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[Tuesday at NAB]
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Surround Solutions From Holophone
New Products Bring Surround Sound to the Broadcasting Masses
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by Kelly M. Brooks,
~ April 15, 2008
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RADIO WORLD
For many broadcasters, new technology requires new, often-expensive equipment, which in turn requires staff training. Holophone debuted products at its Monday press conference that exemplify the company’s stance on the transition to high-definition radio and television: make it easy.
“We are continuously working our very hardest to [offer] products that make that transition [to digital] easier and sound better,” said Jonathan Godfrey, CEO of Holophone. The company introduced a camera-mountable surround microphone, and both a multichannel encoder and decoder — one for portable use and one for the desktop — that it says keeps things simple.
BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE
Holophone is displaying its PortaMic 5.1, a camera-mountable surround microphone with surround sound.
“Up until now, surround recording technologies were unfortunately out of reach for some projects due to budgetary constraints,” Godfrey said. “With the PortaMic 5.1, users have the ability to add that Wow! factor to their productions by capturing discrete and instantaneous 5.1 audio without having to sacrifice their budget.”
Suitable for audio and video applications, as well as field recording and ENG, the PortaMic features Dolby Pro Logic II encoding technology, and a 2.5-inch x 1.5-inch microphone head with six separate mic elements arranged to correspond with the traditional 5.1 speaker setup in a studio. Users can capture a discrete surround recording from a single point source, giving listeners a “best seat in the house” aural experience, according to the company.
The Dolby Pro Logic encoder allows the microphones six audio channels to be encoded down to two channels so it can be recorded to a broadcast camera or stereo recording device. The surround-encoded audio is output to both a stereo mini plug and six-pin balanced mini XLR. The microphone’s unity gain control and a 12 dB pad..
The company’s N-CODE and D-CODE multichannel encoder and decoder also are on display. The company says N-CODE brings the portability and Pro Logic II technology of Holophone’s H4 SuperMINI to its larger microphone models, H2-PRO and H3-D.
Suitable for larger remote productions requiring surround recordings, N-CODE takes six channels of audio from the H2-PRO or H3-D and converts them to two channels using Pro Logic II. This allows 5.1 audio to be captured or transmitted to a stereo recording device, or broadcast over the existing stereo infrastructure.
N-CODE features six XLR/1/4-inch inputs with mic/line selection, and also has two XLR outputs that connect the encoder to the recording device or transmission line to a remote truck, for clear signal transmission even over long cable runs.
D-CODE takes the two encoded audio channels and decodes into six discrete audio channels. The recording device is connected to the D-CODE through two RCA inputs on the front of the device for easy transfer from the camera to the computer. Decoded audio is delivered via six RCA analog outputs or through multichannel USB directly to the user’s computer.
Audio files can then be edited in editing programs such as Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere or Apple’s Final Cut Pro.
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