CODEC SOLUTIONS BY DIGIGRAM

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Alfonso:Derek. Good morning. How are you doing?   

Derek:  Good morning. 

Alfonso: Great. I see you have a nice set up with all your gear behind you. Welcome to today’s broadcast.

Derek:  Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Alfonso:Great, great Derek. I was in the introduction. I was referring to DIGIGRAM that use a company that people in Latin America knows them very well because of their audio cards, but not many people know your other product line, which is what you guys are focusing right now, which is the audio codec’s. And that's the reason you're here today to give us a demonstration on your different line of products in the Kodak line.

Derek:Okay. Am I able to share my screen or am I just keeping it with you?

Alfonso:Yes. Yes. You will be able to share your screen at any time that you will like, of course, sometimes I'm going to be interrupting you because I'm going to be translating into Spanish. What we're doing right now.

Derek: Understood. So essentially, DIGIGRAM for the last 10 to 12 years for those of you who don't know, did you, DIGIGRAM is the inventor of ether sound and they are no stranger to audio over IP and they saw a need for higher quality audio over IP. When the ISD N protocol became more expensive and they wanted to provide a high-quality solution for studio to studio links, studio to transmitter links, as well as a remote to studio links. And there's really three things that they do differently. And just so everybody's on the same page, we're talking hardware codex as well as software codex. So, we have solutions for boxes and we have solutions in the cloud and they all have this in common it's called fluid IP. And what fluid IP brings to any broadcasts solution is the most adaptable algorithms for they've licensed every compression algorithm that you can use in audio from AAC to Opus, to you know, G seven 11.

There isn't a compression algorithm that is used in broadcasting. That's not in their box. So, number one is it's very adaptable to your network. Number two, and there's really just three differences. Number two, forward error correction, the way they've implemented a four-error correction scheme to minimize and get rid of packet loss and number three, the way they do what we call it. DIGIGRAM, 100% redundant streaming where the hardware codecs actually separate network interfaces on the back panel and the codec path is to independent network pass over the internet to their destination---.

Alfonso:Okay, let me, let me interrupt you there direct so I can translate because it's been learned. So let me translate this to our folks in Latin America. Okay. Derek, I think I covered it very well.

Derek: Great. and again, with the redundant streaming part of their technology, that's probably the most wow factor because not only are they taking a second path over the internet, but the secondary or redundant stream can be delayed. So if there's a catastrophic internet event, the actual signal can be received perfectly and codex had been in use for about 10 years now. Companies like the BBC, Apple, globe cast several major manufacturers are using their technology for a variety of either global Intercom or a sub carrier. Even Apple uses it for their Apple music streaming service. So DIGIGRAM has a lot to be proud of. The, the product range is actually very streamlined. There's not a lot to understand now they have studio codex and they have portable codex. So I'll share my screen when you're ready. Go ahead.

Alfonso: Sure. Of course. Okay. Derek, we're ready for you.

Derek: So, this is a great diagram of your typical broadcast ecosystem and you know, everything to the left of the studio is your remote broadcasting and everything to the right is distribution. So, what I wanted to share with you all today is that the coil line it's pronounced, I Coya, and then there's cross-link and then there's serve link. They all do the same thing. It's all just giving me audio in various formats. Dante has 67 Ravenna live wire analog CBU, and the ability to… on the distribution side have that redundant stream, have the ability to have backup audio on the unit with an SD card. So, if the internet goes down completely that you don't go off air and be able to take a single program. And multicast to up to 32 destinations from a single unit in multiple formats at the same time. So, from a station I can broadcast web radio and to my transmitter site and to a studio as well as satellite. All at the same time with a single unit, I don't have to buy subsequent codex to handle these various loads. 

Alfonso:Perfect. There we go. Again. I think I'm doing it very well. This translation, I think I'm getting used to this, huh?

Derek:Yeah, this is not your first party. The other thing I want to add, and this'll be a short clip, then you can translate is the serve link is a single Rackspace and these codecs are scalable in the field. The user can start off with two, four, eight codecs in a single box, and then scale it up to 64 stereo programs out of one box. That means I can take one serve link 

instead of buying say 64 brick link to calm Rex's I can do with one box, what it takes 64 access or brick link tos to do. And it's a redundant power supply. So instead of 64 boxes, all drawing power, all emanating heat in the room that needs to be cooled. I have lower cooling costs. I have lower operational costs and I can do it all with a single unit instead of buying subsequent hardware to do it. So as my station grows, I can grow. And it's all software updatable. 

