A new generation of audio technologies has arrived in broadcasting.

It is necessary to talk about Next Generation Audio because in broadcasting it is prefiguring a higly innovative scenario, in which, in addition to the traditional increase of coding efficiency typical of technology evolution, new and important features are added, which will require the contents producers an adaptation of their production workflow.

For several years, alongside the traditional and professional interfaces dedicated to digital audio (such as AES/EBU, ADAT, MADI), numerous remote control solutions have been developed based on shared or dedicated use of network infrastructures.

These solutions,  mainly based on proprietary technologies, are remains “islands” that tend to limit the interoperability between equipments and systems, leaving the role of “bridge” to the single devices or to the tradtional interfaces.

In this context, the standardization efforts occurred in AES (with AES67 and AES70 standards) and the job that is addressing normative entity the solutions for the Video Over IP transport are the  Networked Audio world changing elements.

The evolution and the increasingly massive use of dynamic compressors in the audio post-production area has led over the years to have in the music and advertising market a real “Loudness War”, which has reverberated with negative effects in the radio and television areas, literlally without regulations and tools to control this phenomenon in the scenario in which the evolution to digital audio/video would have allowed the transmission of products with greater sound dynamics.

The 3D VMS, acronym of 3D Virtual Microphone System, is a sound recording system that thanks to a microphone array and a processing system patented by RAI with the University of Parma allows the synthesis of virtual microphones (Virtual Microphones) whose orientation and directivity can be controlled and modified in real time.