Big Interview - Jünger Audio Solutions For The Modern Age

Established in Berlin in 1990, Jünger Audio might be a relatively young company, but has over the years built a reputation for delivering quality audio products to radio and TV broadcasters, IPTV providers, music recording studios and post-production facilities. BFV spoke to Managing Director Peter Pörs about the new DPP standard and the company's latest offerings...

BFV: October saw the introduction in the UK of the DPP's single, file-based delivery standard for broadcasters, which obviously includes loudness standardisation. What is Jünger's position on this move? Is loudness standardisation important for the industry?

PP: In general, loudness standardisation makes a lot of sense. If the correct references are given and if the rules are clear, it will give end users the benefit of enjoying well aligned and consistent loudness while watching TV.

Typically it will also create new opportunities to improve audio quality, as going by loudness should reduce peak oriented signal compression to keep the audio content close to a technical delivery specification. It is still a fact that not every kind of loudness normalisation can deliver good results.

But as well as this, after the introduction of the new standard, there will be situations in which the wrong file is sent to transmission.

The demands on quality control will be higher and in our experience a need for online control of output streams is a given. But it can be done in a way that critical content will be improved while compliant material remains virtually untouched.

How do Jünger products help broadcasters contain and solve loudness problems, for example the jumps in volume that are arguably one of the biggest complaints made by today's TV viewers?

Dealing with audio transitions can be difficult. The box cannot know if a change in loudness is what the producer has created to express dramatic moments, or if it is just bad transition while changing programs. If we set a loudness control to reduce all those 'jumps', it will do it regardless of whether this was initially intended or not. In these cases, we usually refer to the concept of 'managed loudness control'.

If the playout system tells our unit that this is a moment of transition, we can deal with these kind of jumps as if they are part of the dramatic content. This is the intelligent way of improving the situation. It isn't too complicated to manage loudness control in an effective way, but in many places this kind of solution simply hasn’t been considered.

At IBC in September the company announced the release of the D*AP8 Codec Edition. What does the update provide and how does it fill the gap left by the discontinuation of Dolby's DP570 Multichannel Audio Tool?

The Codec Edition is basically a chassis that can carry audio compression, as well as audio interfacing. This way users can arrange legacy decoding or encoding and metadata creation and verification in a flexible and cost effective way.

The D*AP8 CODEC Edition could replace the DP570 in some respects, but more especially it is aimed at replacing other encoder/decoder products. That being said, the D*AP8 MAP EDITION does act as a powerful replacement for the 570, boasting a lot of additional powerful features.

And did I hear mention at the show that Jünger is planning a plug-in release at some stage over the next year?

The first plug-in release is planned for early next year. It will be our well known Level Magic™ algorithm. Professional clients are asking to perform files in exactly the same way, as they like the real-time, stream-based processing that we are offering with our variety of hardware products.

One of last year's big stories for the company was the incorporation of Audinate's Dante™ IP Technology. IP seems to be a big talking point currently in the industry. Can you explain why? What are the advantages of audio over IP and how does Jünger seek to capitalise on this trend?

We are in in the process of integrating Dante™ interface to our range of products as well.

First off, I can see this filling a substantial gap for our clients.

Secondly, there might also be some benefits for signal distribution in modern technology. But I don't see any advantage in terms of quality of audio production. It isn't our number one target to capitalise on this aspect.
We would prefer to focus on audio quality and audio performance instead of IT based specs for audio production.

Are there any other upcoming developments we should be keeping an eye out for?

Definitely. There will be new solutions and therefore new products coming in future, which should be good news for TV audio production as well as for radio production. And we are also looking forward to introducing new solutions for object coded surround sound, developed via collaboration with the technology leaders in this field.

The article is available to read in BFV online.

(IT/JP)