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Voltair

G

guruofradio

Frequent Participant
Can ratings be trusted with Voltair? Meter was suspect anyway with low samples and 40-50% of the panel staying for two years, the rest turning over at about 10-15% a month. Means big ratings shifts every couple years with meters and now you can juice numbers with Voltair? Canada has temporarily banned it, wonder if that will happen here.

Appears that formats like Smooth Jazz, AAA and others were hurt by meter technology not by actual ratings decline!!! If Voltair works, might we see a return to these formats in Seattle? HOT goes back to THE MOUNTAIN? KLCK to Smooth Jazz?
 
guruofradio said:
Can ratings be trusted with Voltair? Meter was suspect anyway with low samples and 40-50% of the panel staying for two years, the rest turning over at about 10-15% a month. Means big ratings shifts every couple years with meters and now you can juice numbers with Voltair? Canada has temporarily banned it, wonder if that will happen here.

Appears that formats like Smooth Jazz, AAA and others were hurt by meter technology not by actual ratings decline!!! If Voltair works, might we see a return to these formats in Seattle? HOT goes back to THE MOUNTAIN? KLCK to Smooth Jazz?
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That stuff about the PPM killing smooth jazz and AAA and other music formats is rubbish.

But first, "Canada" has not banned the PPM. Numeris, the Canadian ratings company owned by the broadcasters themselves, has put its use on hold for 90 to 120 days for evaluation.

The PPM uses station audio to mask the PPM "tag" which is "burried" in the audio but detectable by the PPM a panelist carries.

The PPM encoder at the station can insert the tag up to 180 times each quarter hour if there are enough 4.5 second intervals of audio to mask the tag. In music formats it's possible to see well over 100 of them emitted per quarter hour segment.

It's important to know that a station gets Nielsen credit for any quarter hour in which there are enough detections. In normal circumstances, 5 total detections (out of 180 possible) in 5 different minutes will give credit for the quarter hour. In some cases, under the missing minutes rule, 3 detections in the whole quarter hour will give credit.

You don't need any more detections to "win" a quarter hour.

The argument about music stations like classical and smooth jazz not offering enough detection points is bogus. All stations do enough gain control to maintain solid modulation levels for the PPM tag to be inserted many, many more times per quarter hour than are needed for credit. In fact, classical and smooth jazz which are mostly instrumental formats with less talk and fewer commercials have higher than average opportunities for the tag to be emitted.

The issue is not how many times, up to the maximum, a station can insert into programming. It is how many are needed to get credit for each quarter hour and whether, without the Voltair, there are already more than enough tags for credit to be gotten. Overkill does not increase ratings.

Only if a station misses maybe 160 or so of the 180 total tagging opportunities is it likely to not get credit. The content on most stations, including talkers, is adequate for the minimum requirement of tags to be broadcast.

What the PPM did show is that stations that had listeners who "thought" they listened for many hours straight and recorded that in diary actually had listeners who listened a lot during different periods of the day actually listened for many short intervals with many interruptions. So the listener who said they listened from 9 to 5 actually did not listen for 8 hours but, perhaps for 3 1/2 or 4 hours because they took breaks, went to the bathroom, went to lunch, took phone calls, moved around the home or workplace, etc. Nobody recorded this kind of listening in the diary, but the PPM sees it clearly.

Low cuming stations with high TSL suffered. But it is not the PPM's fault... it is because listeners did not really record the listening right in the diary.

The Voltair amplifies audio in the frequency bands where the PPM tag can be placed. That may allow for more tagging to happen. However, that amplification is of audio that should be present at low levels; the amplification can distort or make grungy the station sound.

The key to this is not Nielsen's reaction. It is the findings of the MRC which has a committee looking into this now. The issue is not whether the Voltair works, but whether its use constitutes "ratings bias and distortion" which is prohibited.
 
The key thing that hurt Smooth Jazz was not the ratings but the demographics. There were many markets where the ratings were still good. PPM doesn't change the age or make-up of the audience. The fact was that the median age for the Smooth Jazz audience was much older than other music formats, and this hurt the format's revenues. It didn't help that the core artists in the format were over 50. The music itself was stuck in a time warp, and was holding it back. No question there are fans of the music, just as there are fans of Be Bop or Swing or other earlier forms of jazz. But the fan base is shrinking and aging. You can't blame PPM for that.
 
