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Remotes

H

Hawkeye

My college radio station is looking at getting into doing remote broadcasts from games and I have worked to increase my knowledge in this area. However, I am looking to see if there is a better solution than what I have come up with so far:


Portable Mixer: JK Audio RemoteMix 4

Transmitting methods: Using either the standard phone hookup, cellphone interface (either wired or using the proper bluetooth cellphone connection), or using something such as iMic plugged to a laptop and use a program (Skype?) to send back to a computer with Skype installed at the station.


I looked into the Tieline Commander, but is it worth it to go ahead and take the initial cost to buy a pair of these?


Unfortunately, I do not much about remote broadcasting solutions or codecs as well and what not, so any pointers would be highly appreciated.


Thanks
 
Don't forget Tieline either... Are you games normally on your campus where you can get a good net connection all the time? Also, are they phone lines generally available where you're trying to broadcast from? ISDN by chance?
 
Tielines are very solid equipment. Versatile too: you can work them off of 3G cell service, POTS, and ethernet. I think Tieline sells even more modules than that, but I've not got any of the others.

They are a bit expensive, though. Skype can do it, although I prefer to use Skype only for short-form remotes when the Tieline is occupied elsewhere.
 
Yes... Long-form is a harder thing to do really. A guy can cheet and use something like Skype and many other solutions for quick drop-ins. In many cases these days a guy can come up with a way to record the break and send it back to the station for air slightly later too. I've got an app on my iPhone that will do just that. Many stations either due to IBUZ or corporate policy pre-record before airing remotes. When it's not real-time it just makes more sense to record it on something like a iPhone or laptop with internet connectivity and send it to the station for air. Why pay for tower rent for Martis or even Tielines for short breaks? Now when it comes to long-form, that's a whole other animal, like what you're wanting. :)
 
Currently, phone lines is unavailable and Internet connection can be iffy. The option until those can be improved is to use the Bluetooth pairing feature with a cellphone to send a call back to the station and route on-air via the telephone hybrid. However, this problem exists only at our soccer field.

ISDN, is not available.


For volleyball, and other sports, they are located near wi-fi covered areas, which is the where the idea of using a laptop with Skype came to be.


My first question regarding the Tieline field unit is: Can you use more than two connectivity methods? For instance, I thought you were limited to only two modules (ex. POTS and USB) or can you have the two modules (POTS & USB) plus ethernet/wired Internet access (probably the best way for us)?



Thank-you OKCRadioGuy and PTBoardOp94 for your help so far (and to others who may add to this).
 
The newer tielines have a pots and net connection built-in on most units. There is one. Slot on the right hand side can allow you to install isdn, 3g wireless, etc. Personally I'd consider getting something like a Cradlepoint router and just plug your USB modem into that and hook a cat 5 between the Cradlepoint and the Tieline Lan. That way you could pick what wireless carrier worked better at any given spot and use it.
 
OKCRadioGuy said:
You might also want a thing called a gaming adapter to work with the available wifi. Www.frys.com has both.
Click to expand...

Ditto on that, many of them have removable antennas too so you can purchase a high gain 2.4ghz yagi if you've got low signal. Also some high end access point devices can be configured to act this way as well: WAP4410N from Cisco is what we have. Wireless N and MIMO.
 
Management isn't sold on the Tieline, yet. The big roadblock is having to buy the field transmitter and studio receiver units, although for reference, the campus IT guys told me they don't think the bandwidth would be an issue, but no guarantees since QoS is not available.

For now, the JK Audio is probably going to be the option carried forward.


Sidenote: Using our Gentner SPH-3A phone hybrid, our listeners are having a hard time hearing the studio. Is this a unit or another problem floating about?
 
Having used a TieLine Commander for several years by utilizing a wireless connection, let me offer one suggestion: Do not, under any circumstances, get the AT&T card. Verizon, Verizon, Verizon all the way.
 
Yep, I read an article recently that the iPhone's are killing AT&Ts small data network. Also as far as 3G coverage is concerned Verizon's is just better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCbYTrYD5y8&feature=related

I hate to sound like a commercial, but just locally I've tested it. And while the AT&T 3G data speeds are still probably usable here for a Tieline, they don't have good coverage. Wander just a few miles away from downtown Topeka northbound and you'll lose the 3G fast!

Being too poor to afford a Tieline, I just tether my HTC Touch Pro to a laptop running some STL software...
 
