Wireless Remotes--Here we go again....

[ChiefOperator]

Folks,

Before I ask this question, yes, I have looked at the previous threads )....

An AM station wishes to change from POTS remotes to wireless. Is anyone using the flipjack with a cell or the JK Audio Remote 4? I'm thinking, also, of a couple Barix boxes attached to an EVDO router. Is anyone using this set-up? Budget is an issue..

Thanks for all help....

 

[TomT]

These digital cell phone systems are very unfriendly to ambient noise--e.g. crowd noise. No matter what you you use to feed them, unless it is straight voice close-miked they always sound like the audio is swimming or gurgling.

Now, various digital systems apparently seem to work reasonably well with the cell phone connections (e.g.==Tieline) --with delay issues (but you already have that with the digital cell phone). But they are expensive.

I will leave it to the computer geeks to answer on the Barix units, but my initial impression is that you would need some kind of broadband connection to get that to work, something not always available at remote sites. 3G cellular is creeping into various areas of the country, but I have heard of certain carriers putting cumulative limits on data transferred or other limitations that would make it rough to use for remote use.

 

[radiorob2.0]

These digital cell phone systems are very unfriendly to ambient noise--e.g. crowd noise. No matter what you you use to feed them, unless it is straight voice close-miked they always sound like the audio is swimming or gurgling.

Tom T hits the nail on the head regarding the low bitrates of digital cell phone. I just came back from a music event that was broadcast on a local radio station via cell phone with the help of a JK Audio unit. The result was a confusing digital mish-mash on the air.

I have demonstrated this effect to the non-technical type. You have that person call on a land line and place it on hold (assuming you have MOH) then place the same call on a digital cell phone. The expression on the face indicates they hear the obvious difference.

 

[techie2]

I have run into the cell phone issue many a time with high school sports remotes. I can get a Marti shot within about 20 miles of our studio, but if we are out of range or indoors (read: basketball season) it's a POTS line if I can get it or a cell phone if I can't.

I use a Zercom that's been modified with a to disable the loop voltage sensor, along with one of the Daptor One boxes to interface with the cell handset. We also have a RemoteMix Sport that works with cell phones. Both do OK on a cell remote as long as you run headset mics only and don't use a crowd mic. As Tom says, the vocoders in cell phones do not understand how to encode crowd noise properly so it lends a swishing underwater effect to the audio and can make the announcers hard to understand. The land line system uses straight 8kHz 8-bit sampling so it will pass whatever makes it through the bandpass region just fine...the worst thing you get is a little bit of a digital "tinge" from aliasing if your hybrid at the studio doesn't LPF it out.

If you are using POTS line remotes now, I would keep doing so as opposed to cell phone remotes. I've been looking into the Tieline and Comrex products for EVDO but with the providers sticking bit-caps on their "unlimited" service it may not be feasible to use those for sports remotes on a 2 hour ball game. I don't know much about how EVDO routers or the Barix stuff works, but I've heard you can use Skype or something similar if your studio has broadband and get a better quality connection (meaning a little more audio bandwidth) than a standard POTS dial up line.

As for me, I'm probably better off buying a bunch of Yagis and coax from the ham shop and wiring our road gyms for Marti hookups.

 

[TomT]

One alternative, which we've done, is to use a 15 watt UHF Marti out of the gym to a receiver in a friendly location that's connected to the dial-up line. Using a "Ringo" type antenna on transmit, you might get a 1/2 mile...enough of a radius to get to the phone line and back to the studio on those out of town remotes.

 

[sparks794]

I've used a bunch of JK stuff over the past several years for ballgames and I've been very happy with it most of the time.

One of my contract stations just bought a SportsMix 4 and one of the other sportsMix boxes. Using both with a "flip" cellphone. I wasn't happy with the bluetooth on the newer unit so we use it wired to the flip phone.

One thing that I found was to use a "Dapter One". Even though you can connect the JK box directly to the phone this unit http://www.jkaudio.com/daptor1.htm really helps the sound of the unit. They do sports year round and have had good luck with the units.

 

[ChiefOperator]

All,

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. The Marti solution won't work for us. Instead, we'll have to use a cell phone or some type of IP solution, such as a wireless EVDO card.

As for the JK Audio interfaced to a cell (through Daptor 1 if necessary), is the audio quality any better than a standard POTS solution?