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Good discussion. David you always have a great perspective and I enjoy your comments. Clearly there is a difference of opinion on the value of Voltair. Let's hope the Canadian Numeris study (and yes stations were asked voluntarily to stop using Voltair) and the Nielson study determines whether there is value or not. MRC should look into it, along with the 40 or so PPM markets that have yet to accredit.

I know of a half dozen Talk, AC and AAA stations that have installed Voltair and saw immediate ratings jumps. I also know of some CHR and Country stations that installed it and saw nothing. Anecdotal at best, but it does appear boosting the audio frequency where the PPM tag is placed might give you more occasions or continued TSL causing the ratings increase in formats that have programming that is less "amplified." Could possibly be a way to even the playing field for those softer formats. It is curious that stations that report seeing the biggest benefit are those that have softer or talk formats. Who knows, maybe equalizing the ability of the meter to pick up the PPM tag has value. I am for anything that helps radio report all listening occasions and TSL.

My sense is diary over-reported listening to Talk, AAA, Smooth Jazz for the reasons stated above. I can't help feel the meter may under-report actual listening by giving more credit that deserved to loudly modulating cume formats and not enough credit to TSL based softer formats It is one thing to crank the modulation to distortion levels on a CHR and another on a Classical format.
 
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Most stations place an AGC in front of the PPM encoder but that's it. So unless your are really pushing your AGC stage, your not increasing the spectral energy much before the PPM encoder. Most of that boost is in the Multi-band limiting section which is after the PPM encoder has looked at the audio and put in the tags. I have yet to see a PPM encoder hooked to the output of an Optimod or Omnia then to transmitter. The Voltair is in front of the PPM encoder so that it can work it's magic so the PPM encoder can insert more tags. If the PPM encoder was put after the Multiband limiter stage in most audio processing then there would be more spectral energy to mask watermarks. But the PPM encoder does not see that extra energy when it is generating the tags, since most of the time it is at the studio in the AGC section of the audio chain. Talk stations really do not get any boost from the AGC stage like some music stations can. As a matter of fact in Sports radio aggressive AGC can play against you with crowd noise for live sports so can an over aggressive Multiband section.

Has any one placed the PPM encoder after the Multiband limiter in a station. If the Voltair shows that the PPM encoder likes more spectral energy then why would a station not try putting the PPM encoder farther down the processing chain where more spectral energy is created allowing the encoder to work with the audio at that point to insert tags.

The other part of the Voltair is that it is an analyzer of the tagging being done on the station. The Voltair can be used to evaluate the overall PPM encoding as it currently is and does not have to be in the "Air Chain" to do that.

I can see a new processor coming out from Omnia that has built in Voltair and a side chain insert for the PPM encoder.
 
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Xmtrland, your last post sounds like a Telos Alliance pitch. :rolleyes:

Increasing audio in the narrow-ish frequency bands that mask the PPM tags is akin to having a parametric equalizer that has a narrow passband at several different frequency ranges where there is 10 db or more of enhancement. What that does is like this paraphrased Air Supply song title: "makin audio out of nothing at all" which means adding grunge and components that don't belong there in excessive amounts.

There is a question therein: is injecting sound in the PPM mask bands legitimate or is it "ratings distortion and bias"?

The MRC is conducting one of the most tightly secured evaluations I have ever heard of and that will determine the usability of the Voltair technique, both by Telos and other companies that want to try to make a similar product.

Again, when it can take as few as 3 detections in a quarter hour period for a station to get full credit for the quarter hour, the issue is not increasing the number of tags inserted but whether use of the Voltair increases quarter hours for the station using it.

Considering that there are many other variables in radio programming such as seasonality, competition, promotions, holidays, jocks or talent on vacations, etc., any testing has to be done in a very controlled situation such as "odd hours first day, even hours second day" or something like that. Then the meter counts and quarter hour credits can be looked at, either in Nielsen data or the MediaMonitors material that some stations subscribe to. Of course, looking at a "week on / week off" would allow comparison of panelists, hours, dayparts and days but has the disadvantage of being subject to more extraneous variables.
 
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The other variable is what direction the human wearing the PPM meter is facing, environment and how far away they are from the radio.

