Linear Accoustic is showcasing the Upmax: Neo at NAB, but the 5.1 surround field synthesizer will soon be showcased in Beijing, as well. NBC Olympics has chosen the UPMAX:neo to upmix stereo sound to 5.1 digital for this summer’s coverage of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

“The reason why NBC was really attracted to the Upmax:neo is because it saves space,” explains Christina Carroll, director of operations for Linear Accoustic. “This is the new version of our old UPMAX. NBC Olympics came to us and said we don’t have room to put this – the old version took up 3 rack spaces – so we went back to the drawing board and condensed everything into a single rack unit.”

The UPMAX:neo allows additional upmixing choices for increased flexibility in post production applications. It comes standard with metadata input and GPI inputs to control upmixing but can be customized by adding an eight-channel monitoring grade balanced analog output.

Linear Acoustic is also showing the AEROMAX:one, the company’s first cost-effective DTV audio processor.

“It’s under $10,000 and it does four stereo channels, upmixes them and does loudness control,” Carroll explains. “It also has crowd control, so when the crowd goes wild, crowd control suppresses the audience and brings up the mic of the announcer automatically.”

The AEROMAX:one is a single-rack unit that accepts four AES pairs of audio, supports built-in Dolby Digital (AC-3) encoding and can be matched to 5.1 channel network audio.

Also on display at NAB is LAMBDA, “the first monitor that has the capability of actually seeing the meters on the display,” explains Carroll. “With most monitors, you’re not able to do that at the same time.”

LAMBDA comes with a dual power supply option, has Dolby Digital Dolby E encoding possibilities and has been changed to ITU with loudness metering.