Audicom

This technology was created in Argentina by a group of engineers led by Oscar Bonello, professor at the University of Buenos Aires, who began in 1982 to develop the idea of the digital recording on hard disk.

From his experience in the field of Psychoacoustics, Bonello considered that the solution to reduce digital data would be to transmit only a small fraction of it, selected to achieve masking of critical ear bands prevent noticing the absence of the missing information.

He used algorithms of artificial intelligence, to carry out the proposed technology of Bonello of an AutoDJ music scheduling system that works with the perfection of the best human DJ creating exact time blocks, previously impossible in broadcasting programs.

To avoid future discussions about this invention and in order to give constancy of their existence as a commercial product of free availability, Solidyne published a note in the international edition of AES Journal that was the first offer of a product capable of recording and reproducing audio digitally from a standard PC.

[7] The release of patents allowed the rapid spread of audio recording and playback on PCs and later cell phones around the world.

For this, an automation software was developed for music themes and commercial ads that was presented the following year, in 1989, in the Golden Room of the Argentine Communications Secretariat, today the CFK Cultural Center, before the press and the engineers of the broadcasting stations.

[9] It was the only system of its kind at the exhibition and prompted the NAB president to comment: "This is not just a new technology; it is the re-invention of the Radio ..." [10] The Audicom was made up of user software that ran on an IBM PC and an audio card with hardware compression as it took many years for a PC to have the computing power necessary to process the audio data compression algorithms.

The Audicom board was then designed using CMOS logic chips and performed hardware data compression in real time.

This blocks never cuts any music tune; simply by combining the duration of the songs and adding announcements from the radio programming and closing with an arpeggio.

This decision allowed to enhance the video quality and the flexibility of the system The original audio card was designed for the old ISA bus on the IBM PC and was powered by direct memory access from the computer.

Egan-Hake masking curves from 1950 were used in its design [16] To reduce the amount of data, A / D and D / A encoders of the delta-adaptive type were used originally created for narrow band communications but which were modified to operate between 20 Hz - 20 kHz During the 5 years of development, hundreds of sound quality listening tests were carried out before an audience of people of various ages.

Old Audicom-5 working under Window 98
Visual Radio Studio with Audicom and CLOSE at the Xlevel radio station, Puerto Rico. The audio mixer switches TV cameras automatically
1988 Audicom ADX922 board; It was the world's first 16-bit PC stereo audio card. Made it possible to convert a PC into a professional sound quality digital audio recorder and reproducer system, replacing magnetic tape and cassette recorders that would disappear from the market. It works with ECAM compression up to 16: 1
Reduced size 925X card, 1996