Knowledge BaseHOME/SERVICE & SUPPORT/KNOWLEDGE BASE
Audio.TST August 2008 Testing RDS and AP on a Mac
Created 02 Aug 2008
Notes from the Test Bench
By Bruce Hofer, Chairman & Co-Founder, Audio Precision
Hello addressee_placeholder
I just returned from visiting a number of our good customers in Denmark and delivering an invited seminar at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Lyngby. This seminar was part of a special week-long Industrial/PhD course in the design and testing of Class-D amplifiers. This course has been offered for the past 3 years by Professor Michael Andersen (ma@oersted.dtu.dk); and it draws students and seasoned engineers from around the world. Indeed, this course has become so popular that next year’s session is now almost fully booked! Perhaps I will see some of you there again in August 2009!
I mention this course because it is an excellent example of the way in which Audio Precision maintains close contact with our industry. Although we cannot satisfy all such requests, Audio Precision does have a number of qualified speakers who are available to provide technical lectures and seminars to groups of sufficient size and qualification.
Well, back to work here at the bench. But I will soon be back on the road again: first in early September for IBC in Amsterdam and then on to San Francisco for the AES convention in early October.
Best Wishes,
Bruce
Output: Tech tips and new applications from AP
Testing RDS Capable FM Receivers with APx Audio Analyzers
AP's manager of Technical Support, Joe Begin, looks at generating RDS-encoded FM stereo signals for testing automotive audio systems with APx.
RDS is an acronym for Radio Data System - a communications protocol for sending small amounts of digital information in a conventional analog FM radio broadcast. Typically, the digital information transmitted using the RDS protocol consists of short text strings such as the FM radio station’s call sign, song titles, artist names, etc., that appear on an RDS capable FM receiver. The RDS standard, which is published by the European Broadcasting Union, defines how these specific types of information are transmitted. An equivalent standard for use in the United States is published by the National Radio Systems Committee. Although the US standard is officially named RDBS (for Radio Data Broadcast System), the name RDS appears to be more commonplace.
We’ll talk more about the details later, but in a nutshell, both RDS and RDBS use a 57 kHz subcarrier signal to transmit digital data at a relatively low bit rate on a multiplexed FM stereo (commonly called MPX) waveform. Therefore, two features are required in an audio analyzer to generate an RDS encoded MPX stereo waveform:
- A sample rate high enough to reproduce signals in the 60 kHz frequency range.
- A generator waveform buffer large enough to hold a reasonably long waveform (at least several seconds worth of data) sampled at this high sample rate.
Audio Precision’s APx500 series audio analyzers are ideally suited to the task. With a 192 kHz native sample rate, APx analyzers can generate and analyze signals with frequency content in the bandwidth from DC to over 90 kHz. Furthermore, APx500 series analyzers have a generator buffer size of 32 mega-samples - enough to hold almost 3 minutes of waveform data sampled at 192 kHz. That’s much more than is typically required for audio test signals. This makes APx a great choice for testing FM receivers with or without RDS. The ability to generate the composite FM signal delivered to an FM RF modulator, and analyze the received signal, is a tremendous advantage.
If you want to learn more about FM broadcasting’ and RDS/RDBS, there are some excellent introductory articles on Wikipedia, (the free online encyclopedia). This article will focus on the “nuts and bolts” of using an APx analyzer to generate an RDS encoded multiplexed stereo waveform for FM broadcast.
Figure 1 below is a chart that demonstrates the spectral content of a stereo signal multiplexed for FM broadcast. As noted in the references, RDS and RBDS both use a 57 kHz subcarrier to carry a data stream at a bit rate of 1187.5 bits per second.
Figure 1. Representation of a multiplexed stereo waveform for FM broadcast
(adapted from Wikipedia's FM broadcasting article)
Matlab to the rescue?
So how does one create the necessary waveform? An enterprising engineer equipped with a powerful signal processing tool like Matlab™ could build an MPX waveform with RDS encoding from scratch. That would involve applying a pre-emphasis filter1 to the left and right audio channels, manipulating them into (L+R) and (L-R), adding the 19 kHz pilot tone and properly modulating the (L-R) signal on the 38 kHz subcarrier. And that’s just to encode the stereo audio without RDS. To add RDS, you would need to work through the encoding scheme laid out in the RDS or RDBS standard, create the necessary signal, modulate it with the 57 kHz subcarrier, and then add it to the multiplexed waveform. This is certainly possible, but it would be a tremendous amount of work!
Another option: Airomate
Fortunately, there’s a much easier alternative available. We found a great Windows application called Airomate™, available online from Diffusion Software. At a cost of €29 (about $43 USD), it’s a real bargain. The program uses a PC sound card capable of 192 kHz (input and output) to create an MPX stereo waveform complete with RDS or RDBS encoding. It also has many features to allow users to control various aspects of the MPX and RDS/RDBS encoding. Figure 2 is a block diagram of the process for creating a .wav file.
Note that if you just wanted to broadcast the signal, the output from the sound card would be connected directly to an FM modulator/RF generator instead of the waveform recorder shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Block diagram illustrating the process to create an RDS encoded MPX WAV file.
However, because we want a .wav file that can be loaded into the APx500 application, the waveform recorder is necessary. This could be another 192 kHz sound card or the “Virtual Audio Cable” mentioned on the Diffusion Software site looks like a potential alternative to using the second sound card.
