At AES, Surround Cross-Compatibility Tests Discussed

Cincinnati Public Radio has preliminary results from AES cross-compatibility tests of surround sound systems.
“We don’t know if anyone else is testing these,” said Alex Kosiorek, referring to surround sound technology from Dolby, SRS and Neural. The purpose of the tests is to determine whether the sound is different or annoying should an HD Radio station encode using one system but a consumer be listening via a decoder that uses another. Kosiorek told panelists at an AES convention session that final results won’t be out for another two to four weeks.
As far as he knows, Cincinnati Public Radio is the only entity performing such cross-compatibility tests.
He told RW Online it’s too early to tell if the scores indicate that any changes in atmosphere, image, location or loudness were annoying enough to cause someone to tune to another station.
Results will be shared with the NRSC task group evaluating surround systems for HD Radio.
Cox Radio Engineer Steve Fluker, co-chair of the task group, says members are waiting for the results of these tests and NPR’s tests that simulate multipath. “Once we get results we feel we can make some decisions fairly soon.”