I can't help but wonder after taking in all this information, would a music station that sees minimum affect from there $15000 Voltair be better off just moving the PPM encoder after the Multiband stage which most audio processing chains have (but not easily accessible). That way they are not injecting grunge and the encoder has more places to place the watermark because there is more spectral energy. They then could move the Voltair to the talk format station in there group or better yet their classical music station.

Like they say in the sales material for the Voltair, it can be used as an analyzer of the overall PPM encoding and it could allow you to see if that AGC in front of the PPM encoder is allowing it to encode more water marks, or are you better off having no AGC in front of the PPM encoder. If anything the Voltair analyzer section may be able to tell you if moving the PPM encoder further down the chain, after the Multiband limiter but before the multiband limiter clipper allows more watermarks to be encoded. All the analyzer tells you is that the PPM encoder is adding more or less tags which seems to be the game here, more tags equals more chances the PPM meter will get a valid watermark.

The other side of the coin is it's use in pre production to make spots and promo's more encodable, by pointing out things like using a music bed where possible, who's voice encodes best and even what music bed works best. So this is a tool to kinda get the production people in line so the Voltair does not have to add as much grunge.

If the MRC comes down negative on the Voltair, will it stop station from using there $15000 outlawed boxes to monitor and analyze their PPM encoder. I have to admit the Voltair screen looks 100% more informative than the two color LED I see on the PPM monitor. From reading and discussing all the Voltair info, it could be a valuable tool in just making your air chain more PPM friendly. I would hope that a station would use the Voltair to analyze the stations overall presentation/audio chain and see if any adjustment could be made so that when they do take the Voltair out of Bypass it has to add less grunge to achieve results if any. Would a cheaper Analyzer only Voltair be a viable tool for a station versus that two color LED? Are there any PPM monitors other than the stock one from Arbitron?

The only real recommendation for PPM encoding that I ever heard was put an AGC in front. But maybe you can do more without adding grunge but you will need to analyze or monitor the PPM signal to see if there is an improvement. At least the Voltair has started some valuable discussion and testing and if nothing else has pointed out that broadcaster can do more than just place an AGC in front of the PPM encoder.

Again I'm not on the Telos pay role but if they were to throw the LPFM I started an new Axia console or the latest Omnia FM processor or both I would not complain. By the way did you know the Telos Alliance answers emails on Holiday Weekends! Send the console to KVSH-LP
 
xmtrland said:
The other variable is what direction the human wearing the PPM meter is facing, environment and how far away they are from the radio.
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The design criteria for the meter was that it be able to hear what the human ear can hear. If the meter carrier is far from the radio, so is the meter. It hears what the human being hears.

I can't help but wonder after taking in all this information, would a music station that sees minimum affect from there $15000 Voltair be better off just moving the PPM encoder after the Multiband stage which most audio processing chains have (but not easily accessible).
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The engineering guide for the PPM seems to allows installation wherever in the audio chain the station wants it. Why would you not put it where the audio is the most dense?

That way they are not injecting grunge and the encoder has more places to place the watermark because there is more spectral energy. They then could move the Voltair to the talk format station in there group or better yet their classical music station.
Click to expand...

Do you know of any significant clusters that even have a classical station any more? Are there any commercial classicals of significance anywhere?

Like they say in the sales material for the Voltair, it can be used as an analyzer of the overall PPM encoding and it could allow you to see if that AGC in front of the PPM encoder is allowing it to encode more water marks, or are you better off having no AGC in front of the PPM encoder.
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Years ago to test the effectiveness of a Compellor I ran one of those power consumption chart recorders on the transmitter of an AM and compared with a time period without the Compellor and with our previous AGC leveling amp. The increase was astounding and on the order of 20%. So don't dismiss the ability of an AGC to considerably increase density... as anyone who installed the 0 k resistor in a 60's Audimax can attest to.

All the analyzer tells you is that the PPM encoder is adding more or less tags which seems to be the game here, more tags equals more chances the PPM meter will get a valid watermark.
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The issue here is that we don't care how many tags are sent. What we would care about is whether a quarter hour that did not have enough for credit without the Voltair does have enough to get credit for the quarter hour when the Voltair is used. The unity of ratings measurement is not the 4.5 second tag length, it is the quarter hour and there are precise rules as to how many tags have to be detected in a certain number of discreet minutes (usually 5 but in some cases as few as 3 under the missing minutes edit rule).

