NUGEN Audio at the 2017 NAB Show

	Jon Schorah, Nugen Audio

At the 2017 NAB Show, NUGEN Audio will demonstrate new downmixing technology for creating the best possible stereo mixes from original surround audio sources. The company will also showcase its industry-leading post-production and broadcast audio tools for loudness, upmixing, and batch processing, and a range of products for creative sound design, enhancement, and sound-stage correction.

Nugen Audio will unveil Halo Downmix, an all-new product in the company's award-winning Halo line. Halo Downmix is a highly creative solution for precise downmixing of feature-film or 5.1 mixes to stereo. Until Halo Downmix, the options available to audio engineers for downmixing were less than ideal. Pre-existing tools can generate excess ambient sound as the rear channels collapse to stereo, and they can cause indistinct dialog or disproportionate levels of low-frequency energy. Original archive material, when upmixed using legacy methods such as rear-channel delay and phase shifting, can end up with audible timing errors when summed to the phantom center.

Halo Downmix surmounts these challenges by giving the engineer hands-on control over the relative levels, timing, and direct/ambient sound balance within the downmix process. By allowing appropriate adjustment, Halo Downmix delivers a result far superior to a typical in-the-box, coefficients-based process.

"We created Halo Downmix in direct response to customer demand," said Jon Schorah, founder and creative director, Nugen Audio. "Many of our Halo Upmix users also need high-quality downmix processes to handle legacy and third-party content. Halo Downmix provides new levels of creative control to improve the quality of stereo downmixes, therefore making it easier to deliver on the creative intent of the original mix in stereo."

Nugen Audio will demonstrate the latest update to Halo Upmix, the company's solution for upmixing stereo audio to 5.1/7.1/9.1 surround. Based on Nugen Audio's proprietary upmixing processes, Halo Upmix has received much critical acclaim since its launch. This update includes algorithmic improvements designed to enhance multichannel-to-multichannel mix and upmix adjustments using the Halo Upmix technologies to further enhance existing surround recordings.

AMB is a powerful new solution that radically expands on the concept of Nugen Audio's loudness management batch-processing technology for high-speed audio loudness measurement and correction. AMB enables post-production facilities to accelerate workflows significantly and reduce delivery times for a range of different tasks, with separate modules available for upmixing and loudness management. AMB also offers new features including threaded algorithm processing and multiple processing threads that are addressable for simultaneous parallel handling of files and queues.

"Our loudness processing is the fastest in its class, offering a highly efficient and cost-effective batch-file solution that meets audio professionals' most demanding requirements," said Schorah. "AMB significantly increases these capabilities to give customers batch-processing options for more of our award-winning, workflow-enhancing technologies."

AMB offers unprecedented scalability, allowing post-production facilities of all sizes to add the precise processing modules they need and tailor the system to their exact requirements. Examples include extensions to repurpose content for LRA or to process audio within MXF or .mov files. AMB comes standard with two watch folders/processing queues. If users need extra power and speed, the AMB queue expansion provides additional watch folders/processing queues. A total of up to 16 AMB queue expansions can be added.

As standard, the base AMB module includes two independent processing threads that optimize workflows by allowing two simultaneous processes to run in parallel. For even greater speed and efficiency, users can add the AMB Thread Expansion to activate additional processing threads up to a total of 16.