Alfonso:  That's a very powerful unit naive. So how does he come there? Does he, does he have a slot that you can increase? It's a scalable and you can being increasing the amount of cortex? actually it's software

Derek:Actually, it's software. So your clients can contact you and say, okay, so to answer your question, it comes with eight mano codecs or four stereo programs out of the box. And when you look it up on the price list, that's what it comes with. And then there are what we call IO upgrades. So, you can scale it from I'm going to speak in terms of mano channels, but obviously in radio broadcasting, we're dealing with stereo, but it comes with eight mano codex, and you can scale it in eight channel increments. So, you can turn an eight-codec server link into a 16 codex server link into a, you know, 24, 30 to 60, and you can do it in at different times. So, if today you're running, say eight stations out of your center and you need 16 codex. So, you get a serve link with a 16 IO upgrade, but next year, you acquire a couple more stations. They can call you, and then you can software. It's just a software update that you provide to your customer and it's field installable. So, it's very convenient.

Alfonso:is very impressive. Derek. I was mentioning that I never seen this before, and this is the good thing about this program, about today in broadcast that we learn about new technologies and we can give this knowledge to our customers to tell them how they are [Inaudible 19:46], there is this box. You can get it. You can increase size in the future. It's a scalable, et cetera. Very, very nice presentation.

Derek:You're welcome. Thank you. This… it might be hard to see because I'm trying to blow up the window, but this is the back of the server link. All of our codecs have redundant power and most people who get into the server link architecture usually want to do the LAN audio. So, either A S 67 or Dante or Ravenna or something. And so those are the networking ports and there's multichannel connections that you connect your analog or ASC BU connections, if you want to use it in that type of way, but people who know they want to get up to 64 or 128 codecs in a single box. Usually at that point, you're doing Maddie or you're doing Dante, are you doing ASMR 67? So, you order the version that suits you in terms of connectivity. So, if you're already doing Maddie, then you stay in the Mattie. If you're already doing A S 67 then it's just your cat five connection. So you know, the only time you have to be a little bit more committed is if you start out analog, because obviously there has to be physical analog connections, but most people who are going to scale beyond eight or 16 channels are at that point, Maddie, Dante, or A S 67 almost exclusively. And then we can ridden, we can stream GPI, owes and cereal

Alfonso:As well. And how many DPI do you have? Can you talk to...

Derek: Gosh, many, 1632? It's a lot. You can add upgrades for more. It's quite a bit optional. GPIO is an additional 16, but what I'm trying to remember is how many it comes standard.

Alfonso:Right? Right. Let me, let me show the back of the unit. All right, perfect.

 All right. I'm going to switch gears to the remote broadcasting side for a minute.

Alfonso: Sure.

Derek:Yeah. And the cross-link a lot of people ask me you know, before I get into the portable stuff, a lot of people ask me, well, what's the difference between the cross link and the serve link. And the answer is technologically. There is no difference. The, the main functional difference is the cross link is limited to two, up to 16 codecs in a box. And there are versions of it. Like a cross-link stereo is similar to like a complex access. I would argue the stereo unit has more capability. It has an onboard front panel screen, and you can put in the IP address, you, you don't have to always pull out a laptop to configure it. So for troubleshooting, it's very convenient. But they all look the same on the front. They have the display, they have the headphones, they have the SD card, you have the ability to monitor.

And so, the, the cross-link stereo is your basic two in two out all forms, A S, Ravenna live wire, analog, AEs, et cetera. And then the duel is like having two stereos in the same box. So for a station that basically wants a codec to do program and maybe talk back or program, maybe two programs at once the dual and the stereo is a great place to start. The ASMR 67 model is exactly what it says. It's A S 67 and it's scalable up to eight stereo has 67 iOS and obviously eight codex and MPX is your FM composite over IP solution. And, and then the Ellie is just no display. It's like an STT. You know, I… I'd sort of, this is a very affordable one, obviously, but, but at the end of the day, it really just comes down to how many ins and outs and how many codecs do you need. And that's really the difference between all of these units

Alfonso:Understood. And one question, for example, in the, if I have in this, the serving in the studio is that a version of the surf link with MPS where I can send the MPX out here to all my other stations and put the cross-link MPS on them on the other sites.

