OPTIMOD Celebrates 50 Years of Audio Innovation at NAB

Friday March 21, 2025 14:15

The OPTIMOD FM audio processor is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025.

50 years ago, Orban shipped its first audio processor for FM radio broadcasting, the OPTIMOD 8000, and it revolutionized the broadcasting business. Since that day, Orban has been the leader in audio processing for broadcast audio.

“Over the years, many things have changed in the market including a wider range of places to listen to audio, but one thing has remained consistent,” said David Day, Orban Labs President. ”Between bandwidth issues, transmission methods and other considerations, audio needs extra treatment in order to make it pleasing for listeners. The overall sound of AM, FM, TV, and now internet broadcasting has been vastly improved over the decades thanks to Bob Orban and the OPTIMOD.”

Bob Orban released the first OPTIMOD FM processor in 1975. “While I used my electrical engineering university training to ‘do the math’ in processor development, of equal importance was my experience as a musician, composer, and producer,” said Bob Orban. “I knew how the music industry wanted their creations to be heard over the air, and my designs reflected that.”

As electronics technology progressed over the years, so did Orban’s designs, incorporating DSP technologies and ultimately creating software-based processors to complement the hardware designs that have been used by tens of thousands of customers. “Processor development is a continuous process that allows improvements – and is never really finished,” said Bob Orban. “Perhaps the most important thing that any processor developer can learn is to not project their preference on the listening audience, but instead to supply a variety of presets that best serve different demographics and formats. And, of course, experienced programmers have the ability to fine-tune those presets to achieve a sound unique to them, which also can more closely match the desires of the creators of the material.”

In recent years, the pace of innovation has increased, leading to the Orban New Platform (ONP), a single rack unit processor; next-generation FM with Super HiFi; onboard implementation of watermark Nielsen, Ipsos & Kantar encoders; and the XPN-AM, a software platform that is revolutionizing AM processing.

“Bob Orban and his engineering team are achieving remarkable things in the world of audio processing, and we’re excited to bring these ideas to the world,” said David Day.