Nielsen Audio has “reiterated its non-support” for the controversial Voltair product. It made the statement more than once in a private national webinar for its radio clients and industry leaders.
But, reports RadioWorld, the company also announced planned technical tweaks to its system, intended to help assure reliable PPM performance in difficult listening conditions, including a new station monitor that will be distributed to all radio stations later this year.
The company told clients in the webinar that it had conducted tests of Voltair and concluded that the $15,000 processor, made by 25-Seven Systems/Telos Alliance, can introduce audible artifacts for listeners, interfere with the Nielsen encoding and result in “credit for unintelligible listening.” It can also “introduce variability” through station-controlled settings, Nielsen said. And because Voltair is not universally implemented, it “results in an unequal market dynamic.”
Nielsen did find that in certain situations where background noise is equal or greater than the audio content, the PPM could pick up more codes with Voltair; but Nielsen doesn’t know whether this is “true listening.”
It said that it has been working on enhancements to its system already and have been expediting them due to market conditions. They promised enhancements in the fourth quarter of this year. They promised improvements to the PPM system’s “critical band encoding” and they will issue a “next generation” in-station monitor that will be for all PPM station users.
There was no mention of any legal action with the product’s users or manufacturers, something that had been speculated about. But the company several times “reiterated its non support of Voltair.”
As to whether any ratings had increased because of Voltair, one speaker said Nielsen has no way for sure to know, in part because the list of Voltair users isn’t public, but that “Nielsen stands behind the ratings that have been released.”
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