Someone emailed me about the Barix boxes but had no first hand experience. Is anyone successfully using these with an EVDO card for remotes?

Thanks.....

 

[BrokeEngineer]

Would be nice to see if http://www.audiocompass.com/ works as they claim. I am interested in using such a product and might try it out at an upcoming event. Good thing about it, promo kids now a days don't know much about audio but they have a deep knowledge of computers. Thanks MySpace.

Any tried the Audio Compass software?

G

 

[RealityCheckr]

See:

http://www.broadcast.net/pipermail/radio-tech/2008-July/thread.html#188699

<SNIP>
Someone emailed me about the Barix boxes but had no first hand experience. Is anyone successfully using these with an EVDO card for remotes?

Thanks.....

 

[Bob_Hudson]

All,

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. The Marti solution won't work for us. Instead, we'll have to use a cell phone or some type of IP solution, such as a wireless EVDO card.

As for the JK Audio interfaced to a cell (through Daptor 1 if necessary), is the audio quality any better than a standard POTS solution?

Someone emailed me about the Barix boxes but had no first hand experience. Is anyone successfully using these with an EVDO card for remotes?

Thanks.....

I have not used EVDO for "transmitting" streaming audio but I have used it for many hours at a time to receive streaming audio when driving around (I use a Palm Treo 700P connected to my car stereo system to listen to internet radio in the car). It seems to me that I am using as much bandwidth downloading 64KB (or sometimes better) streaming audio as I would uploading through EVDO for the same amount of time. So far Sprint has not dunned me for that, but it's not something being done 24/7 but just a couple hours at a time.

It just occurred to me that while I have not used EVDO for originating streaming audio, I have used it for streaming video. We often take my MacBook when we travel and I use the Treo for a tethered modem for the laptop: with that system and the MacBook's built-in camera, we often send live video via iChat to friends and family, and they have cameras at their end so we are doing two-way video via EVDO.

 

[Chuck]

I use EVDO to do “almost live” remotes. Basically I record the remote on my laptop, edit it using Sound Forge (but there are lots of other programs that work just as well) then email the edited product to the station. If nobody is at the station to put it on the air, I use some remote desktop software, insert the segment into the automation system play-list, and it airs at the end of the next song. Thanks to the magic of editing, it makes a much more professional on-air product than a live remote. It works great. The audience doesn’t know it isn’t exactly “live.” Obviously, this would not work for live sports, but it leads me to believe that EVDO is a viable way to get good quality audio back to the station.

I’m planning on using the same EVDO card with Skype for a few experimental really live remotes. It will be interesting to see how it works. Skype to Skype calls actually sound very good. They are a lot better than POTS and way better than any digital cell phone.

 

[sparks794]

All,

Thanks for all the suggestions so far. The Marti solution won't work for us. Instead, we'll have to use a cell phone or some type of IP solution, such as a wireless EVDO card.

As for the JK Audio interfaced to a cell (through Daptor 1 if necessary), is the audio quality any better than a standard POTS solution?

Someone emailed me about the Barix boxes but had no first hand experience. Is anyone successfully using these with an EVDO card for remotes?

Thanks.....

The Dapter One helps it (espcially with a digital cellphone). I wouldn't say that it is better than a POTS but shure is a heck of alot cheaper in the long run (beets the he!! out of ordering in lines).

Something else - That same station I was talking about put a new phone system in the studio/office last year. I'm using a JK Innkeeper on the studio end. They complained that it didn't sound as good as the 1970's push button phone system that they replaced. For about $100 I bought a cheep type of audio compressor/limiter and put it in line between the JK Innkeeper and the console. It took awhile with settings but made it sound a he!! of alot better. The comment to me was it gave the play by play guy "balls". I think this is it - http://www.bswusa.com/proditem.asp?item=3630

 

[ChiefOperator]

Thanks all for the excellent comments.

The Comrex Access, I've been told, successfully uses an EVDO and wireless router. I don't see why this wouldn't work with some Barix boxes for a remote. I'm thinking an Instreamer and Exstreamer at both the studio site and remote site for sports, etc. The boxes at the remote could use an EVDO router. With both boxes, the remote site could transmit audio to the studio (Instreamer) and receive studio program/cue audio (Exstreamer).

