Ramsey Electronics Phone Patch Mixer Kit PPM3 Especificaciones descargar pdf (Pagina 4)

2 TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS

2.1 General Trends

Only a decade ago, professional or semi-professional audio and video equipment was highly

specialised – and very expensive! The professional portable tape recorders used by most national

broadcasters would cost more than 5.000 US$ and the studio equipment was even more expensive.

Community stations would have to work with the cheaper cassette recorders, but even a decent

quality cassette recorder would cost more than 1.000 US$. Furthermore, the advanced broadcast

machines required highly specialised maintenance, and hundreds or maybe even thousand of

expensive Studer or Revox recorders stand idle in radio studios in the developing countries because

it has not been possible to get the essential spare parts.

The explosive development of digital consumer products, however, has changed this situation

completely. Compact Discs – or CD’s as they are now known to everybody – give a significantly

better sound quality than even the best of the old tape recorders, and the CD’s can be played over

and over again without loosing quality like the cassette tapes, which simply loose the layer that

contains the recordings. CD-players are also available at prices far below the cost of good cassette

players – and at a fraction of the price of a professional tape player/recorder.

This is just one example of the general trend that the quality of the consumer product is so good that

these machines replace the specially designed profession equipment. In the TV industry, the small

DV cameras, which can be obtained for 1.000-2.000 US$ are replacing professional cameras, which

cost up to 50.000 US$. And today standard computers equipped with appropriate software can

perform all the editing tasks, which could earlier only be executed in highly specialised Radio or

TV editing suites. An external soundcard, which costs less that 200 US$, can turn any standard

computer into a recording and editing facility far more advanced than a normal radio studio built in

1990.

This general technological development has a number of positive effects. First of all the equipment

has become drastically cheaper, because we are now talking about standard mass products, which

can be bought in practically any country in the World. Secondly, daily running costs are reduced

considerably because it is no longer necessary replace recording tapes with short intervals.

Finally, maintenance costs are reduced dramatically because the new digital equipment has fewer

mechanical moving parts, which would otherwise wear and tear. Once a song or a radio programme

is stored in a computer hard disc no mechanical parts except the hard disc itself must move in order

to play the programme. Computer hard discs do break down and they do so relatively often – but a

120 Gigabyte replacement disc will cost less than 100 US$, and it only takes a few hours to learn

how to replace a hard disc. There is no need for several years of training as a broadcast engineer.

2.2 The Modern Radio Studio

The brain in any modern radio studio is a computer. The sound parts can come from a number of

different sources such as CD’s, music cassettes, tape or Mini-Disc recordings, other computers or

downloaded Internet files – or you can record your interview or song directly into the computer.

Any modern standard computer can perform very complicated editing tasks as long as it is equipped

with appropriate editing software and an interface (a sound card), which allows you to connect a

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... 56 57

Sin comentarios

Ramsey Electronics Phone Patch Mixer Kit PPM3 Especificaciones Pagina 4