[cma-l] mobile technology and community radio

Tue Sep 6 13:04:48 BST 2011

Hi everyone,

Great response from this thread, and interesting read...
One thing that comes up is how technically advanced CMA members are, for
sure.

However, I was sort of looking for lower tech answers, that a normal person
could use to their advantage.

I'm thinking about two main areas, one where listeners could use mobile
technology to interact with the station, and the other where stations could
use mobile technology to interact with listeners.

With regard to the former, most stations (BBC, commercial and community) are
already trying to exploit mobile technology to try to entice listeners to
interact with the station.

With regard to the latter, I haven't seen so much, but it could be because I
don't get out much...!
I'm thinking along lines of presenters going out into the community and
using iPads (or smartphones) as a way of bringing the station to the
audience.
I like the "travel light" aspect of this: there are existing apps (such as
the iRig mic <http://www.ikmultimedia.com/irigmic/features/> and iPad
dj<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfgMh4pdoBg&feature=related>and
Groovemaker <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brp7JUxGlDQ>), where people
could bring the studio to groups, and get them to *participate*. No vans
full of equipment, no fumbling around with getting expensive equipment to
talk to the station, etc. I think there is a lot of future in this. Twenty
years ago, if you wanted to record your band, you had to go to a recording
studio and pay engineers, etc. Now you can do so much of this on the
computer.

There are some technical questions, (mainly because I don't have an iPhone
or iPad, so I don't know), like can you do live vox pops on an iPhone, and
then have it simultaneously send the audio to the station (or even the
website - cut out the middleman)? Or is it just a case of recording it live
and then uploading the file (doesn't make too much a difference anyway).
Anybody discovered an app that is like a presenters desk, where you can play
music and take calls? (gap in the market, maybe?)

I was inspired by what Clive said, "*Only a few years ago such things
required van fulls of equipment and a staff of dozens - at least for the
BBC!*" and I think this is a good thing, something that all community
stations could replicate on a small budget....

Love to hear your comments!

Peter Vautier
London Chinese Radio
(aka London Huayu)

2011/9/5 Ian Hickling <transplanfm at hotmail.com>

>
>
> We have been doing a lot of work recently on reducing latency (delay) on
> link and OB encoding systems.
> This has always been a problem with any digitising algorithm but now
> latency can be as low as 10ms which is effectively undetectable to the human
> brain.
> However - the methods of doing this are complex and represent the use of
> specific equipment and a great deal of time expended - so we will certanly
> install them - but I'm afraid we're not prepared to tell anyone else how to
> do it!
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> *Ian Hickling
> **Partner
> transplan UK
> *
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> From: martin at martinsteers.co.uk
> Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2011 16:22:18 +0100
> To: clive.glover at lineone.net
> CC: cma-l at commedia.org.uk; admin at londonhuayu.co.uk
>
> Subject: Re: [cma-l] mobile technology and community radio
>
> Clive,
>
> I have heard that you can get special / better streaming codecs that a)
> reduce the size of the stream and b) reduces the delay.. I think places like
> this http://www.audiotx.com/
>
> I also think there is going to be a session on something similar to this at
> this years Radio Festival, about low cost OB solutions instead of
> expensive commercial / BBC setups.
>
> 2011/9/5 Clive Glover <clive.glover at lineone.net>
>
> Peter
>
> We have been experimenting over the Summer with various ways of doing
> Outside Broadcasts. Essentially we have mikes, mixer and music source(s)
> plus a laptop PC creating a stream broadcast over the Internet which is then
> picked up in the studios. In theory we can use a direct Ethernet connection
> or WiFi if available at the remote location or 3G otherwise. However
> Ethernet is rarely available and we have found WiFi unreliable so have opted
> for 3G which works well. We got a 3G dongle for ￡30 from 3 which lasted us
> through the whole Summer!
>
> The only major problem with this setup is that there is a delay of several
> seconds which can cause problems if we are interacting with a presenter in
> the studio. We tried various combinations of presenter in studio with
> reporter on remote site, presenter at remote site with music coming from
> studio and broadcasting the whole programme from the remote site. Perhaps
> surprisingly the latter worked best as it avoided problems working with the
> delay.
>
> The technical solution to the delay is to use special "black boxes" called
> Instreamers and Extreamers although these are expensive (￡200 or so each).
> But running the whole programme from the remote site works very well as long
> as the broadband link stays up.
>
> The other main lesson is that it is essential to have a technical operator
> at the studios all the time during an OB, with a direct communications link
> (mobile phone usually although it could be Skype).
>
> I think we have been surprised that this setup can produce such a good
> quality link from an external site using just a few ￡100s of equipment. Only
> a few years ago such things required van fulls of equipment and a staff of
> dozens - at least for the BBC!
>
> regards,
>
> Clive Glover
>
> Radio Verulam
>
> St Albans
>
>   On 4 Sep 2011, at 22:42, London Chinese Radio wrote:
>
>   Hi everyone,
>
> Sounds a bit vague, but I would be interested in hearing what use community
> stations are making of mobile technology.
> So the first question is "what do I mean by mobile technology", to which
> the answer must be "somehow using a mobile phone to interact with a radio
> station or it's output"
>
> I once saw a presenter who used to take calls to his mobile which he had
> plugged into the mixing desk (that was on Sound Radio) it worked really
> well, and he did get quite a number of calls.
> Some of our presenters come and want to play music from their iphones, so I
> guess that's another use. Once, before we had a telephone hybrid, we had a
> presenter who did a phone in, and held the mobile up to the mic, that worked
> pretty well too....
> But more importantly, listeners - do you take texts, SMS, facebook
> messages, etc. How about people listening with their mobile phones?
> Or what about using SMS services to contact large amounts of people en
> masse...? Anyone had experiences with that?
> Does anyone know of any way to broadcast to mobile phones and avoid huge
> costs to listeners on mobiles?
>
> I'm about to start a mobile technology project, and I'd like to hear any
> success stories, maybe we can all share what works well. I certainly will be
> more than happy to share any results from the project.
>
>
> Best regards to all,
>
> Peter Vautier
> London Chinese Radio
>
> --
> 野火烧不尽，春风吹又生
> _______________________________________________
>
> Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk
>
> The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community
> Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
> http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
> Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
> _______________________________________________
>
> Mailing list guidelines:
> http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
> ________________________________________ _______
>
> To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
> http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk
>
> The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community
> Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
> http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
> Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
> _____________________________________ __________
>
> Mailing list guidelines:
> http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
> _______________________________________________
>
> To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
> http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________ Reply -
> cma-l at commedia.org.uk The cma-l mailing list is a members' service
> provided by the Community Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.ukTwitter:
> http://twitter.com/community_media
> http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation Canstream Internet Radio
> & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/_______________________________________________ Mailing list guidelines:
> http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma -email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
> _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe or manage
> your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
> http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> Reply - cma-l at commedia.org.uk
>
> The cma-l mailing list is a members' service provided by the Community
> Media Association - http://www.commedia.org.uk
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/community_media
> http://www.facebook.com/CommunityMediaAssociation
> Canstream Internet Radio & Video: http://www.canstream.co.uk/
> _______________________________________________
>
> Mailing list guidelines:
> http://www.commedia.org.uk/about/cma-email-lists/email-list-guidelines/
> _______________________________________________
>
> To unsubscribe or manage your CMA-L mailing list subscription please visit:
> http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/cma-l
>

-- 
野火烧不尽，春风吹又生
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.commedia.org.uk/pipermail/cma-l/attachments/20110906/4ac7688a/attachment.html>