New York, NY. At last night’s Emmy Awards ceremonies, The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized Sonic Solutions Inc. and the IEC/ISO standards organizations with awards for technical achievement.
The Academy gave the Emmy for Outstanding Technical Achievement to Sonic for its NoNOISE® process. The award cited the use of NoNOISE for the restoration of tens of thousands of recordings, movie and TV sound tracks. NoNOISE was the first digital sound restoration technology available commercially, introduced in 1986. Today it is used in every major recording market in the world.
The Engineering Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Technological Development went to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) for their work in developing the MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and JPEG standards for coded and compressed representation of audio, video and still image data.
Sonic’s NoNOISE has made it possible for engineers of audio recordings and other media utilizing digital audio to greatly enhance the quality of recordings by removing unwanted noise while preserving underlying program material.
“Recognition of NoNOISE as a key digital production tool by The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is very gratifying,” said Bob Doris, President of Sonic Solutions. “Audio technology is surging forward as bandwidth increases and new digital audio/video technologies explode on the scene. With NoNOISE, producers will be able to bring the best of the old into the new, digital production environment, enhancing the quality of analog source material in the process.”
Traditional analog audio restoration techniques can eliminate noise but usually leave the valuable program material muddy. NoNOISE applies proprietary digital signal processing algorithms that eliminate broadband background noise like tape hiss and record surface noise, as well as AC hum, HVAC buzz, camera whine and other such ambient noises.
It can also reduce distortion caused by overloads and dropouts, acoustical pops and clicks, transients caused by bad splices and channel breakup from wireless microphones, all without affecting the original source material.
Sonic’s NoNOISE is used by TV and radio stations, as well as film and music production studios around the world. Classic episodes of I Love Lucy, interviews edited for 60 Minutes, and tracks of many other popular TV shows, movies and music recordings utilize NoNOISE to enhance the quality of audio recordings.
NBC producers from Dateline used the technology to reconstruct unintelligible dialogue allegedly spoken by O.J. Simpson from a recording of a controversial 911 call made by Nicole Brown Simpson which was admitted as evidence in the Simpson trial.
MPEG compression is a scalable technology for delivering high quality audio and video programming to consumers by reducing the bandwidth necessary to carry the programming to homes and businesses across the globe.
Accepting the Emmy, President and CEO Sergio Mazza of ANSI (the U.S. body representing ISO/IEC) stated: “On behalf of the U.S. standards community, ANSI is pleased that ISO and IEC and their international standards have been recognized for the valuable role they play in the entertainment industry. We commend the participants of the ISO/IEC subcommittee for developing standards that provide the highest level of efficiency to the user.”
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.