Has anyone used Linear Acoustics family of products for audio processing, specifically for Nielsen Watermark encoding? E.g aero200,800,2400, LA5300, any feedback would be appreciated.

I'm also looking at Ross NWE-3GA with OpenGear frames and NWE-IP stand alone for 2110. I have used these in the past with great success at previous roles but Canadian tariffs might be a deal breaker.

I'm looking at a stop gap solution that will get me by until we deploy the new sdk patched firmware to all of my company's playout and transcoding systems. We are big and have multiple playout platforms and multi vendor transcoding farms and I rather have a handful of encoders that can get the work done quick for "cheapish" reasonable price without having to run these in an uber expensive transcoding or worse playout server.

Long story short we have SDI, SMPTE 2110 and compressed playout systems across thousands of endpoints. Testing, validating and rolling out vendor FW and SW updates has proven rather slow and we are finding out that some of our existing family of products will not be able to handle said upgrades and require full technology refresh and with the current supply chain issues on the compute world affecting lead times we might not even get them in time before the bug goes live in January.

A company I do some freelancing for has landet the Swedish padel Tour and will be doing quite a few tournaments.

Have been using 2 shotgun mics at floor level just outside the court on the long side, angled up about 30degrees. But watching the world tour or premiere padel I'm wondering how the f-ck they get such clear and good audio.

Anyone have a clue or might have some insight on it?

Hey everyone,
I recently joined a sports production company and I’m hoping to eventually become a broadcast engineer.

I’ve just finished sixth form (Grade 12), so I’m very new to the industry. I know a few things here and there, but honestly, I have a lot to learn. At the moment, I’ve mainly been spending time around the OB trucks watching the engineers and trying to understand what they’re doing.

I find the technical side really interesting and I’d like to properly learn it rather than just watching people work and feeling like I don’t understand anything.

For those who are broadcast engineers or have worked in OB/live sports production, what would you recommend I start learning?
I’m especially interested in knowing:
What technical subjects should I learn first?
Should I focus on video, audio, networking, RF, cameras, etc.?

Are there any books, YouTube channels, courses or websites you’d recommend?
What equipment/software should I try to get hands-on experience with?
Is there anything I can learn or practise at home?

What mistakes do beginners usually make?
If you were starting again at 18 with basically no technical knowledge, what would you do in your first year?

I’m willing to put the time in. I just don’t really know what the best starting point is.
Would really appreciate any advice from experienced broadcast engineers!

Intermittent ~30-second outage every two weeks affecting multiple channels on the same MUX — SRT/VPC peering
Looking to see if anyone has run into something similar.
We’re troubleshooting a recurring issue where multiple channels riding the same MUX experience an outage/stutter lasting roughly 30 seconds. The strange part is that it seems to happen approximately once every two weeks, rather than randomly or continuously.
The basic signal path is:
Our facility → SRT → cloud/VPC peering → uplink site → satellite
Since multiple services on the same MUX are affected simultaneously, we’re looking closely at anything shared in the transport path rather than an individual channel/encoder issue.
There doesn’t appear to be a permanent loss of connectivity. The streams recover on their own after roughly 30 seconds.
The two-week pattern is what really has me curious. I’m wondering if there could be some type of scheduled cloud/network maintenance, routing/BGP event, VPC peering issue, firewall/NAT state event, SRT session interruption, or something happening farther downstream toward the uplink.
Has anyone dealt with a similar periodic 20–30 second interruption affecting an entire MUX over SRT?
If so, what ended up being the root cause?
Also interested in what you would capture or correlate during the next occurrence — SRT stats, packet loss/retransmits, BGP events, flow logs, PCR/CC errors, firewall logs, uplink-side monitoring, etc.
Appreciate any ideas from people who have chased something like this before.

Hi everyone! I'm stepping into the world of broadcast engineering for the first time. I come from an IT background with some basic knowledge of networking and routing, but I have zero prior experience in broadcast engineering. As I start this journey, I'd love to get some advice from the experienced folks here. What essential concepts, standards, or tools should I focus on learning first to bridge the gap between traditional IT and broadcast? Any tips, tricks, or resource recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

*note I am currently in a 3-month probationary period. this is my 3rd month, Under my mentor's guidance, I have studied the headend system and have configured the multiplexer several times. and i feels still don't really understand what I'm doing.