Derek:Not yet right now, the only MPX version is the cross-link version.

Alfonso:The cross link. And I can send out here from one crosslink MPS to how many other MPH units out there, two 16, if I understood correctly,

Derek:32,

Alfonso:32, that’s more than enough.

Derek:They were multi-- yeah. It's plenty. Of course. Let me know.

Alfonso:Of course. Let me translate this real quick, because he's a very interesting shot of all the units at the same time. Very well. I love that product lines. It's super innovative and has a lot of flexibility, and I'm very glad that we're able to show this to our customers. Know, we understand this year, we didn't have the nav show on some other, so many other shows, but this is a great way to communicate this to customers and show them what's out there now. And it's going to stay in there in the cloud and people can see it again. Then from this, we're going to make different clips. So it's a good opportunity that that's why that's why this show exists. So great, great content.

Derek:Great. Now I'm going to switch gears over to remote broadcasting where there's even more activity going on right now. The cross link and the serve link can be in either mode. Obviously when it's in a distribution mode, it's multicasting, it's multi program. It can send and receive studio, SSL links, SST links, all that. On the remote side, we have a full duplex type of scenario where we take out a portable codec. We connect to the studio, we have program, we have talked back and the equate talk was debuted at the end of last year and has been phenomenally successful. In addition to the coil talk, you can use a cross-link and OB van, obviously, and a serve link when you have lots of channels. And we're really excited because very recently, did you, DIGIGRAM launched a Coya connect and a koi guest quick connect is essentially the dotted lines that you see in my diagram.

Yes, it is a internet connection, but a quick connect is DIGIGRAM, sip infrastructure. That's unique versus say just any simple infrastructure. It allows any DIGIGRAM codec to talk to any third-party Kodak. I have a calm Rex in my office. I connect to it all the time and I demonstrate that we can do interoperable connections and a lot of engineers get afraid that, Oh, I don't want to have to change my comrade settings to talk to DIGIGRAM and then change it back. And the truth is you don't have to, you go into your comrades access, you set it up on the, you registered on the DIGIGRAM, a coy connect. It's a onetime thing. And then your comrades and I'm using commerce. We could, this could be telos Thailand. It doesn't matter. And the commerce just sits there in standby mode and can receive a call from a commerce or DIGIGRAM no problem. So a coy connect does third-party interoperability, which is good. It also does manage monitor and remote. And these are services that you can get from three or five broadcast, verify, pay this license. Oh, go ahead. You translate and then I'll continue.

Alfonso:No, but one question that Korea connect is it says it's a license. It's a service. It's not anonymous.

Derek: It's free for two. When you buy a DIGIGRAM cross-link or SurfLink you get to acquire connect connections, free of charge, and that's so that you can third party connect other codecs to it. Or if you buy a talk to connect to a DIGIGRAM, you get ns if yothat sip infrastructure at no additional charge. You can pay for more sip connections. It's very nominal. I can't remember like $8 a month or something. And you can add more sip connection need them. But you get two connections which can be stereo or mono at no charge and the basic benefit is the advantage of sip. Of course, is all. You don't have to know the IP address. You can just connect with almost like a, like an email address.

Alfonso:Let me wrap this up in Spanish. No, one second. Let's see. I get the name.  I'll call enriching. It's the castle. They stay up Bellamy CBO. going to jump onto his studios. Okay. I think I did it very well. Okay.

Okay. And a COI guests is just a link. And what it looks like in your web browser is this where the studio can send a link to somebody to be a guest on a show like we're doing right now. And you go to the link and you have a mixer. So if I'm a contributing guest, you interview me, we do what we normally do, but if I'm say stuck at home due to COVID-19, I can actually be a DJ. I can load in music files and queue them up very easily. This is… I can queue them up on the timeline. I can monitor them in my headphones. I can choose to broadcast. I can mix the audio--

Alfonso:Because looking at the presentation screen right now, or you in another screen?

Derek: Oh, hold on. You're right. We need to share my desktop my bad. Let's try that again. There we go. So now you can, yeah. So this is what a Coya guest looks like. It's essentially; the studio sends me a link. I opened it up in my web browser. I highly recommend Firefox as the web browser. Not Chrome, not Safari, not explore because Firefox has the most audio flexibility related to your operating system. This is what we've learned.

