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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?"
Is that possible? That sort of sounds like time travel to me.
Why does a little bitty radio station need a computer?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I've got an harmonica up my ass. It plays music when I fart.
For Mac users, the Griffin Powerwave has the following features:
RCA input and outputs, 1/8" inputs and outputs, built in USB hub and DSP, digital audio amplifier.
Wintel folks will want to check out the Telex device. Edirol UA-1A (44.1 kHz only), Edirol UA-3, GriffiniMic, Opcode DAT-/SonicPort (optical), Onkyo MSE-U33(HB), Onkyo SE-U55 and Roland-ED UA-30.
How many of these have drivers for Linux is anybody's guess.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Read the fucking article!
... how are these radio stations different from the kind you listen to. Then you know why they want digital media.
Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov. Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males."
All reports indicate that we have a booming economy right now, but few understand why this is so. I hate to disappoint my friends on the radical left, but it has nothing to do with Bonnie and Clyde Clinton or the Democratic Party, or with any other party for that matter. What I'm about to say is tantamount to blasphemy in this politically correct day and age; yet truth is truth. How long are we going to pretend that origins play no role in our world, the origins of the inventions, science, technology, and economics of the world in which we live?
Our present economic boom is due to the revolution in electronics and computer technology. But saying this is not enough, for these things didn't just spring into existence by themselves. They have traceable origins. And all of our "booms," throughout history, have the same origins as this one. It's no mystery. Just look at the list of names in your history books, and their national origins.
The great majority of "booms" past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from non-whites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males.
Curse me, or all white males, if you wish, that changes nothing. But if you call me a liar, you'll have to come up with the proof that I'm wrong. Remember, I didn't say there were no important contributions by non-whites; I said the overwhelming majority. Of course, I know about such things as the Chinese and gunpowder, but they didn't take it much beyond firecrackers and pyrotechnics. And I know about the pyramids and masonry of South America and the zero of the Arabs.
Would we have atomic physics and electricity if it hadn't been for the ancient Greek philosophers who, for example, had the idea that all matter consists of tiny atoms? Aristotle (5th century, B.C., 25th century pre P.C.) used electric charges to treat gout! Archimedes perceived the center of gravity of solids, cylinders, and spheres. From the basic discoveries of Greek civilization it went to the Romans and after the fall of Rome, it passed to later Europeans who expanded on this scientific knowledge. In modern times these ideas were developed by such Europeans as Volta, Ampere, Watts, Bell, Edison, and Einstein, who provided the basis for most of the technical wonders of today. All of them dreaded white males.
Maybe you got your enlightenment from one of the Ivy-League institutions of dis-education. Maybe they taught you that it's all the result of white racism and oppression. That every time a potential Einstein, Edison, or Ford popped up in the Third World, a White hit-squad would swoop down and eliminate him before he had a chance to prove himself. Or maybe their schools refused to teach him in the Ebonics of his day. Or maybe they didn't have proper daycare facilities. Or maybe our would-be innovator came from a "dysfunctional family."
But the facts tell us that many of the great men pursued their genius at great personal risk--like the astronomer Galileo, who proved that the earth revolves around the sun. He and other men of genius and courage refused to be suppressed even if it meant their lives. They would permit no race, gender, group or class to keep them from their pursuit of truth and excellence whatever the cost.
If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a turd-world cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life- improving inventions that we now enjoy?
Now it is certainly true that China did lead the world in technology and commercial inventiveness about 1,000 years ago. They had great coal-mining operations, gunpowder, six-masted sailing ships, and intense commercial enterprise. But it all collapsed because the elites, the long-nailed Mandarins, centralized control--1,000 years before Mao--and crushed the expansion and inventions.
Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own, be he a white male or other, be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a democratic society it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.
Wah. Wah. Cry wah. Fuck you commie. You leftish shit. Lets make the doors out of paper to let the burgulars in, give a big hug and try to kiss and make friends lalalalalal.
This thread is making me sick, and all the commie leftist biased shit going on makes me even more sick.
