AWS for M&E Blog
Introducing: Guidance for audio quality control with TAG Video Systems and AWS
Modern broadcast and streaming operations face unprecedented challenges in maintaining professional-grade audio quality while scaling to meet growing content demands. Traditional hardware-based monitoring solutions struggle to be flexible and cost-effective, as well as meet geographic distribution required for today’s cloud-first media workflows. Audio quality control (QC)—from loudness compliance to real-time stream analysis—has become increasingly complex as organizations distribute content across multiple platforms, languages, and regions simultaneously.
We will explore how the TAG Video Systems (TAG) Multichannel Monitoring (MCM) and Media Control System (MCS) modules aid with monitoring of audio streams when deployed on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. The guidance would focus on how AWS infrastructure, along with AWS Elemental MediaConnect Gateway multicast support, delivers comprehensive audio quality control capabilities that scale elastically while maintaining broadcast-grade reliability. We will also address critical challenges including AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110-30 stream monitoring, how to implement the regulatory compliance automation, and perform real-time quality assurance across distributed production environments.
Solution overview
Core components combine the broadly adopted monitoring technology of TAG Video Systems with AWS services to create a horizontally scalable audio QC solution. It leverages AWS Elemental MediaConnect Gateway multicast capabilities to efficiently distribute audio streams to multiple monitoring instances. AWS Elemental MediaConnect (MediaConnect) provides secure ground-to-cloud transport with SMPTE 2022-7 seamless protection.
Core components:
- Ground-to-cloud contribution: MediaConnect transports AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110-30 audio streams from on-premises facilities with hitless failover protection.
- Multicast distribution: AWS Elemental MediaConnect Gateway supports on-premises multicast streams by acting as a bridge that converts the multicast feed into a unicast stream for transport to the AWS Cloud. There it can then be replicated, processed using AWS services, or distributed to other MediaConnect Gateway installations or on-premises locations. The gateway manages the conversion from multicast to unicast. You can then send the video to and from your customer-managed multicast infrastructure without needing custom third-party tools.
- Real-time analysis: TAG MCM modules on Amazon Elastic Compute (Amazon EC2) provide comprehensive audio analysis across transport, essence and content layers.
- Centralized intelligence: TAG MCS on Amazon EC2 instances aggregate data from distributed MCM nodes, exposing over 500 event types through REST APIs for integration with monitoring systems.
- Adaptive output: Clean audio streams integrate with AWS Elemental MediaLive (MediaLive) for HLS packaging and distribution.
Figure 1: Architecture flow for quality check of streaming audio channels.
Prerequisites
Before starting this solution make certain you already have access to:
- An AWS account
- Licenses for TAG MCM and MCS modules
- To acquire the licenses, you will to:
- Login to your AWS Management Console.
- Navigate to your Amazon EC2 service.
- In the left-hand side menu, under the Images dropdown section, select AMI Catalog.
- In the AMIs search area, enter TAG-MCM, the module should appear in the results area.
- Click on the orange Select button next to the search result and follow the process for acquiring the license, you will need to reach out to the TAG sales team
- To acquire the licenses, you will to:
Figure 2: AMI Catalog location.
Note: the AMI Marketplace is separate from the AWS Marketplace and is not accessible outside of the AWS EC2 service. Costs for the TAG MCM and MCS licenses are the buyer’s responsibility and not included in any AWS costs associated with this solution.
Deployment
There are five deployment steps, we will start with the multicast configuration.
1. Multicast domain configuration
The MediaConnect Gateway is deployed on your on-premises hardware and subscribes to your local multicast groups. For example, a broadcaster can subscribe to multiple channels multiplexed into a single stream (MPTS). The gateway then converts this multicast traffic into secure, encrypted unicast streams for transport to a MediaConnect flow in the Cloud.
Performance characteristics: For multicast AES67 audio streams, the most critical performance characteristics of MediaConnect Gateway are latency, jitter, and precision time protocol (PTP) synchronization accuracy. While the gateway reliably moves audio streams between on-premises and cloud environments, these metrics are crucial for preserving the precise timing required for professional audio applications, such as live production and broadcast.
Alternative solutions: Customers can explore additional third-party capabilities for handling multicast audio (AES67) specs. To learn more read Enabling real-time audio using multicast on AWS and a guidance announced by swXtch.io about the feature.
2. TAG Video Systems monitoring on Amazon EC2
The TAG MCM and MCS modules leverage Amazon EC2 compute and networking capabilities for optimal packet processing performance. They can scale to accommodate the requirements of enterprise customers managing hundreds of audio channels.
Compute requirements: For example, a c7g.4xlarge instance processes approximately 70,000 packets every second while analyzing 180 stereo AES67 feeds in full monitoring mode. Enhanced networking with SR-IOV enables line-rate packet processing. Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) gp3 volumes provide sufficient I/O performance for alarm logging and Smart Recording functionality.
3. Centralized management with TAG MCS
TAG MCS serves as the orchestration layer, coordinating multiple MCM instances while providing enterprise-grade integration capabilities.
Data aggregation: The system exposes over 500 distinct error types through REST APIs and WebSocket interfaces, enabling integration with Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon OpenSearch Service, Grafana, and Prometheus. Content matching technology provides fingerprinting for complete content verification and integrity checking.
Adaptive monitoring modes: The X-Light mode of TAG reduces compute requirements by up to 80% for backup feeds while maintaining transport-layer monitoring, optimizing cost-effectiveness for large-scale deployments.
4. Integration with AWS Media Services workflow
AWS Elemental MediaConnect provides the secure transport layer between on-premises audio sources and cloud monitoring infrastructure.
Redundant transport: SMPTE 2022-7 seamless protection confirms hitless failover during network disruptions. MediaConnect flows support AES-256 encryption and can replicate content across multiple AWS Regions for global monitoring deployments.