The SPH-3 problem is probably just a matter of setting up the send level. Dial in on you cell phone, and adjust to a comfortable level. You may need to go back and re-touch the null. If you still don't have enough level, you may need to change your feed point...most modern consoles let you feed audition and program at the same time giving you the "mix-minus" feed you need.
 
Verizon and Tie Line iMix 3 pair up and can do almost anything u need to do with remotes. Call and talk to Bill or Kevin at Tie Line they can solve all your remote needs.I have four of these units in Eastern Ky. with nothing but success, At&t's upload speed isnt fast enough for streaming audio in my area, other area's maybe different. The quailty you get from cell phones will be a bit better then tin cups and string, bite the bullet and do it right the first time.
 
Thanks for the tidbit TomT, adjusting the null and moving over to a more stable feed point solved the problem.


The Tieline is starting to sound more favorable for our remote broadcast option to management. Just some quick questions that came up (and thanks again for helping me out folks!):

Would the Commander G3 field would be a good option to send stereo sound back to the station (say a concert or something like that)?

Is the 3-port USB module that I see on the Tieline site an extra module that has to be purchased or it already included in addition to the wired Internet access port?

Could I hookup a small mixer to the unit (using the output feed on the mixer) and hook into the input feed on the Tieline?



Again, thanks for helping out with suggestions and pointers.
 
"... Just some quick questions that came up (and thanks again for helping me out folks!):

Would the Commander G3 field would be a good option to send stereo sound back to the station (say a concert or something like that)?"

Yes. I wouldn't rely on using the cell network module to do it, but if you could grab a decent POTS telephone line or even better, a broadband internet connection that's not overloaded, you'll have great results. The broadband connection route with the Tieline would sound almost perfect, most likley (depending on how far you could ratchet the bitrate up based on the connection not the Tieline).

"Could I hookup a small mixer to the unit (using the output feed on the mixer) and hook into the input feed on the Tieline?"

Absolutely! My previous employer had several of the smaller Patriot Tieline boxes and only one iMix so on several occations we'd use a old Shure mixer or a Mackie ahead of the Tieline to have multiple mics on a remote when the iMix was out elsewhere.

Here's something I've been playing with for non-realtime remotes. There are several nice apps out on the iPhone these days that will let someone record and email/FTP audio back to the station. For quick hits that are pre-recorded anyway, why not do it the easy, cheaper and wireless way? Of course with live programming/long-form the Tieline option is one of the best!
 
If you're thinking about concert live remotes, you could go a completely different route. We're an internet-only community station, and so we have our own icecast server (dedicated hosting). When we do remotes, we take a laptop with a Sprint or Verizon broadband wireless card (or use the venue's internet, if we know it's not shared and can maintain 128kbps) and connect the mixer to the laptop via a USB sound card (M-Audio Fast Track Pro). We use edcast (free, PC) or nicecast (excellent mac software) on the laptop to create and transmit a 'remote' stream to the icecast server (separate from our station's public stream). The studio host pulls the 'remote' stream up on a PC attached to the console and mixes it into our public stream. The big key is that broadband wireless cards are now capable of holding a 128kbps mp3 stream as long as we need it--at least in our area. If you don't want to deal with the laptop, you could purchase a Barix Instreamer. If you don't have access to an ISDN line, I'm not sure what advantage a Tieline is--perhaps others can fill me in.
 
A Tieline can run off of the 3G wireless network or POTS, in addition to ISDN.
 
OKCRadioGuy said:
Here's something I've been playing with for non-realtime remotes. There are several nice apps out on the iPhone these days that will let someone record and email/FTP audio back to the station. For quick hits that are pre-recorded anyway, why not do it the easy, cheaper and wireless way? Of course with live programming/long-form the Tieline option is one of the best!
Click to expand...

What are the names of these apps? I'd like to give them a try.
 
Fire will do the FTP thing nicely. VR+ is very cool in that it sends it to a website so all the talent had to do at the station end is hit a player on the website and play the track on the air. No firewall fun. No ftp server.

The built-in recorder in the iPhone is great for stuff under a couple minutes. You can email your breaks with it. The only other trick other than the time limit is that you'll need to install an Acc player at the studio. Acc sounds awasome and is a smaller file than normal mp3 stuff.
 
Don't forget that Skype now can do 3g. They say they'll charge a little for skype to skype over 3g, but it still will be a great idea for live remotes on the cheap. If you can grab a wifi signal it will work really good. iPhones are going to become more of a remote tool than more realize...
 
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