January 2000 RAP
January 2000 Highlights
Feature: The Creation of Sound in the New Millennium
By Michael R. Lee, Ph.D.
We live in an era of vast visual trickery. Images on screen, in movie
theaters and on the printed page are manipulated in ways we can barely
imagine. It is Peter Pan without wires, Armageddon without explosives,
advertising images so clever that we don't realize we've been branded.
The aural medium has also experienced quite a few new tricks. Random access
digital recording, time domain manipulation, and the imminent advent of
spatial reproduction technology are some of them. But since Stan Freberg
suggested that we could drop a ten-ton marshmallow in a huge lake only in
the aural realm, it has become no easier to accomplish in audio and
eminently more feasible for our visual brethren.
Interview: Tom Versen/Sirius Satellite Radio, New York
By Jerry Vigil
The new year is here. So is the new decade, and the new century, and the
new millennium, AND satellite radio. If all goes well, by the end of
January, the first of Sirius Satellite Radios four satellites will be in
orbit, and by the end of the year, Sirius Satellite Radio will be
broadcasting 100 channels of programming to the entire continental U.S..
Sirius Satellite Radio (formerly CD Radio) has been in the works for several
years, but 2000 marks the year when the switch will be flipped.
Its hard to imagine the production task that goes with 100 channels of
music, talk, news, entertainment and more--that's the equivalent of 100
radio stations under one roof! Nevertheless, Tom Versen is the man in charge
of directing the production at these 100 "stations." This months interview
takes a look at what Sirius Satellite Radio is, what Toms huge task entails,
and what we can all look forward to in the very near future.
Test Drive: CDR-850 Professional Compact Disc Recorder
from HHB
By Steve Cunningham
The compact disc has become so widely used and accepted that it has
nearly overtaken the cassette as broadcasts audio recording medium of
choice. Blank CDs are now cheaper than blank cassettes of similar length.
They don't degrade with multiple plays. They're a random-access medium, and
given good recording technique, they sound better than cassettes. But a CD
burner is not as simple as a cassette recorder to the uninitiated. HHB have
made a good attempt at solving this problem with the CDR-850 Professional
Compact Disc Recorder.
Feature: You Call This Living?
By John Pellegrini
What's your perspective of your life? How do you define yourself? When
someone asks you to sum up your life, do you simply tell him or her what you
do for a living? Or, is there more?
My father-in-law is a former teacher and librarian. For many years he would
define himself as that. If people would ask, "Who are you?" he would
respond, "I am a Teacher." But he told me, after some years of this, he
began to wonder why his outlook on his life was so shallow. Why did he
define his entire life by his job, and nothing else?
Radio HED: Take Risks
By Jeffrey Hedquist
Every day on the radio you can hear spots that were created by committee:
politically correct, watered-down, automatically-written radio that offends
no one. Commercials that sound like well, like commercials. They make you
want to change the station, or at best, ignore them.
If you want your spots to make it all the way from the ears to the brain,
you'll need to take a few risks: that your idea wont work, that you'll
offend someone, that it might not get immediate results, that people will
think you're crazy.
Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks - CD Burners Part 2
By Jerry Vigil
As the digital age marches on, in the race between DAT, MiniDisc, and
CD-R, it looks like the CD is going to be the choice to do the job the
cassette did for so many years. Purchased in reasonable bulk quantities,
blank CDs are under a dollar each and will probably get even cheaper.
Granted, you cant use them again, but how many times have you "burned" a
10-minute cassette with a spot or demo and actually "reused" that cassette?
CDs as a cheap recording media are here. You get uncompressed digital
quality, and everybody has a CD player or quick access to one.
This months and next month's Q It Up take a look at what gear stations are
using to burn CDs and how they are being used.
Q It Up: What hardware (and software, if applicable) do you
use to record audio to CD? What are you likes and dislikes (if any) about
your current system for burning CDs? How has a CD recorder helped you in
your studio? What do you use it for?
Personal Computing: On the Net, Speak Freely, But Think
First
By Reid Goldsborough
The Internet has been called the most participatory form of mass speech
yet developed, the best advancement in democracy since universal suffrage,
the greatest soapbox ever built, reaching even the most fettered corners of
the world, in which people freely speak their minds about issues of the day.
Yet freedom on the Internet is the snarly sort, with faceless and often
nameless ranters cyberbashing anyone and anything they please. Truth often
becomes the victim.
Monday Morning Memo: Baking Bread in a Traffic Jam
By Roy H. Williams
You're stuck in a noisy traffic jam with car horns honking all around you
as the smell of baking bread wafts into your car. Which is more likely to
captivate your attention, the smell of the bread or the noise of the
traffic?
Although the traffic/bread question may seem a simple one, no cognitive
neuroscientist would dare to propose an answer. Those who understand the
human mind know the answer depends entirely on which "felt need" is greater:
your hunger or your hurry.
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