There are those few people here which have said some conservative sense to these leftists that would teach gay love to young boys for the sake of diversity.
No one holds a gun to your head to eat that fuckin' McDonalds. NO ONE. These third world saps suck up American culture because they are busy chopping clitorises off of women, suppressing ethnic minority groups though genocide or some other bull shit.
People are way to young and don't read much history. Ask Tibet how it likes China's takeover. Ask the Chinks how they like the Japs when they killed 100,000's during the occupation of Manchuria. Ask any of the down trodden eastern Europeans how it felt to have the long spear of the Soviet Ramrod up their asses during the cold war days? How bout a nice day in a GOULAG? How about making bomb shelters in Iraq near legit military targets to get "bad lefty communist like Christiana AMAPOUR to report civvie deaths even though Hussein is at fault?" How about starving Iraqi "children" aka terrorists in training starving to death because their leader is spending upwards ot 50B/year in WMD research. How about Canada and France selling No. Ko. reactor parts, great fuckin friends we have. How about getting the death penalty in Singapore for smoking a joint? How about giving the Middle East nations the oil fields back (after we built huge oil platforms for them, because the tent dwelling cretins were too fucking retarded to do it themselves). Oh, Mr. Bad USA, gave the panama canal back. How about a USA so weak right now fucking Chinks want to buy out Global Crossing (a big chunk of the FUCKING INTERNET WE INVENTED, PIONEERED) after the chinks were handed all sorts of shit by the CLINTOON administration, and Terry McAuliffe.
FUCK TIHS ANTI AMERICAN shit. all the foreigners who get here legally stay for a fucking damn good reason. And I welcome you, so long as you pay taxes - do what you fuckin want.
This is historically unfounded. We get over our vices and inconsistencies fast here. USA makes mistakes, but the Sudanese still have slavery, we don't. We got over slavery damn quick compared to the rest of the world. We came a long way on suffrage (the right to vote to all the bleeding heart commies who have yet to pay much into the system yet). We may not be perfect yet, but shit, its far from shit. very far.
I hate the commie shit socialists who want the least common denominator for everyone.
FUCK YOU. Id rather nuke your ass and suck up some nice radiation I paid for that share my home with you fucking lazy un-working vermin.
I'll never worry about losing the cure for cancer by nuking dumps like Iraq, because these defunct shithead countries will never make one.
There is so much trash going around on this thread, it makes me laugh. Pseudo educated suppressed homosexuals (not that homosexuality is bad, but suppressing it, geeze you liberal fucks should spread the cheeks and get it done with, you spit your wad a lot harder when the person fucking your ass has a towel on his head) eructating puerile shit.
I'm glad we are planning to make it possible to put me into bondage. I would rather die than be in bondage to these shitty subversive chinks or commies or morally bankrupt suppressive shitass Islamic Towelheads.
We have said for 40 years plus, you do it, you think about it, and you are gone. the red button gets pressed, the red telephone gets slammed on the receiver.
The Japs did well surrendering to us. They are the second or third largest economy in the World, jeeze, the USA really sucks to surrender to , huh? You tools need to think - you really think the US didn't do them a favor by burning down that house? They made off with our car industry for Christ's sake, and boy, I do love driving my Japanese car - its great. And I fucking paid it off in 9 months, $33,000 bucks. And not, its not public property, you cant have a ride, fuck off , its mine I PAID FOR IT. None of this commie shit.
John Walker scume floating around Marin. Bezerkelyite fuckers with Barney Telletubbie view of the world scumballing their shit subversive agenda.
I must say, piss on John Asscraft for being a fascist shit. I may hate you leftist fuck commies, but this right wing fascist shit sucks too.
Really, really. What is going on? There are circles of power, some leaning left, some leaning right, some existing for themselves. They divide the people of the world, always focusing on what makes us different! Are you a fag or not? Are you black or white? Are you left or right? Are you a fat fuck? You know what - I don't give a shit what you are, and that's still my fucking car. The circles of power want us to fight amongst ourselves while the prance off with all the fucking money and power.
