With the few recording studios now for only the rich and famous, many organizations want to take advantage of the streaming media landscape with low-cost podcasts and web presentations. Fortunately, high-quality gear is now available that can be easily set-up in any office, home or other space. Here’s some guidance on constructing a low-cost studio.
Loudspeakers began as simple wooden boxes. Today, they have evolved into a wide variety of shapes, sizes, colours, materials and technology. Yet, the physics of audio acoustics and the human auditory system has not changed. John Watkinson looks at the state of loudspeaker design and how the industry continues to make the same design errors.
For most of us, the era of the recording studio is long over. Voiceovers for broadcasts, podcasts and narration are now mostly done in homes, offices and other make-shift locations. It’s a new world that requires a special engineering skill set to create professional voiceovers from any location.
IP networking is taking the radio and broadcast industry by storm, but as a method of distributing data, it has been available since the 1970’s. So, what are IP Networks? And why have they become so popular recently?
Broadcast television is the point where the creative arts and technology meet. It’s different from any other discipline as to operate at an optimum level, and get the best possible quality, artisans, producers, and creatives have a deeper technical understanding of their craft than any other artistic discipline. And over the years, the demarcation between creativity and technology has become blurred as members of the creative teams have found themselves delving deep into engineering disciplines.
When setting up new audio monitors in a studio, their placement is an important choice in the successful operation of the monitoring system. Since no two rooms sound the same, here are a few tips to make the installation easier.
Due to advances in IP content delivery and production crew collaboration, new virtual tools are augmenting the connected studio. Broadcasters are now able to customize studios and workflows with virtual interfaces that talk directly to anything that touches the IP audio network. They’re replacing hardware newsrooms with virtual mixers, mobilizing the studio using tablets and other virtual interfaces in the field, and scripting their own version of what broadcast looks and feels like.
Sometimes — when boom or lavalier mics aren’t appropriate — engineers must record good audio with microphones hidden on a set. This can be a challenge. Here’s a look at how to hide microphones for maximum effect.