Alfonso: That's a very nice, that's a very interesting tip. Thank you for the tip by the way, Derek.

Derek:Yup. No problem. So, this allows me to basically be a DJ. I can load music. I can, I can change the volume of the music relative to my voice. Here's my voice. If I don't want to broadcast these sources, I can just uncheck them. If I want to hear the sources in my headphones, I just hit that. So, it's a very simple interface. The other thing you get to do is choose whether you're broadcasting from your browser and stereo or mono and what algorithm, and if you need to, there is even DSP there's echo cancellation and all of that. So we tried to make the interface, accommodate a need at home. Even if it's somebody who's just going to be an interview guest, like I am on this show, or if it's somebody that has to work from home being a broadcaster. So basically, I just do this and then I call and I can connect to by clicking that essentially, I'm connecting to a cross link or a serve link back at the studio. So that essentially is this person here connecting back to here. And it's very powerful.

Alfonso: Let me understand this. So, if I have the guests right now and I'm in Nicaragua in some seat, in some places in South America I can use the coya guest to connect to my Conrad's unit that is in the studio and I can be uploading music, uploading music files while I'm talking. And I'm mixing at the same time.

Derek: Yeah. And, and I can basically use a coya guest as a carte machine and play music or spots. If I want to, or I can just use it for me talking to you and you have a Coya, well, this is a comrade--

Alfonso:This is a great bait now for customers to start looking at the DG ground environment. Well, yeah.

Derek: Well, yeah. And the thing is, this is a subscription-based thing, so you can pay monthly or annually and it runs on a coy connect, which again is the backbone, it's the virtual backbone. So, I could obviously connect to a DIGIGRAM piece, but I can also connect to a complex or a timeline. But here's where it gets interesting. There are some broadcasters who don't want to do hardware at all. And I get asked all the time, well, what if I had a coy guest in the studio and on a web browser connected to an audio interface connected to the console, for example, and can I do a Coya guest to a, a guest connection? And the answer is yes, you can. So, you can, and what's interesting about that is we have universities that want to use that for private music instruction to have a very high quality, two-way virtual call. And you can do it in, in tandem with zoom. So, or anything like zoom. I just don't connect the audio of my zoom. And I connect the audio with the Coya guest. And now I can have a web browser in Tampa connected to a web browser in Miami with a high quality, two-way, audio you zoom in parallel. So, we can each other. And I could do broadcasts. I could do music, private instruction, lessons, universities are purchasing this now for music colleges. I mean, market is booming.

Alfonso:What am I losing? Because they, I don't want them. I didn't want to stay in this program that then you can use the Coya guest in both sides. And then what you need direct unit. You're losing a lot of advantages by having the right unit. Now,

Derek:Yes, the rack unit gives you great point. The rack unit gives you redundancy. The rack unit gives you the ability. The limit of guests to guests is it's just a walkie talkie. It's a two-way phone call that cannot be expanded. Now, typically in a station you will send out four guests links to four different people in four parts of the country. And you need like a serve link or a cross-link duel to simultaneously speak to four people at once.

Alfonso: Let me wrap this up in Spanish Dereck. Because we've been having the conversation, but I want to express this to our folks that are that will watch this program or are watching it right now. So, I get that or [inaudible], you know what I mean?

Alfonso: Okay. Derek, I did a big commercial over there.

Derek:Oh, that's great. This diagram shows a mall. You know, another reason why you would do a hardware codec in the studio and guests in the field is that you're surveilling can combine multiple iOS at the same time. So, I could have multiple guests on air simultaneously. And each one is tied to a pair of channels in my serve link. Now that circling could be connected to my radio console and then a radio operator could be mixing, or I could even use like an army interface and do mix minus, and I could use it as a collaborative high-quality zoom call. And this particular slide is more for a university that wants to have a music class, but it's just the power of this interface is, is really remarkable.

Alfonso: Derek, do we have, we have about five more minutes, right guys? We have about five more minutes. So yes, let's try to wrap it up.

