SVG-Sit Down: Inside the Telos Alliance with John Schur and Martin Dyster

Telos Aliiance was at the recently held IBC in Amsterdam once again representing its brands which include Axia Audio, Omnia Audio, Telos Systems, 25-Seven Systems, Linear Acoustic, Minnetonka Audio and J nger Audio. John Schur, president of the TV Solutions Group and Martin Dyster, VP of Business Development, sat down with SVG's Ken Kerschbaumer at the show to discuss new developments related to the Infinity intercom and how DMF is impacting the audio side of the industry.

SVG: What's the big story for Telos Alliance at IBC 2026?

Schur: Telos spans a number of different areas of the market. We have a core section of the company focused on radio and streaming, which includes products like our Quasar console. We recently came out with the Pulsar, a more mid-level entry into that market. And on the intercom side we have a whole new set of panels for the Infinity intercom system that were announced at NAB and are now shipping. They're a leap forward from the version ones we'd been selling for a while, with a new design that's more user-friendly and new software to go with it.

SVG: Tell us more about the Infinity intercom system and where it's been used?

Dyster: We were probably the first company to produce a fully matrix-free intercom system, without a central matrix, when we launched Infinity in 2018. During COVID, when we couldn't make the hardware panels because of chip shortages, we developed a virtual version of the same product: a software panel that replicates the hardware panel.

It found a market early in sports with Warner Brothers Discovery Eurosport, who were gearing up for the Paris Olympics. They put a system in the cloud with 256 virtual panels and 296 4-wires from AWS, feeding into the Riedel system they had spread across various sites in Europe. They used it for some production events during the Paris games and as a disaster recovery solution. Since then, they've used it as their primary comms at the US Open and at other events in recent weeks.

Martin Dyster (left) and John Schur of the Telos Alliance.SVG: What do you see as your competitive advantage?

Dyster: Cost is part of it, along with ease of deployment. It's also a total, integrated solution, without the big piece of iron in the middle that you need with the others.

The advantage of the VIP system, the Virtual Intercom Platform, is that you can put a panel in front of an operator anywhere in the world in a few seconds and have them connected directly to the plant.

SVG: So it's Web-based?

Dyster: Yes. If you have a crew at a stadium on a REMI broadcast, you can put comms in their hands without shipping a rack. It can be on their tablet or their phone.

We also have physical AS67 belt packs that can be switched into VoIP mode and connect over the public internet back to HQ. IMG in the UK has been using them for six years on EFL League 1 and League 2 soccer, for camera crews and pitch-side interviews, with the belt packs connected back into a Riedel system, because Riedel doesn't have anything comparable.

SVG: How has Telos Alliance evolved over the years to become more inclusive of different technologies?

Dyster: It's a bit like the Brady Bunch. You have the three core brands John mentioned: Axia consoles, Omnia, and Telos Systems. Those were the founding parts of the company. Steve Church, who founded the company, and Frank Foti, an early partner, decided those brands should have different names for different market segments. Ultimately that may have been a questionable decision, but they came first.

Other brands like Linear Acoustic, Minnetonka, and 25-Seven were bought later on, and J nger was folded in as a partner. They're all wholly owned, but Alliance makes it sound more like a trade body than a wholly owned group of companies.

SVG: With immersive audio like Atmos becoming more common and high-quality audio delivery getting easier, what opportunities do you see?

Schur: One area where we're focusing more attention is the Dynamic Media Facility architecture. We have some new MXL-based plugins doing things like loudness correction and upmixing, still in the audio space.

Beyond that, we think there's a bigger play in observability, specifically for the audio portion of a program. We're doing a technology demonstration of a platform that, to use the AI buzzword, brings AI-enhanced analysis. It handles basic audio detection like silence and dropouts, but also language detection and dialogue intelligibility analysis. We're working on content identification too, such as the genre of a program or who the speakers are in a talk show.

That lets us identify and compare for QC purposes, making sure things are in the proper range and match the playlist. If there's an event, we can record its details, including the audio, the analysis, and the metadata. That helps diagnose the problem, understand the root cause, and suggest ways to correct it. It's a whole new area for us, and I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/10/28/svg-sit-down-inside-the-telos-a...
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