Nautel NUG: Hard gets soft

The appetizer for the NAB Show, the Nautel Users Group gathering at The Flamingo on Sunday morning, officially NUG@NAB Radio Technology Forum, captured a theme, perhaps the theme, of the 2025 NAB Show: even hardware gets the software.

For transmitter maker Nautel, the majority of its new product news was devoted to software items. The company’s John Whyte discussed the progress in updating the AUI user interface for operating and monitoring all those transmitters in the field. The good news is that things are moving forward on what was a total rewrite, and many deployed transmitters now operate the Mark II.

The not-so-good news is that contemporary software demands, which are only going to grow, are overwhelming the onboard processors of some older transmitters. So a cloud-centric workaround, likely sustainable going forward, has been developed. This is a “problem,” not a Nautel-specific hitch but everyone’s problem, that will reveal itself more and more as time marches on and the earliest installed processing chips in the modern digital infrastructure hit their walls.

Actual hardware, sort of

Philipp Schmid, Nautel’s CTO, had plenty of news on the company’s software-based air chain ecosystem and its latest growth progress. The gist is that it will be doing more, a lot more, and soon. An HD Radio importer and an exporter are ready while Telos Omnia processing and Nielsen watermark encoding are in the queue. A Quu Rapid car dashboard info interface is also rapidly approaching.

Senior Engineering Technologist Justin Jameson touched on actual hardware, discussing improvements on the VX transmitter series — not so much new models but improvements in AoIP/streaming features such as ShoutCast and IceCast compatibility. So it was software, again.

Quu CEO Steve Newberry had a lengthy discussion on “Visual Radio.” By that, he means not cameras in the on-air studio for the radio version of stovetop TV but taking RDS-style data and visuals to a whole ’nother level. As screens on the car dashboard become larger and car occupants become accustomed to them, there’s an enormous opportunity for radio broadcasters to go on the offensive (because if they don’t, someone else will).

This visual radio will be, no offense to RDS, much easier to use with most of it being automated, along with offering many more features and better performance. As Newberry said, Quu is “trying to simplify metadata for your visual imaging and content for radio.”

So why was Newberry at NUG? Because Nautel is building Quu-compatibility into its software and hardware. Nautel and Quu have demonstrations at the Nautel booth, W2809.

The disappearing talent pipeline

Nautel also has booth demonstrations with automation developers Radio.Cloud and WideOrbit on a variety of things, including automating HD 2/3/4 station programming.

Yes, software gab dominated but it was a NUG, so Nautel’s Jeff Welton had his Tips and Tricks segment. Welton also tag-teamed with Kevin Trueblood, associate general manager of WGCU Public Media, on disaster prep and recovery for stations. Trueblood is in Hurricane Alley, Welton is in the land of blizzards, and wildfires have recently been in the news.

Welton helmed an engineering panel that featured well-known broadcast engineers Cindy and Gary Cavell and Josh Bohn.

The main topic was what happens to broadcast engineering when all the old guys in the NUG room retire. The majority of the room may have been closer to retirement than their rookie year.

It’s a serious question without a simple answer. Professional educators such as colleges and universities very rarely have broadcast engineering programs and most college radio stations focus exclusively on programming, management and business. All agreed that the best education is “doing” but there are very few official apprenticeship programs.

So many engineers tell the same story, they lucked into a position and/or met an engineer mentor where they could learn, make mistakes (without getting fired or electrocuted) and see “the big picture” of how the signal gets on the air.

It’s a terrible system for breeding future broadcast engineers but it is the only one available.

These stories might interest you

Nautel to add vision at NAB Show

Nautel adds audio playout to VX Series

Tech Focus: Nautel brings audio processing to the transmitter