Derek:The last piece of the puzzle is the coy talk. We didn't spend much time on it and we really should because it's a really an amazing product. This is an all in one unit. It too can connect to comm Rex and other codex. It has everything built in and it's roughly the same price as the other portables that are out there. It has 5G, 4G Wi-Fi, dual redundant streaming bonded cellular. You get to define what is the primary connection? Is it cellular? Is it ether, net? Is it Wi-Fi? What is the backup? There's an onboard hard drive. You can record interviews off air and play them on air and comment that you can have up to four journalists at one time you can set it up. So, if a station owns four of these, all the journalists has to do is sign in and then it will download all the settings and it can be remote controlled via coy connect from the studio as if the engineer at the studio is sitting in front of the unit. So, if you have a non-technical person in the field who doesn't understand sip, doesn't understand IP just understands how to talk and use a microphone. Then that's a great, and I think, I think digit gram is the only company that allows this remote control of the portable codex, but it has all of the analog connectivity. Everything you'd need.

Alfonso: Let me translate this part, competency in Salem con retro in Thailand, et cetera. Okay. what is that that's lot at the side that I see one of the issues. So, it comes… 

Derek:It comes with a lithium ion battery. Okay. And there's another slide on the right on the other side. So you can have two lithium ion batteries for up to 12 hours of battery life. 

Alfonso: Okay. Very nice, very nice unit. 

Derek:So at the end of the day, you have this one IP solution, where did you gram pretty much has all the end points of a broadcast ecosystem covered. And that's really the big idea. 

Alfonso:Yes. Yes. Completely. Completely agree. Completely agree with you. Okay, guys, do we have people in soon right now that for some questions and CCR or Elvis? Yes. No. So we can continue the animal so we can outsmart Marco Antonio there. You see the people in soon. Okay. It's because I'm not connected to the soon, so I don't… Okay. Let me start with the second. Well, the first question is if the survey link this study two connections that I can have a multicast can they be bi-directional that's the first question? 

Derek: All connections are by direct connections.

Alfonso: All connections are by direction connections. Okay. And the second question against if they have, and the capacity to connect to social media, social network with a R.S.P D. I.T.M.P for social media, if it has the capacity to connect to RTMP. Okay. The format BD the channel. So, our T.sN.P is what it's called Michael.

Derek:And P.R.T.N.P.M.M ma'am. Let me find out social media. And if it did, what does that allow me to do? It allows me to use this as the audio channel for a social media live stream. 

Alfonso:It's to send it to directly to the front from the digital encoder is to send it directly to YouTube for Facebook. Just audio though, just in parallel with video, with video, right. Just the audio.

Derek: I think it does, but I would like to confirm that Alfonso and I will email you that.

Alfonso:Of course, of course. Okay, perfect. Great guys. So let's, let's go to, if we don't have any other question Derek, if you have any, we have about one more minute to finish, to wrap, to wrap it up. 

Derek: Sure. I just want to show you that if you go to, and there's no pricing, what I'm about to give you website wise, but it syntax, his website has videos on various applications of Digi gram. And we did a zoom audio versus a DIGIGRAM audio comparison, where we actually used a koi guest and somebody else recorded it into pro tools. And then we did the same thing with zoom, and we put a comparison up on the wall up online, and it's a stark difference in quality. And ever since we did that, that's who our lead gen has been off the charts. I've talked to a hundred to 110 customers just in 36 hours because of that, that audio demonstration on the website.

Derek:So, it syntax.com and there's nothing there that's, it, you're more than welcome to share it with your customers. But there's various broadcast examples of the DIGIGRAM. And we put this zoom audio versus a coil audio comparison just to give folks an idea because zoom is so popular right now, even, even radio folks, use it to do interviews and record interview audio. So, I highly encourage people to check it out.

Alfonso:And we can use the, I call you to use that audio right in. So, it's perfect. 

Derek:Yeah. I can give you a pair of links that when you do interviews like this, you send a link to your customer. You log on just like you would zoom and you use the link. They log on zoom without audio and use the link. And then the audio quality's amazing. Especially if you're going to play music. It's incredible. 

Alfonso: Of course, of course. She came with me and Derek. Well, first, thank you for coming to the show, a thing. We did a marvelous presentation, and I hope that many customers will see it. And we will…

Derek:My pleasure. 

Alfonso:We will take many clips from it and we will be promoting it so people can see your program, your solutions more. It was a pleasure having you here. And I hope to have you again some other time. So, thank you for coming.

Derek: Thank you.

Alfonso: Alright. Take care!

END