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Ogonowski: Avoid “Slippery Slope” With PPM

"Their goal to capture more PPM receivers, increasing ratings by essentially gaming the system"

Techies and programmers continue to debate the implications of the Voltair product that has been much in the news.

Greg Ogonowski is weighing in on the PPM watermarking debate; and without naming the Voltair, he offers critical comments about its approach.

Ogonowski, right, is president of Modulation Index, a company that makes software products for audio encoding, streaming, metadata and logging; he posted a commentary in that role. Separately he is a veteran broadcast engineer and VP of product development at Orban, a competitor to Voltair’s manufacturer the Telos Alliance.

“Recently, devices that increase the PPM signal level to audible levels have become available,” he writes. “Their goal to capture more PPM receivers, increasing ratings by essentially gaming the system. … This is a dangerous and slippery slope,” he wrote. “Put simply, these devices make your radio station sound worse, driving more listeners away from traditional broadcast in favor of new media that isn’t using such devices.”

He pointed to previously posted audio files that he said provide “proof that level control before the PPM encoder does not matter, contrary to what many believe, and how various levels of audio processing affect the encoding probability and level.”

An official with the Telos Alliance declined comment on the post.

Read it here, and comment below.

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