Source-specific multicast support: MediaConnect gateway enhancements include source-specific multicast (SSM) capabilities, allowing specification of both multicast group addresses and source IP addresses for enhanced security and traffic filtering.
MediaLive integration and output generation: Clean audio streams from TAG monitoring instances integrate seamlessly with downstream AWS Media Services.
Output formats: MCM publishes clean audio as SMPTE 2110-30 or RTP-TS streams that serve as MediaLive inputs. MediaLive encodes AAC-LC or Dolby Digital Plus renditions and packages audio-only HLS playlists or multiplexed AV playlists for over the top (OTT) distribution.
Timing synchronization: Amazon Time Sync Service provides microsecond accuracy within the cloud environment, while on-premises PTP grandmaster clocks maintain GPS synchronization.
5. Observability with Amazon OpenSearch Service
Operators can use OpenSearch Dashboards to view real-time mosaics alongside historical analytics, configure alert thresholds for each channel, and export compliance reports. Clean RTP outputs flow to AWS Elemental MediaLive for HLS packaging and distribution.
Amazon OpenSearch Service ingestion: MCS sends metrics to the mcs-events-* index through the OpenSearch Service bulk API over HTTPS. An ingest pipeline tags each document with the stream ID, facility, and severity class.
Dashboards and visualizations: Utilizing the Alerting plugin, users can build for each query or bucket monitors, visualize trends, as well as create composite alerts that watch multiple conditions in one workflow.
Notification channels: OpenSearch Service Alerting supports Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Slack, or any webhook, so operators can route critical silence or clipping alarms straight to network operations center (NOC) dashboards or on-call schedules.
Historical forensics: Because all events are indexed, engineers can pivot on stream name, UTC timestamp, or error code to isolate chronic encoder drift or nightly PTP offsets within seconds.
Operational benefits
For audio engineers and operators
The cloud-focused approach transforms traditional monitoring operations in several key ways.
Enhanced situational awareness: Real-time multi-viewer displays with up to 32 loudness bars for each service provide comprehensive visual feedback. Automated penalty-box functionality highlights problematic feeds without manual monitoring, while Smart Recording captures pre- and post-fault 30-second clips for forensic analysis.
Reduced monitoring fatigue: Automated detection of error types eliminates constant manual oversight requirements. Engineers receive intelligent alerts only for actionable issues, reducing alert fatigue.
Aggregated metric monitoring: The TAG modules utilized within the scope of this guidance support multiple metrics as provided in the following two lists.
Audio error detection:
- Silence
- Loudness
- Proper phasing of audio signal
Metadata detection and capabilities:
- Expected break signaling or similar (to anticipate ad breaks)
- Support and readability of SCTE-35 and SCTE-104
- Detect watermarking
- Capability to communicate with on-premises metadata systems as or if needed
- Metadata pacing
For technical directors and operations managers
The operational and studio broadcast leaders can implement this solution to reduce their existing operational overhead by up to 40% and enable predictive maintenance schedules.
Predictive maintenance capabilities: Historical analysis enables prediction of equipment failures before service impact. Machine learning models trained on monitoring data identify patterns indicating impending issues, enabling proactive maintenance scheduling.
Resource optimization: Elastic scaling allows facilities to provision monitoring resources based on actual demand rather than peak capacity. This approach can reduce infrastructure costs compared to traditional hardware-based solutions while improving operational flexibility.
For compliance and quality assurance teams
Media organizations through this solution can embed strict adherence to quality and compliance standards for streaming audio distribution.
Automated regulatory compliance: The system generates automated EBU R128 loudness compliance reports for regulatory submissions, with data exports to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enabling long-term trend analysis.
Data-driven operations: Integration with business intelligence platforms enables correlation of audio quality metrics with audience engagement and operational efficiency metrics, supporting evidence-based decision making.
Implementation guidance and best practices
Network architecture considerations
The network and associated security benefits are amplified using this cloud-based monitoring solution and is a viable production scale alternative against the on-prem systems.
Bandwidth planning: AES67 streams consume approximately 1.5 Mbps for every stereo channel at 48kHz/24-bit resolution. Each MediaConnect Gateway bridge has maximum bitrate of 100 Mbps and a single gateway can support up to 40 bridges.
Security implementation: Deploy monitoring infrastructure in private subnets with appropriate security group rules. MediaConnect entitlements provide additional access control for cross-account scenarios, while the role-based access control of TAG verifies only authorized personnel access sensitive monitoring systems.
Cost optimization strategies
The container based adaptive monitoring solution from TAG Video System leverages a cost-effective scaling mechanism for broadcasters who need to scale out to hundreds of channels.
Adaptive resource allocation: Implement the X-Lite mode (adaptive monitoring) of TAG to reduce computational requirements for backup feeds by up to 80% while maintaining essential transport-layer monitoring. Use Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances for always-on monitoring operations and Spot Instances for non-critical workloads. For the full solution cost of MCM and MCS, contact TAG.
Conclusion
The combination of the proven monitoring technology of TAG Video Systems with AWS infrastructure delivers broadcast-grade audio quality control while embracing modern operational practices. The architecture provides organizations a way to scale monitoring operations dynamically, reduce capital expenditure, and leverage advanced analytics for data-driven decision making.
The solution’s standards-based design facilitates compatibility with existing AES67 and SMPTE 2110 infrastructure, enabling gradual migration without disruptive infrastructure changes.
For organizations ready to transform their audio monitoring operations, this solution provides a proven path to professional media workflows that maintain broadcast quality while delivering cloud flexibility and cost-effectiveness.
Contact an AWS Representative to know how we can help accelerate your business.