Last Hurdle Cleared to 100% Digital Air Chain

WheatstoneBaseband192UPDATE 7-29-13: Wheatstone® baseband 192 is now live on the air in Minneapolis providing the world's first all-digital transmission chain!

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Overcoming hurdles is something we’re good at here at Wheatstone. And we’ve cleared a big one recently – the last obstacle to the all-digital air chain.

We just started shipping select FM audio processors with new Wheatstone® baseband192 for direct AES-EBU output into any FM transmitter equipped with a digital baseband input.

Wheatstone baseband192 uses open standard technology that eliminates the need for an analog composite interface between processing and transmission, making the 100% digital air chain possible at last.  

A single AES-EBU cable between a Wheatstone processor and the transmitter carries the baseband signal, bypassing the need for multiplexing in the exciter and eliminating the resulting signal overshoot with its associated loudness tradeoff. 

As our own Jeff Keith explained, “We simply digitize the entire multiplex spectrum up to and including the RDS, then send that digitized signal directly to the modulator of the exciter."

The baseband192 interface is now available as a standard feature in our AirAura X3, FM-531HD and VP-8IP audio processors.

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