It's clear to me, based on how busy company founder and president Tim Carroll has been over the past year, that Linear Acoustic "gets" audio.
Tim and I caught up at NAB 2009, where he told me stories about projects Linear Acoustic has been a part of since last year's show. One of those was the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Tim said the Olympics broadcast was mixed by watching loudness. And those summer Olympics were, according to him, the "best laboratory." Tim was able to work with top mixers from around the world who gave him insight about what would help them notice changes in audio levels.
Perhaps it's a setting like the Olympics and talks with sound mixers that help to inspire Linear Acoustic to make sure us consumers aren't sitting at home covering up our ears while we're watching TV.
So what has changed with the technology in the last year? We're "on a good path toward getting loudness more fully understood and under control," says Tim.
Rather than waiting until the last minute to change audio levels, he says we should treat it like lip sync and measure audio in different stages so there isn't so much work to do in the final stage.
Linear Acoustic offers several products that can do this. The AERO.qc audio quality controller combines all of the essential loudness and reformatting tools required for maintaining a consistent viewer experience, including ITU loudness measurement, loudness correction, selective upmixing, metering and monitoring.
AERO.qc simplifies operational integration when deployed at the head of the program chain — during ingest, origination, or in-house production — where correction can be applied manually or automatically to maintain program consistency.
To learn about other Linear Acoustic products, stop by their NAB booth N1725.