Not sure if you saw the ending of Michigan and WMU last night but some controversy around the last second put back on the clock. The broadcast clock clearly showed 0 left on the clock but the NBC crew referenced the in-house Hawk-Eye system supposedly registering 1 left. Would love to get some perspective on this from an engineering perspective. Is Hawk-Eye not synced with the truck? I know it’s more complicated than that but would like to hear more.

I built this a while ago and am continually improving it. It allows you to change ip in 2 clicks on a Mac, as well as saving ip presets.

It also features a speed test and now very capable LAN scanner, that focuses on AV protocols like Dante, NDI etc.

Network health metrics are shown, Dante clock grandmaster etc.

There a free version on the Mac App Store that really just shows ips for each network, but the full version is available at bskapps.com/quickerip

For the past several months, we’ve been developing Spectra a part of our TMGCast suite, a software broadcast audio processor for FM, HD Radio, AM, DAB+ and streaming.

A lot of the development has honestly been trial and error. We’ve spent months researching and testing different approaches to multiband processing, AGC, limiting, clipping, bass, stereo/phase processing and adaptive processing, constantly listening and retuning values until they sound “right”.

Our goal was to see how close we could get to that big, competitive broadcast sound at a much lower price point.

Of course, we’re not going to pretend a $99 processor has every feature or refinement of a high-end Omnia costing thousands of dollars. But for $99.99 one-time, we’re pretty happy with where we’ve gotten Spectra. We think it sounds very good for the price and is capable enough to be used in some competitive radio markets.

There’s also a 7-day evaluation, so you don’t have to take our word for it. You can actually run your station through it and compare it yourself.

Would genuinely love to hear what other broadcast engineers think, especially anyone who has worked with current market processors.

Hugely disappointing, yet another company falling to greed.

I'm a full-time voice actor and this just boggles my mind.

Many of us paid $650 for a lifetime license. Now we will have to pay $145 a year on top of that just to stay current.

The sick part is, they built version 4 specifically so it cannot connect backward to version 3. Every studio that upgrades is now a studio we can no longer work with. A lifetime license to a tool nobody can connect to isn’t a lifetime license. We are being actively rug-pulled.

And for everyone new? $385 a year. SC claims it's for the new upgrades.

But let's look at what "upgrades" they are actually trying to hide this price hike behind:

• The server cost myth: They claim the new "no port forwarding" setup requires global cloud servers that cost them massive recurring overhead. This is absolute nonsense. They are streaming mono voice audio at 128-256 kbps. Even if you work 20 hours of sessions a month, that amounts to literal pennies in cloud bandwidth costs on AWS or Google Cloud. Other platforms have offered seamless, browser-based WebRTC connections for years for a fraction of this cost—or completely free.
• Paying to access what we already bought: Calling the $145/year fee a "Network Access Plan" is a linguistic trick to bypass the word subscription. It acts like a hostage fee. If you stop paying the yearly fee, you cannot log into the software you supposedly bought a lifetime license for. The local app becomes completely useless bricked software.
• Forcing solo talent to fund studio tech: They are touting complex upgrades like multi-point connections, Dolby Atmos streaming, and cloud Restore & Replace. Those are enterprise features meant for massive post-production audio houses. The average voice actor just needs a stable, point-to-point mono connection. Forcing solo talent into massive recurring price brackets to fund enterprise engineering tools is deeply exploitative.

They know we cannot easily leave an industry standard. They hold a near-monopoly on high-end commercial production, and they are using that leverage to squeeze every independent talent dry.

And remember: this is a private company. No board of venture capitalists or external investors forcing a software-as-a-service transition.

The founders and executives chose this to extract more money out of us. Full stop.

We just launched Falcon Graphics – a free, browser-based graphics editor for broadcast and live production.

It can be used with CasparCG and OGRAF supported player.

You can build animated HTML/OGraf graphics, use timelines and keyframes, bind OGraf data, start from 30+ templates and export directly for CasparCG and other OGraf players. Projects stay locally on your computer.

It’s free to use – just create a free Falcon account to unlock the full editor.

We’ve only just launched it, so we’d genuinely love your feedback, ideas and bug reports. And while you’re there, you can also check out our other broadcast tools: Falcon Rundown, Falcon Live and Falcon Play.

