Audio is on the brink of the next big step after the transition from mono to stereo. Next Generation Audio (NGA) and especially object-based audio will provide the consumer with a lot of new features such as personalizable dialogue level. Check out this EBU website for an introduction into NGA and an overview of the work we are doing within the EBU. The fundamental idea of object-based audio is to accompany the audio data with metadata, which is standardised in Recommendation ITU-R BS.2076 or as it is usually called the Audio Definition Model (ADM). ADM is the only format for NGA production which is codec-agnostic and makes sure that a broadcaster is not tied to a single emission codec.
Structure of the Audio Definition Model (Credits: BBC R&D)
We talked about the ADM quite a few times in our blog already. So you may already have a basic understanding of what it is and how it works. But the ADM is quite comprehensive and understanding it in detail can be challenging – especially if you have to rely on just the standards documents. To help you getting started, together with a group of other ADM experts within the EBU, we wrote the EBU ADM Guidelines.
The EBU ADM Guidelines consist of a
- an easy to understand introduction into the ADM
- a step-by-step tutorial
- a set of use-cases
- a complete ADM Element online reference
We hope that those guidelines will help implementers, audio professionals and other interested parties to better understand the capabilities and (intentional) limitations of the ADM. We believe that by publishing the ADM Guidelines we can prevent misunderstandings and therefore enable better interoperability between different ADM implementations which are used during the production workflow.
We are looking forward to hear your feedback on the guidelines! Write our expert Benjamin Weiss (mail see author info box on the right hand side) if you have questions or suggestions.