AES (Booth #2523), NEW YORK (Oct. 18, 2013)—Today at the 135th AES Convention, Shure Incorporated announced the availability of Digital Feedback Reduction (DFR) as part of a free firmware update to its SCM820 Digital Intellimix® Automatic Mixer. With the addition of DFR, audio professionals will benefit from two added channels of adaptive EQ filtering, which will attenuate frequencies that are feeding back.
Introduced in April 2013, the SCM820 is an eight-channel, digital automatic mixer designed for use in speech applications and sound reinforcement applications that require multiple microphones to operate simultaneously. Through the incorporation of Shure IntelliMix technology, the best microphone for a specific talker is seamlessly activated, while microphones that are not being addressed are attenuated. The SCM820’s web-based control interface offers customers enhanced control of mixer settings, with tabs for inputs, outputs, Intellimix parameters, link groups, and preferences. Given the flexibility of the digital signal processing engine in the SCM820, Shure added DFR to the suite of software capabilities to benefit existing and future customers.
“Adding DFR has been one of our highly-anticipated goals,” said Chad Wiggins, Category Director, Wired Products, at Shure. “Many Shure customers have relied on the feedback reduction feature in products such as the DFR22 and have repeatedly requested the technology be added to a mixer. While the SCM820 is already feature-packed, DFR was a value-add we couldn’t ignore—making it easier to produce a better quality sound and minimize feedback.”
Features in the latest firmware update (supported by version 1.1.X or higher) include two channels of patented DFR that can be assigned to input channels and mix outputs, automatic feedback detection and filter deployment, the ability to apply up to 16 filters per channel, 25 Hz to 20 KHz bandwidth, and up to 18 dB gain reduction per filter. Additionally, a “freeze” feature locks depth and frequency of existing filters to avoid unwanted automatic changes and an “auto-clear” function automatically returns filter settings to a previously-defined state.