CNR-Sidetone

IT'S NOT ALWAYS QUIET OUT THERE

It's difficult to communicate effectively during live operations. Background situational noise ensures clear radio communications are simply not a reality. Calytrix CNR-Sidetone is an advanced hardware-based audio processing system that integrates game environment noise (e.g. VBS3 helicopter rotor wash, gun fire, crowd ambiance etc.) into your radio broadcasts so everyone knows what is happening around you.

CNR-Sidetone is designed to work with any virtual training environment or simulator, increasing situational awareness and engulfing users in a highly realistic audio environment.

An Complete Crew Environment

CNR-Sidetone can be used in a standalone capacity to provide a more immersive environment for users as well as Environmental Noise for participants on the radio network. However, its capabilities don't stop there. Designed for environments such as Vehicle Crew Trainers, CNR-Sidetone can be readily integrated with CNR-Intercom to provide latency free, direct team communications.

When linked with CNR-Intercom, players can speak directly to groups of up to six participants with all the speed benefits of a hardware solution, replicating a true intercom environment. The units can be configured to link into the Intercom channel continuously (hot-mic) or only when PTT is activated.

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Major Features

CNR-Sidetone is a USB-powered audio mixing device that sits between the user's headset and computer, providing several key features that dramatically enhance the audio realism to the simulated environment. CNR-Sidetone's features include:

  • SIDETONE: A "sidetone" effect is the feedback of the user's own voice (microphone signal) mixed with the environmental sounds (e.g. from a virtual game like VBS3) and fed back into the users own ear (headset) to produce a pleasing, natural sounding, audio experience. Without a "sidetone" the end user will struggle to hear their own voice and will become disconnected and distracted from the environment they are training in.
  • ENVIRONMENTAL: Clear-comms: that is crystal clear radio communications, is a common artefact in virtual training systems as the "games" environmental noises are only fed directly to the user’s headset. For example, the radio transmission from a VBS3 user inside a helicopter would be clear, without any background noise, although in reality the rotor wash background noise would be broadcast over the radio. CNR-Sidetone addresses this issue by mixing voice and environmental noise together to produce a realistic radio transmission.
  • PTT: Real (physical) Push To Talk (PTT) switches can be used as an alternative to using the computers keyboard or mouse.

Technical Notes


Sidetone

One of the primary functions of the CNR-Sidetone device is to deliver sidetone to the user. This is the effects of delivering some of the input signal of the mircrophone back to the user. This effects acts much like many real radios do and helps reduce the fatigue and strange feeling of talking into a vaccum so often experienced with standard headsets.

Environmental Noise

Enviromental mixing takes the input signal of the game or virtual environment in use and combines it with the users voice to genrate a composite signal. The composite is then routed to CNR-Sim for transmission so that participants on the other end of the radio can get a sense of what is happening around the sender. This helps break the disconnect between the virtual player, immersed in the virtual world, and the clear communications that they send.

Push-to-Talk Support

CNR-Sidetone can be configured to release an audio stream in a number of different ways, matching the specifics of your real-world equipment.

It can transmit continuously in a hot-mic environment, or be configured to only transmit when a Push-to-Talk switch is activated. It can also be configured to transmit to one source (such as CNR-Intercom) when the PTT switch is open, and redirect the sound to another source when it is closed. This allows deployment to model an environment where intercome is always enabled and a signal is sent to the radio when PTT is pressed.

Intecom Integration

By itself, CNR-Sidetone delivers a number of functions, however, mix it with CNR-Intercom and you can simulate a true crew environment. When connected, CNR-Sidetone has a direct line to up to 6 participants connected into an Intercom device. As the connection is hardware, it is virtually instantaneous.

Headset Support

CNR-Sidetone itself contains two soundcards, and presents itself to the operating system as a set of sound devices. It requires headsets with 3.5mm microphone/headphone connections and will deal with all the appropriate rounting itself. CNR-Sidetone does not support USB headsets.

Fully CNR Compatible

CNR-Live is fully compatible with all CNR software products such as CNR-Sim, CNR-Log, CNR-Skins and CNR-Monitor. Any user on the virtual network can communicate with radios linked to a CNR-Live device, and all live radio traffic can be recorded.

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