Amber Technology Blog

TC Electronic Introduces Broadcast 6000 Tailored for Live and Post Production in Broadcast

Written by Karin Cahill | 03/10/13 01:41

TC Electronic's System 6000 signal processing flagship has been an industry standard for over a decade in professional recording, mastering and film studios. With the recent introduction of System 6000 MKII, many broadcasters have also found it the ideal solution for live transmission as well as post production.

Broadcast 6000 is a custom-tailored version of TC Electronic's System 6000 MKII that is optimized for production with broadcast in mind, hence the name Broadcast 6000. The new unit comes fully equipped with a wealth of pristine algorithms. It also facilitates live program mixing, making it the ideal solution for sports, gameshows or concerts.

Loudness Metering and Correction
Regardless of whether the context is live or post production, measuring loudness is absolutely essential. Broadcast 6000 includes TC Electronic's legendary LM6 Loudness Radar Meter, which offers a complete loudness landscape overview at a glance, including Loudness History spanning from 1 minute to 24 hours, Momentary Loudness, Logging, True Peak Level and two universal and user-definable descriptors that can be set up to show Program Loudness, Loudness Range or other loudness-related parameters.

LM6 is an indispensable tool for checking loudness, and it facilitates normalization of programs to a defined Target level, for instance -23 LUFS or -24 LKFS. For live mixing, normalization is not an option, so Broadcast 6000 also includes the ALC6 Automatic Loudness Correction algorithm, which is a great help at hitting a Target live at an ultra-low latency (0.8 ms), preserving sound quality and audio resolution.

NEW: AM6 TASA Radar Meter
For the first time, TC Electronic's AM6 Radar Meter is now available for the System 6000 MKII platform. AM6 combines "M" frequency weighting with an energy-integrated measure of sound, or equivalent continuous sound level, abbreviated Leq. Leveling of commercials and trailers in movie theaters is typically based on this measure of "annoyance".

The AM6 radar combines an intuitive and efficient way of visualizing annoyance of stereo or 5.1 content over time, while the integrated Leq(M) number indicates the status of the entire trailer or commercial with regard to regulatory limits.

Upconversion and Downmix
World-leading film and post production studios have been relying on TC Electronic's UnWrap HD algorithm for years - it is simply the best-sounding tool for folding out a stereo or an LtRt signal to a credible 5.1 representation. UnWrap HD does its job without compromising audio resolution or changing Program Loudness, and it comes with a suite of award-winning presets for a host of applications.

To go the other way around, the DMix algorithm handles trouble free, high headroom downmix from 5.1 to stereo on the fly. It is even capable of Target level transcoding for Mobile platforms in one, low latency pass.

Multichannel Tools
If additional dynamics control is needed, Broadcast 6000 comes equipped with MD5.1 and MDX5.1 multiband, multichannel dynamics processing algorithms, covering high resolution compressor, DTX processor, limiter and expansion tools. Broadcast 6000 also includes Toolbox 5.1 with loudspeaker management and calibration functions that turn a stereo room into a fully fledged 5.1 production suite. Finally, the unit offers a 5.1 Eq and the Matrix 88 precision summing mixer with integrated 48 bit true-peak limiting.