HDTV Reviews

ENCO Systems DADtv is now providing native surround sound for live HDTV productions.

Eugene Novacek, P.E., President of ENCO Systems said, “Surround sound is here in the television space and it’s not only for movies. We’re proud to be the first digital audio automation and playout system to support multi-channel 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. During the 31st season debut of Saturday Night Live on NBC, DADtv was used in both scoring playback and surround sound effects playback assisting in the first HDTV broadcast of SNL. Now our DADtv clients are using surround in their live productions, and we also believe our radio clients will be asking for it soon.”

DADtv is a scalable, networkable digital audio storage and playback system designed to provide broadcasters with high quality, reliable digital audio recording and playback. Support for multi-channel sound within DADtv enables audio engineers to rapidly incorporate surround sound in live studio programs as well as field produced programs.

The 5.1 and 7.1 audio files appear to the user the same way as stereo or mono files appear and are just as easy to play and manipulate. Files are stored as single linear uncompressed files using industry standard interleaved .WAV streams.

Dave Turner, Executive Vice President of Engineering at ENCO Systems said, “ENCO has systems operating at NBC for the Today Show and Saturday Night Live as well as Paramount, CNN, MTV, ESPN and other cutting edge television broadcasters, so we knew that surround was a highly desired tool. With the increased attention to high quality audio that HDTV has brought to the forefront, it’s not a surprise that our surround playout solution has been so quickly adopted.”