[cma-l] Remote Contribution Infrastructure

[Mike Davison]

I was hoping someone would mention Skype. We have three kits for live 
interviewing as bi-lateral operation.

They are affectionately known as THB1,2 and 3. THB stands for 'Talking 
Hand-Bag'.

THB1 is just a simple mobile 'phone with 12volt Yuasa battery powering a 
car kit in a bag with sockets for mic and headphones. Quality just 
tolerable but it was a start and simple to use. One of our technophobe 
volunteers likes it.

THB2 is a HP Netbook with 3G dongle in a Maplin flight case and sockets 
for mic and headphones. It is used with Skype only for interviewing.

THB3 is a Windows phone clamped on a board with notepad and a 3rd party 
adapter to feed headphones and take a mic. It can be used on Skype or as 
a mobile accepting a quality reduction if internet connection not good.

THB2 is also pressed into service for unilateral use on full remote OB 
operation using Windows Media Encoder streaming directly over the 
internet to studio where a PC runs WinMedia Player. We have done 4 hour 
OB's with no glitches being observed on a CD quality stereo link. The 
down side of using this 'free' software is a 7-8second delay but that's 
easily covered up.

Mike Davison, Tempo FM.


On 02/10/2016 16:16, Two Lochs Radio wrote:
>
> We've done numerous on the fly OBs - generally just using a laptop 
> with ICEcast or similar over public internet, with complete success - 
> all it needs is a reasonable broadband connection (we have no 3G let 
> alone 4G within 50 miles!). But that's strictly for one-way work, with 
> the whole show originated at the far end.
>
> For really occasional two-way work not needing music from the far end 
> we use Skype - as long as a decent microphone and reasonably powerful 
> PC is used, the quality of Skype nowadays is remarkably good. Of 
> course for really on the fly work you can use a smartphone running 
> Skype for the remote end (and there are some quite high quality 
> proprietary solutions for smartphones).
>
> For high-quality low-latency interviews and two-way shows we used to 
> use ISDN, but once a regularly weekly two-way show finished we 
> couldn't justify the couple of hundred pounds a quarter for the line 
> rental just for occasional use.
>
> Alex
>
> (PS if anybody would like to buy two AudioTX ISDN licences we could 
> talk!).
>
>> On 02 October 2016 at 12:17 Callum McLean <mail at callum-mclean.co.uk> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> I was thinking about the Barix kit, but I didn't get the impression
>> that it was going to be robust enough...
>>
>> Good to know that other people have used the PS-kit successfully - and
>> cheers for the heads-up about potentially high latency in the MP3
>> format! Was hoping not to go down the MP3 route in any case, but still
>> good to know...
>>
>> Good shout about using SIP to negotiate the connection - will look into
>> it!
>>
>> Has anyone used this sort of kit in a flyaway environment - i.e. not in
>> installations? Typically, this is the sort of thing where most people
>> might use a) an ISDN line; b) a flyaway sat connection; c) a bonded 4G
>> link. We *were* going to go down the multiple-carrier bonded 4G route,
>> until the cost just became prohibitive for what we want to achieve.
>>
>> Also, to answer Iain's question, we're only using this over the public
>> internet - the plan is to require the venue hosting the OB to provide
>> us with a solid, wired internet connection - protected within their own
>> networking infrastructure, where possible, and then do everything we
>> can to keep latency and bandwidth down whilst retaining audio quality.
>> The only downside with the Sonifex kit is that they don't support
>> encoding in Opus :(
>>
>> Cal McLean
>>
>> --
>> Station Technician // Halton Community Radio 92.3 FM
>> mail at callum-mclean.co.uk
>>
>>
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