pozar@kumr.UUCP (Tim Pozar) (07/16/90)
>I heard on the radio the other day that instead of using conventional >cassette tapes to store commercials and other such clipettes, Actually broadcast (Radio and TV) stations use 'Carts', A technology that dates back to 4-track tapes! (Note that I said 4-track and not 8-track.) >radio DJ's are beginning to use 3.5 inch microdiskettes instead. It was my >understanding from the news I heard that the information was not >stored digitally, but rather was analog, much like conventional >cassette tapes. The advantage in doing things this way was that they >could program a computer (I think they mentioned a macintosh) to play >clipettes at appropriate times, do special effects, etc. > >Can anyone tell me if this is a common thing, that is, storing analog >information (or rather, storing information in analog) on media >conventionally used to store digital info? Obviously the hardware >needed to read/store such analog information would differ from >conventional disk drives; does anyone know which manufactures make such >equipment? Also: storing a song or a picture in analog takes up much >less media space compared to digital, is that not true? (Of course at >the expense of many other things, I am aware . . . .). I havn't heard of anyone storing analog data on Diskettes. It would mean a major modification of the drives, and media. Digital information is encoded much differently than audio. Digital drives saturate the media with magnetic flux where Analog uses a method known as biasing and doesn't saturate the tape. The latest 'hot' item for stations now is Audio Workstations. A Audio Workstation is basicly a computer, large hard disk (100-300MB or more), and A-D and D-A converters. The software creates graphic representations of the audio. This may be the actual waveform plotted out or a block that represents the waveform. The software normally will support cutting and pasting of the audio, say by dragging a cursor across the waveform and selecting it and then commanding the software to either copy or cut the section. Much the same way you would use something like a word processing programme on the Mac to cut and paste text. The cost of audio workstations have come down quite a bit in the past few months. Companies like Studer and AKG have stations between &10K and $100K. The costs are almost what a good 2-track may cost. Workstations are the production end of theings. If you want digital audio for the 'air' side of things, you can purchase a box like the CompuSonics drives that will store the produced audio on a Bernulli disk. The drives look and act much like a 'Cart' machine where they only have simple functions like 'play', 'stop', and 'cue' where you can select the cut you need. The drives will display the 'cart' title, out-cue, and time in a LCD window on the drive. These digital 'cart' machines go for some where between $6K to $15K. Or about twice to three times the cost of a good cart machine. Tim -- Tim Pozar Try also... uunet!hoptoad!kumr!pozar Fido: 1:125/555 PaBell: (415) 788-3904 USNail: KKSF-FM / 77 Maiden Lane / San Francisco CA 94108