Loudness Control

Inconsistent DTV audio loudness, or the so-called ‘loud commercial problem’ is the number one complaint of television viewers and it is driving them away. With the CALM act being signed in December 2010 it is illegal for commercials to be overly loud compared to the rest of the programming on a give channel.

In order to accommodate customers to comply with the act and remove the customer complaints AXON has developed, in close cooperation with Linear Acoustic, 3 Synapse modules the DLA42, DLA43  and the DLA44.  All three modules use the third generation audio and loudness management technology from Emmy award winning Linear Acoustic. The DLA43 is an 8-channel (5.1+2.0) digital audio loudness module and the DLA44 adds an upmixer/downmixer. The DLA42 is an 8-channel (4x 2.0) digital audio loudness module. All three models are equipped with the Quad Speed ADD ON functionality which enables bidirectional in and output of 32 channels of audio to and from the accompanying Master card (f.e. an embedded domain PCM to Dolby Digital encoder, a keyer or an up/down/cross converter).

 The Axon Synapse loudness solution also enables the combination of loudness control with other signal processing equipment in the same form factor. The DLA42 in combination with the Synapse GPD100 (3Gb/sHD/SD embedded domain PCM to Dolby Digital (plus) encoder) is ideal for transmission environments. The DLA42 in combination with the GED100 (3GB/s HD/SD embedded domain Dolby E to Dolby Digital (plus) transcoder) is very well suited for ingest purposes.

 The DLA42 in combination with the Synapse internal Quad Speed bus makes it ideal for situation where multiple audio streams within the video stream need to be adjusted. The DLA42 receives up to 32 channels from the master card f.e. a keyer. It extracts up to 32 channels for internal processing. All 32 channels are also looped to the next ADD-ON card In the below example 8 channels are selected and processed. The card receives 32 channels from the right hand ADD-OD card and overwrites 8 channels (these normally should be empty).
Two DLA42 cards next to each other can process 16 channels from a Master Card with no use of cables (not even connector panels are needed).

See our CALM solutions at NAB2012