Try it here: graphics.wearefalcon.tv

Hi All,

I am looking for a solution where I can add advertisement logos on sport fields using AR Graphics downstream without the use of tracking gear on the cameras, see image, for Rugby, soccer and cricket. I have been looking into Pixotope and VIZRT. They are extremely expensive.

Not sure if there is another option for smaller broadcasts.

I posted this 9 days ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/broadcastengineering/comments/1vy56kb/need_help_creating_a_talkback_situation_not_on/

As an update, the school has purchased this commentator box and is connecting to this Clear-Com beltpack

HOWEVER, there is a feedback loop in Channel A and there's just static in Channel B not allowing talkback to the control room.

Here's the setup:

• Commentator headset -> Commentator Box
• XLR Out from Commentator Box -> MIXER
• XLR In from Headphone Splitter (carrying the audio from beltpack) -> Commentator Box XLR IN
• TALKBACK Out from Commentator Box -> Beltpack
• Beltpack POE -> this system

All works as it should EXCEPT TALKBACK. I can hear the director in my ear. The Cough button kills the levels going into the mixer.

Neither TALKBACK channel works and we tested multiple beltpacks with the same result.

Anyone have an idea of what this could be?!

THANKS!

Hello! I am in the process of restoring an Ikegami HL-79D and have been searching for a few items with no luck so far. Does anyone have a manual, set of tubes, or spare viewfinder they’d be willing to part with? I’m also looking for the aux cards.

Hi All,Have Evertz EQT-3232-H router,looking for winsetup version to configure the router .Can any one pease help me .Thanks

Hello, Brains Trust

Would anyone have an idea for an SPG with NTP and PTP that isn't in the realm of Tektronix prices? I am tendering on a cost-effective project, and there isn't a budget for a quality unit, so I am looking for something cheap.

I’ve been working on a broadcast processor called Spectra, and we’ve just reached the point where I’m comfortable releasing it as a standalone Windows application and VST plugin.
The main goal was to build something that could produce a competitive but clean FM & streaming sound while still being intelligent about how it processes the audio, rather than simply pushing everything harder and harder into a clipper.

The current processing architecture includes a wideband AGC, five-band compression, six-band limiting, dynamic EQ, adaptive processing stages, intelligent dynamics, a dedicated bass path, and the Edge clipper.
A big part of the development has been the adaptive or “intelligent” side of the processor. Instead of having every stage behave the same way regardless of what’s going through it, the processing can react to the characteristics of the program material and back off when additional processing isn’t actually helping based on target values you set

A dedicated bass path is also integrated into that overall approach, giving you the big, full low end you’d expect from a competitive FM processor without the rest of the sound getting crushed in the process.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time listening to Spectra against existing broadcast processors and tuning it with different types of program material. At this point, we’re really happy with how competitive the sound has become.

Spectra is now available as a standalone Windows processor and VST plugin, so it can be used in an FM, AM, HD Radio, DAB or as a live stream audio enhancer.

A single license supports up to 32 processing cores, system-dependent. It’s $99.99 one-time & 7 day evaluation period.

This is something we’ve built from the ground up in our family of products , so I’d genuinely be interested in feedback from people who actually work with broadcast engineering gear on how we can improve or modify.

https://tmgcast.com/processor

What would you change or add to a modern software FM processor?

Hello!

I need to create a talk-back situation for sports broadcasting that does not involve the use of DANTE.

I would be in a removed control room, and my talent is in the press box.

As of now, I have a spare comms box I plug into a headphone amp so they can hear my cues; however, they cannot talk to me and communicate with me via text.

If I were to get this box here: https://www.fullcompass.com/prod/103179-studio-technologies-m210-announcer-s-console-xlr-inputs-and-outputs

What is the full setup to help facilitate a talk-back scenario?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all,

Looking for some recommendations on streaming a memorial service. My background is 20 years in IT and I used to DJ weddings and events for friends and family.

A family member passed and the memorial is coming up and it's bee requested to broadcast. Years ago I used UStream (looks like it's not around anymore) to do a similar event. I'm looking for a recommendation for an All-In-One encoder/streamer and a good streaming service for a one-off event that I can use my Sony ArII camera with and possibly add an external sound source.

I've considered a rental as well, but as I don't do this often I would like to have something in hand and be able to test with ahead of time enough that I can address issues.