CALM Act now law in the U.S. and compliance soon to be mandatory, Prism Sound is using the NAB 2012 platform to highlight the importance of loudness meter verification by showing a new application for its award-winning dScope Series III audio analyzer.
This unique, freely-available test suite allows broadcasters and manufacturers to determine whether every aspect of their meter design complies with the latest international loudness standards.
Developed by Dr. Rich Cabot, founder and CTO of Qualis Audio, and Ian Dennis, joint-founder and CTO of Prism Sound, this comprehensive new suite of audio tests can be used to evaluate the performance and compliance of any loudness meter on the market. As U.S. broadcasters are now legally obliged to comply with the ATSC A/85 standards, Prism Sound's new test suite enables them to properly evaluate all loudness meters and ensure that their chosen product can deliver both ATSC and ITU BS.1770 compliance.
The new test suite will be on show at Prism Sound's NAB 2012 booth (C3029). Visitors to the booth can obtain a free set of WAV files and dScope Series III test files for verifying the performance of their loudness meters. The WAV files have been specifically designed to expose any design flaws in a loudness meter, and the dScope Series III programmable test suite replicates these test signals in a highly convenient format, allowing the waveforms to be sourced directly from the dScope Series III digital signal generator.
Prism Sound offers a range of audio test solutions including the highly-acclaimed dScope Series III instrument, which incorporates precision, automatic gain-ranging that allows high-resolution analog measurements over a massive range, from a few µV to more than 150V RMS, and from less than 1Hz to over 90kHz. Its dedicated hardware interface uses DSP to provide a wide range of real-time measurements, while its software exploits the host PC for almost unlimited number crunching and analysis options such as Fast Fourier Transforms, unique 'Smart FFT' soft instruments, swept sine and multitone testing. Designed to be highly programmable, the dScope Series III can be automated from a wide range of third-party software applications using Active X controls, or internally using VBScript.
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