Radio World Announces 2005 “Cool Stuff” Award Winners

Las Vegas, NV (April 20, 2005) - Nautel's Digital Adaptive Pre-Correction designed by Nautel is the winner of radio’s most prestigious technology honor, the “Cool Stuff” Award, given by the editorial staff of Radio World newspaper at the NAB2005 convention in Las Vegas.

Radio World U.S. Editor in Chief Paul J. McLane said the “Cool Stuff” Award means a product was selected by a panel of engineers and industry journalists as notable for its design, features, cost efficiency and performance in serving radio users. It means the product caused them to stop in the aisles and say, “Oh, cool!”

The winning companies may use the “Cool Stuff” logo in their marketing. Winners receive a placard for their booth, and later the award itself.

About Radio World:
Radio World is the newspaper for U.S. radio managers and engineers. It is published by IMAS Publishing of Falls Church, Va., and is celebrating its 28th year covering the radio industry. Other IMAS publications include Radio World Engineering Extra, Radio World International, TV Technology, Pro Audio Review, Broadcast and Production, Audio Media and a family of country-specific publications and Web sites.

Contact: Paul J. McLane, Editor
703-998-7600, ext. 117
radioworld@imaspub.com

(Cool Stuff Award article as published in Radio World, June 8, 2005 edition)

Company: Nautel Product: Digital Adaptive Precorrection

Nautel's direct-to-channel digital M50 exciter includes new adaptive pre-correction capabilities. It was this concept that the Cool Stuff judges liked. Spectral integrity without costly filters.

If you're doing HD Radio, you don't want deviations to the HD Radio mask. As Nautel puts it, the high amplifier linearity required for digital can be affected by changes in the system such as those caused by a change in VSWR, an adjustment in transmitter output power, a change in amplifier temperature, or aging and failures of RF amplifiers. "Any one of these events can result in serious deviations to the HD Radio mask, poor sound quality or even interference with other stations.

So the M50 exciter monitors the output of Virtuoso transmitters and responds to changes by automatically '"pre-correcting" the RF signal.

"Not only is this a great concept and feature, the show floor demonstration was a kick," one of our judges wrote. "With a V10 operating into a mismatched load, similar to an iced-up antenna, you could watch the intermodulation slowly fade out as the automatic correction took place."

This also means that Maestro exciters do not have to be matched to specific transmitters.
Price varies by product; the M50 exciter retails for $11,900.

Shown: Mike Woods, Tim Hardy and Scott Martin.