The other side of the coin is it's use in pre production to make spots and promo's more encodable, by pointing out things like using a music bed where possible, who's voice encodes best and even what music bed works best.
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The problem in larger markets is that a huge percentage of spots come from agencies, and are not produced in house. No way to change them.

The only real recommendation for PPM encoding that I ever heard was put an AGC in front.
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I've never been at a station that did not have AGC already... going back to the already mentioned Audimax in the 60's to the many systems in the 70's like the LA-3As with speaker crossovers followed by a Gain Brain plus discreet mike processing. So there is usually nothing to be added that was not already there.
 
guruofradio said:
MRC should look into it, along with the 40 or so PPM markets that have yet to accredit.
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The MRC is doing a study, in conjunction with Nielsen. It is one of the most guarded MRC actions I have ever seen (or in this case, not seen).
 
DavidEduardo said:
Do you know of any significant clusters that even have a classical station any more? Are there any commercial classicals of significance anywhere?
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Of course not. Even the legendary KING in Seattle is non-comm. But they all subscribe to Nielsen, and many of them show up pretty well in the ratings, which disproves the myth that PPM dislikes classical format or any format with wide dynamic range. Same with non-comm talk stations that are #1 in several major markets, disproving the myth that PPM dislikes talk. The difference is that the non-comm world doesn't really care if the format attracts older folks as long as they become paying members. So formats that advertisers don't like are having a second life in non-comm radio.

BTW, I can tell you that as a rule, non-comm stations tend to under-process and under-compress their signals, for even wider dynamic range than their commercial brothers. Can you imagine what would happen to commercial radio if non-comm stations bought Voltair?

The moral is: Don't blame PPM for bad ratings, folks. Blame bad radio. And don't blame PPM for the death of once-popular formats. Blame aging demos.
 
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TheBigA said:
The moral is: Don't blame PPM for bad ratings, folks. Blame bad radio. And don't blame PPM for the death of once-popular formats. Blame aging demos.
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Very true. Just because a consultant writes what amounts to a blog regarding his personal conspiracy theory, doesn't mean it's fact.

Back in the 90's when the short-lived manager of KLTX (Sue), decided to go smooth jazz at night, I attended many a meeting where upper management was concerned that a couple months after, the cume numbers for SJ were garbage and the TSL wasn't great. Advertisers were concerned because the target demographics weren't showing up as expected. The consultant came in and tightened up the playlist, added some artists that had nothing to do with Jazz (Less Kenny G, more Doobie Bros., Steely Dan), and added more focused liners. The TSL stabilized, but cume still was low as compared to the days when doing light AC. They abandoned the SJ at night and the rest is history. 98.9 flipped to SJ right after that (same consultant). We were observing from 190 Queen Anne Ave., chuckling to ourselves because they hired the same guy.

PPM wasn't even close to being around back then, although I was involved with some very secret over the air testing of how audio data subcarriers could be injected in the station audio. I dealt with the transmission/station side only. The reception data was kept a secret.
 
I believe that the Voltair works. It simply helps the PPM unit "hear" the stations coded tone better. Now, IF it changed the tone, that would be a different story. If every station had one, Radios listening numbers would go up, across the board. We'd look stronger against Pandora and the rest.
 
jry said:
I believe that the Voltair works. It simply helps the PPM unit "hear" the stations coded tone better.
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The Voltair does not help the individual meter carried by a panelist to "hear" the tag better. What it does is expand the audio, prior to encoding, in the 10 little frequency "notches" that the encoder can use so that there is enough audio for a tag to be inserted.

Keep in mind that the Voltair is placed ahead of the PPM encoder, not after it. So it can not do anything to the encoded audio at all.

The idea is that if there is not enough audio to mask a tag, the tag will be omitted. So by pumping up the gain on the specific frequency ranges (10 of them between 1 kHz and 3 kHz) a tag can be inserted farther down the audio chain. The detection of the tag by the listener's PPM does not change... just the potential for more detections due to more transmitted tags.

Now, IF it changed the tone, that would be a different story. If every station had one, Radios listening numbers would go up, across the board. We'd look stronger against Pandora and the rest.
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Most formats have plenty of audio in the 1 kHz to 3 kHz range to insert well over 100 tags every quarter hour. It only takes 3 tags "in the right places" to get credit for the quarter hour of listening so anything beyond that has zero ratings benefit to the market and to the station.

