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USB Audio Recorders?
arunmehta asks: "We're setting up short-range mono FM radio stations in Indian villages. We're currently recommending minidisk recorders to tape and edit (mostly voice) -- does anyone have a better idea? In some stations, we will also implement radio-surfing, so there will be a PC available, and so would like some USB-type connectivity that allows bidirectional transfer of digital audio at speeds higher than real-time. Suggestions for a recorder?"
Why does a little bitty radio station need a computer?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
1. Anyone handy with a knife and a screwdriver--and I mean anyone--can build an AM or shortwave transmitter with miles of range from a few dollars' worth of parts, and can do so for even less with salvaged parts. FM's not forbiddingly complex, but it does need bigger, more precisely measured antennas and bigger transformers, and a lot more juice.
2. Shortwave receivers are expensive in the United States. The receivers used in countries like India--espeically in remote parts of the country that aren't even served by FM--are cheap. Rural India is not the same as suburban Bangalore. As with western China, much of Siberia and much of Africa, where the population is either sparse or very poor, the short range, expensive equipment, and high power requirements of FM don't make much sense.
3. Who said anything about reel-to-reel tape? Who said anything about "professional-quality" audio? This is a community-radio project. They're broadcasting news, weather, and farming reports. For half a century, the world was more than happy with the sound quality of AM broadcasts. People even listened to music on it. Billions of people still do. Plain old consumer-grade cassette tape should be more than adequate for something like this. Minidisc media are expensive. The recorders and playback devices are expensive both to obtain and to repair. And they need repair a whole lot more often than a $20 cassette recorder. Not to mention training involved, and the relative vandalism and theft risks.
Radio journalists worked for many decades with plain cassette recorders, without even Dolby B. I think Indian villagers can, too, especially for broadcasting speech.