Cooperation Between IRT and DSPECIALISTS on Continuous Loudness Adjustment

July 27 2020, 00:10
The Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT), the central research and development institute of the public broadcasters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and DSPECIALISTS GmbH, a company specialized in the development and distribution of products for digital audio signal processing and measurement technology, have established a cooperation agreement focused on high-quality loudness control. DSPECIALISTS already ported the IRT loudness adjustment algorithm to its HARVEY signal processing platform.
 

In recent years, IRT has developed and patented the Continuous Loudness Controller (CLC), a method that allows the continuous adjustment of audio material to a predefined target value and a definable loudness range value with the least possible artifacts in real time. In this way, unpleasant loudness jumps in the program are avoided and speech intelligibility is improved. This is an important contribution to increasing the satisfaction of television and radio audiences and also made the CLC method into a desirable solution for other application fields.

DSPECIALISTS GmbH, already known in the broadcast market for its high-quality stereo to 5.1 upmixer ISOSTEM, has implemented this procedure for loudness control in its Audio DSP HARVEY platform, which is a flexible audio and media control solution, allowing applications in public-address, conferencing and even home listening systems, thus expanding its product portfolio. 

DSPECIALISTS already supplies an extended library of tried and tested signal processing algorithms, covering the whole spectrum that is required for the development of multiple applications, including algorithms for the enhancement of speech signals like echo cancellation and noise cancellation. The company works with manufacturers and organizations to implement DSP solutions, including hardware and software, from prototyping to production.    Its algorithm library includes acoustic echo cancellation, line echo cancellation, voice activity detection, level activity discriminator, automatic noise cancellation, filters and equalizer, dynamic processing, automatic gain control, level measurements and volume adjustments.

"We are delighted about the cooperation with DSPECIALISTS. With the international standards ITU-R BS.1770 and EBU R 128, the loudness control has started its triumphal success in broadcasting in recent years. IRT has been intensively engaged in the development of solutions for user-friendly and reliable loudness adjustment and has developed the Continuous Loudness Controller (CLC) for automated real-time adjustment of loudness and loudness range in accordance with the EBU R 128 specification," says Sebastian Goossens, IRT's Division Manager of AV Technologies.

HARVEY is a freely programmable audio DSP solution, developed originally for fixed installations, but also suited for many applications, benefiting from its high audio quality and extensive software library for audio signal processing. DPECIALISTS works continuously on performance improvements and new features for the HARVEY product family. Recent developments include direct hardware interface for IP networks.

"We are convinced of the high quality of IRT's CLC algorithm and see great potential in marketing the CLC software in a stand-alone device. To this end, we have ported the CLC algorithm to our proven hardware platform HARVEY, as part of our cooperation with IRT. In a first step, HARVEY will enable the processing of stereo signals, and later it will be extended to the 5.1 format," adds Dr. Jochen Cronemeyer, DSPECIALISTS Managing Director.
www.harvey.audio | www.dspecialists.de
www.irt.de
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