To get credit for a quarter hour, the basic building block of ratings, detections of one tag have to be recorded in five discreet minutes, contiguous or not. If there are only 3 detections, each separated by an undetected minute in which no other station was detected, the "missing minute" edit rule assumes that listening took place for 5 continuous minutes and the quarter hour is credited to the station.
 
DavidEduardo,

I remember the mid 80's when some FM stations would boost their audio in the 3kHz area so they would sound louder.
I hated it then and I hate it now.
Many of the stations "honked" themselves to the bottom of the book with that EQ bump.
It seems like Voltair is doing the same thing. I predict that it will create listener fatigue.

Your thoughts?
 
frankberry said:
DavidEduardo,

I remember the mid 80's when some FM stations would boost their audio in the 3kHz area so they would sound louder.
I hated it then and I hate it now.
Many of the stations "honked" themselves to the bottom of the book with that EQ bump.
It seems like Voltair is doing the same thing. I predict that it will create listener fatigue.

Your thoughts?
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Even earlier in the late 60's there was the CBS Dynamic Presence Equalizer which tried to make station audio (we are talking AM here) sound brighter. The idea was a station would sound crisp and cleaner.

I had them on my stations HCRM, HCSP and HCFV and they did make a difference... enough that listeners said we sounded "clear" or "bright".

The advent of the multiband processor eliminated the need for this by allowing stations to emphasize specific parts of the audio spectrum to tailor the sound. We pretty much all do that now.

But the Voltair actually tries to enhance residual audio even where there is little or nothing in order to create the mask needed to encode.
 
The CBS Dynamic Presence Equalizer worked quite well when used on AM stations.
The station to which I was referring was an FM station.
 
A couple of things on how the Voltair is installed. It actually "wraps around" the encoder. You have a studio input, and a transmitter output. The PPM in and out has its own set of jacks. So the PPM encoder appears to be in some sort of side-chain or insert loop of the Voltair.

Most people do run some sort of AGC/Leveling in front of the PPM encoder to maintain a fairly high average level into the box.

As to putting PPM after your "real" audio processor.....Omnia, Orban etc, As long as the PPM does not increase the peak level of the audio I see no reason why you could not do that. Again, the key there is; does it introduce any overshoot etc. It seems that it would introduce some overshoot---but I have no evidence one way or the other on that.

Having worked with a couple of these, if nothing else, the Voltair provides a nice display of your encoding, rather than the stupid green light on the decoder. Related to that; I recall that Arbitron (and then Nielsen) Were working on a "next generation" decoder. I recall that it had a history display rather than the SGL (Stupid green light)which would have been a welcomed change. The new generation encoder...and decoder had <gasp> a thing called an Ethernet jack on it....so you could see what was going on remotely.

Also from the perspective of working with a couple of these, I will "buy in" to its effectiveness on a talk format. I reserve judgement on whether it does much for a music format.
 
I just ran into an AM station with the output of their Omnia feeding the PPM encoder then the transmitter. I always wondered why they sounded bland and seemed have bad modulation control. Now I know. Looking at it on a scope which me and the engineer did there was bad peek control and the modulation seemed to wonder up or down by about 5%. The PPM encoder was defiantly affected the correction the Omnia was tying to do for the AM signal. I would rather run the ppm encoder before an all in one box like Omnia or Optimod with no AGC versus putting it after. I have seen it done with AGC and without, only thing it affects is if the AGC is engaged in the main processor or how aggressive it's used.

I have never looked at the manual for the PPM encoder, does it have any type of phase scrambler in it? Or would it pass the asymmetry boost from the Omnia or Optimod. I was seeing positive peaks around 110 positive so it makes me think the PPM encoder passes asymmetry, but there was over shoot and the peak control was not there.

So if you used an AGC (Aphex Compellor) before your PPM encoder and the encoder feeds the Omnia/Optimod and you get a Voltair. Do you put the AGC in front of Voltair then plug the PPM encoder into the jacks on the Voltair then output of Voltair to Omnia/Optimod?

I'm mostly on the transmitter end, having fun re building the APD-20 dehydrator right now.
 
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