PASADENA, CALIF. – On New Year’s Day, viewers will see 41 flower-filled floats, 24 vivid marching bands and 21 colorful equestrian units at the annual Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif. Despite the visual appeal, the broadcast must also have audio of equivalent quality.
KTLA’s Chief Engineer Dave Cox again chose the Linear Acoustic AERO.air as the loudness manager and upmixer, the fifth consecutive year the station and Linear Acoustic collaborated on the event.
produces the telecast for their own station’s local broadcast, in addition to which it is also distributed throughout the United States and internationally. “We produce the program in stereo and rely upon the AERO.air to handle the upmixing to 5.1,” says Cox. “It does a great job of that.”
Cox says the majority of the audience will listen through internal TV speakers, which means a good 2-channel downmix is critical. “The challenge is to create a mix that sounds good to those viewers while still providing a great 5.1 listening experience for the audience listening in that mode.”
AERO.air also simplifies program distribution. 2-channel audio is sent from Pasadena back to the KTLA studios in Los Angeles, where the signal is split: one feeds KTLA's own main and backup AERO.air units for local transmission; the other feeds main and backup AERO.air units on loan from Linear Acoustic for the network and international feed sent to over 200 countries. The insertion of SAP audio is also handled by AERO.air.
