Telefunken (now ANT) developed the Telcom C4 noise reduction technology, widely used in the broadcast industry for audiotape and videotape recordings.
The C4 system was introduced approximately ten years after Dolby’s A-type noise reduction system. This four-band compander achieved notable commercial success in Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark, particularly within the broadcast sector.
At NextArchive, we first integrated Telcom C4 units into our 1/4” audiotape setup in 2016 while working on a project for the German broadcaster SWR. Our in-house designed solution allowed operators to activate or deactivate the C4 units seamlessly by following the blue Telcom C4 labels found on some of the 160,000 tapes slated for digitization. Whenever a C4 unit was activated, the operator selected a corresponding preset in Quadriga Audio and linked the unique tape ID (via barcode label) to the associated audio file for accurate documentation. See images of the 16-line ingest installation for further details.