Figure 3 shows the spectrum of an MPX encoded waveform with RDS disabled. In this case the audio signal consists of a 1 kHz sine wave on the left channel and a 2 kHz sine wave on the right channel. If you study the graph, you can see the effect of the MPX encoding. For example, the 1 kHz and 2 kHz tones both appear at high amplitude in the base band (the L+R portion), the 19 kHz pilot tone is clearly visible, and several peaks 1 kHz apart show up at lower amplitude, mirrored about the 38 kHz subcarrier frequency (the L-R portion).
Figure 3. Spectrum of an MPX stereo dual sine audio signal without RDS
Figure 4 is a spectrum of the same signal with RDS enabled. Note the prominent peaks around 57 kHz (the frequency of the RDS subcarrier).
Figure 4. Spectrum of an MPX stereo dual sine audio signal with RDSSo how long does the waveform file that we load in the APx generator need to be? The required length depends on the nature of the RDS text being transmitted. In our example, we used a message queue with two messages alternating every 2 seconds. For this example a total waveform length of 5 seconds worked well. Note that when playing the waveform, when the APx generator reaches the end of the .wav file, it wraps around to the beginning of the file. Therefore, to avoid glitches when the signal wraps, it’s a good idea to ensure that the waveform transitions smoothly from the end of the file to the beginning of the file. This can be done using an audio waveform editor program.
Figure 5 shows a block diagram illustrating an FM receiver test. Note that only one generator channel is used, because the MPX waveform includes both the right and left stereo channels. The RF signal generator modulates the MPX signal with the RF frequency. With it, you can select a frequency within the FM band (preferably one that no local radio station is using), and then tune the FM receiver to that frequency. In this case, a cable is used to connect the RF generator’s output to the receiver’s FM antenna.
Figure 5. Block diagram illustrating an FM receiver test with an APx500 series audio analyzer.
Figure 6 is a photo of an automotive head unit displaying an RDS text message.
Figure 6. Photo of the FM receiver displaying the RDS text generated by AP.
One of the many nice features about the APx software is that if you load a waveform file into a project file, it gets saved with the project. Hence there are no external dependencies. However, because of this feature, project files with loaded waveforms can be relatively large in size.
The single project file, along with features like the 192 kHz sample rate, large generator buffer, arbitrary waveforms, and 2, 8 or 16-channel analog inputs, make the APx500 series audio analyzers a great platform for FM receiver testing.
Related downloads
APx_RDS_Demo.zip A zip file containing an APx project file configured for testing automotive head unit. Includes a set of RDS-encoded sweeps and tones.
Sound Advice: Audio Test Q&A
Question: Can I run AP gear on a Mac?
Answer: Technically, AP only supports Windows XP and Vista. But since Mac went to an Intel processor, several utilities have been developed that allow Windows apps (including AP2700 and APx500 etc.) to run almost natively on a Mac.
Two approaches are available to let you run AP software on a Mac. The first is Apple’s Boot Camp, a free utility included with Leopard. Boot Camp lets you boot your Mac hardware with either the MacOS or Windows (or any other OS if you're so inclined). Because it allows Windows to communicate directly with the hardware, in general it is the fastest solution. However, you can’t use Mac and PC applications simultaneously.
The other approach is to create a virtual machine inside the MacOS. This lets Windows apps run alongside Mac apps at the same time. The two most popular programs that use this approach are VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac. While it's extremely convenient to be able to stay within the Mac environment, there can be some penalty in speed, though in our tests of both utilities, APx500 ran on a Macbook Pro with no problems. VMWare has the advantage that it can utilize a dual core processor if available, whereas Parallels only recognizes one processor.
A Mac with an Intel processor is required. We recommend running the latest Mac operating system, Leopard OS 10.5, as previous versions had problems virtualizing the USB ports. For the “guest” operating system, either Windows XP Home or Professional are fine. Because of Microsoft’s restrictions concerning use of Windows on virtual machines, the only flavors of Vista that you can use are Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate.
Once you start up the AP software on the Mac, it functions exactly like it does on the PC. APx Series instruments connect natively through the USB port. For AP System Two Cascade and 2700 Series instruments, it is necessary to use the USB-APIB adapter, available from our sales department or your distributor. Instruments earlier than the System Two Cascade don’t work with the USB-APIB adapter and therefore can’t be used with a Mac.
And the iPhone?
Certain engineers at AP have pointed out that you can indeed run your APx (or any other analyzer) from an iPhone using the Jaadu VNC or MochaSoft VNC iphone apps.
Not the best screen size for detailed R&D work, but if you must make that measurement from the beach or you just want to impress your colleagues, it can be done!
Figure 1. APx on an iPhone: It can be done!
Test Results: AP News & Events
Service Pack 1 released for APx500 Software v2.2
APx500 v2.2 Service Pack 1 was released Aug 27, 2008. It addresses some minor issues discovered after the release of the software. These issues in no way impact measurements made with the original v2.2 release.
UPCOMING EVENTS
IBC 2008 | RAI Centre, Amsterdam
Sept 12 -16
Visit the show websiteAES San Francisco 2008 | Moscone Center, San Francisco
Oct 2-5
Return to Knowledge Base home
Comments
0 comments so farPlease log in to add a comment.