 

[techie2]

One alternative, which we've done, is to use a 15 watt UHF Marti out of the gym to a receiver in a friendly location that's connected to the dial-up line. Using a "Ringo" type antenna on transmit, you might get a 1/2 mile...enough of a radius to get to the phone line and back to the studio on those out of town remotes.

I was thinking we just need to get one of the small Martis and use it indoors to make the hop to a vehicle outside with the big transmitter and mast.

 

[RealityCheckr]

You are making some pretty big assumptions.

First of all most mpeg decoders do not have psychoacoustic error concealment. Telos and Comrex do. APT's stuff effectively have something just as good.

Secondly, only Telos and Comrex have adaptive buffer management and/or adaptive bit rate technology. If the ZIP or ACCESS boxes work on a given connection this means nothing about if the Barix boxes will work.

You can pretty much guarantee that these other boxes will work better on a given network.

You might to read the white papers on the Telos, Comrex and APT web sites before jumping to conclusions

Thanks all for the excellent comments.

The Comrex Access, I've been told, successfully uses an EVDO and wireless router. I don't see why this wouldn't work with some Barix boxes for a remote. I'm thinking an Instreamer and Exstreamer at both the studio site and remote site for sports, etc. The boxes at the remote could use an EVDO router. With both boxes, the remote site could transmit audio to the studio (Instreamer) and receive studio program/cue audio (Exstreamer).

 

[dtube1]

For about $100 I bought a cheep type of audio compressor/limiter and put it in line between the JK Innkeeper and the console. It took awhile with settings but made it sound a he!! of alot better. The comment to me was it gave the play by play guy "balls".

We use telco for Friday and Saturday night football in the fall. I'll second the compressor suggestion (2:1 ratio, quickest attack time, 75-ms release, and set the threshold to achieve about 10dB of G/R on the loudest parts). But, I'll also suggest an Aphex 204 Aural Exciter follow the compressor http://www.aphex.com/204.htm. Those are pretty cheap 2nd-hand. They take some experimentation to get good results - but they really make a POTS line sound amazing. Word of warning: you will have to adjust settings for each remote as line conditions - and the person speaking on the other end - are not consistent.

If you really want to get crazy, you can also add an EQ after that tonal sandwich to notch-out some 1.5k ;D

-D

 

[techie2]

For about $100 I bought a cheep type of audio compressor/limiter and put it in line between the JK Innkeeper and the console. It took awhile with settings but made it sound a he!! of alot better. The comment to me was it gave the play by play guy "balls".

We use telco for Friday and Saturday night football in the fall. I'll second the compressor suggestion (2:1 ratio, quickest attack time, 75-ms release, and set the threshold to achieve about 10dB of G/R on the loudest parts). But, I'll also suggest an Aphex 204 Aural Exciter follow the compressor http://www.aphex.com/204.htm. Those are pretty cheap 2nd-hand. They take some experimentation to get good results - but they really make a POTS line sound amazing. Word of warning: you will have to adjust settings for each remote as line conditions - and the person speaking on the other end - are not consistent.

If you really want to get crazy, you can also add an EQ after that tonal sandwich to notch-out some 1.5k ;D

-D

I'll have to try this out. We dial up into a Sine Systems DAI-1 which has built in compression. The sound is about like a Telos One with the AGC button on. It sounds pretty good when I use my Zercom Max-Z and flip the High/Low boost switch on, but I am tempted to slap an EQ in between the telco line output and the insert relay on the Sine Systems to try and sweeten things up a bit.

 

[foursider]

If you've made it to any of the Taste of NAB meetings; Larry is showing some neat little Bluetooth boxes that allow for indirect coupling of audio to a cell phone. This gives you a lot more control over input overloading of the phone.

 

[ChiefOperator]

Foursider-

Thanks.. Who is "Larry" and what product is it? Have you tried the Bluetooth yourself?

THanks again....

 

[gunterm]

EVDO does have its limits, I haven't tried something with Rev A but the older Rev0 standard will not work for this, max allowed upload speed is around 130kbps and under real-world testing I cannot send anything over 32kbps reliably and even then its iffy.

I've been testing AT&Ts 3G and its great, over 320kbps upload speed with just the stock antenna and a weekend test was able to broadcast a 128kbps AAC+ stream over it with little audio issues.