Everyone wants a nice Japanese import car, real medical care (not socialized shit, like that shit in the UK where if you reach a certain age you entitlement to care is GONE, like if you get dialysis, hit age 65, they PULL THE FUCKING PLUG, because they are commie shits), they want halfway decent schools, freedom to think etc. We got all that here. I live it. You fall on your face here because you are lazy, not a caste system.
Tactical nukes are appropriate, and we had the finger on the button the last 50 years, we just want to remind the world, hey, have a wet dream, and well have a coupla kilotons of force to save us some money.
Appeasing Hitler landed Neville Chamberlain in the historical doghouse, and it took Winston Churchill to show the world the right way. To quote Churchill, "'Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others,'"
All high and mighty EU, they armed these fucking countries. Half the Islamic nations shit came from French military hardware, roundly supplemented by the zipper heads. The I hear some leftist shit in this thread quote MAO the DUNG on the US being the "paper tiger". HAH. Nice life expectancy in China there, Mao Tse Dung. Nice going, harvesting organs from political prisoners for the highest bidders and government dignitaries.
Commies say big business is evil. Hah. The "Evil" Big Business: Doesn't exist like you think it does. I am in a small business. My small business was created from money from big business to innovate new technology to stop Internet DDOS attacks. The innovation would be a B2B service for medium and small businesses. I get my health care, dental, paid vacation and education subsidy either directly or indirectly from Big "Evil?" Business. One could way to make things work better would be to give outright tax credits to companies doing good things in their communities, like building schools or repairing roads or bridges. I'm sure HP could negotiate a better price for the "NEW BAY AREA BRIDGE" than the cabal of stupid idiots running Oakland and San Francisco. Now that I think of HP, I think of a huge company that has built several hospitals and given BILLIONS of dollars in charity through the "David and Lucille Packard Foundation" - established 1964. General Electric was run by a bottom-to-top rags-to-riches engineer-to-CEO JACK WELCH [http://www.straightfromthegut.com/ good book]. Mr. Welch, a native of Salem, Massachusetts, served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Electric from 1981-2001. He was nicknamed "Chainsaw" or "Neutron Jack" because he fired people. He was painted as evil He was the epitome of an evil CEO. Yeah riiiight. He fired the lower 10% every year. He removed the bottom 10% with sound metrics. He FIRED losers. And those vocal minority losers who can't work up to corporate standards whined and pissed and made the public think that he was "EVIL." The losers seem to speak up the loudest. By the way, GE has a long standing tradition of employee investment - education subsidy, good pensions, health care, etc etc. Yeah, GE dumped shit in the Hudson. Yes, GE made mistakes. The Chinese STILL dump shit in their rivers, we stopped doing it 30 years ago. Does it help GE to maximize shareholder profit if they are being forced to clean up shit they dump? No, so they stopped doing it a LONG time ago. Are some businesses evil? Yes. Are they all, flat out NO. It doesn't pay long term to be "evil."
Point: Be angry at the media for sucking, be angry at the government for wasting your money. Unless we get a western version of Mohandas Gandhi, be angry with every single Congressman, Senator whatever else. They step on your heads everyday.
Time to go read about some new scientific discoveries or new information about open source software or something interesting. Politics suck.
God I love those Krauts too. The fucking purified leftovers from the National Socialist party. Fuck you krauts. You started two god damn world wars. This Eurotarded Eurotrash Union is a suck bag quagmire of shit.
And these Towelheads and their newfound love for Palestine. Keep in mind these Palestinian vagrants have been booted out of every ISLAMIC nation they try to infect. They are hooligan vagrants , and if you replaced Israel with lets say, a pro Towel regime like France, they would be next on hit list of all the adjacent Arab nations. No one wants to pay for these tent toting Neanderthalic holdovers from the 3rd century. May as well kill them. We wont have to in the long run, the morally bankrupt Islamic nations will mop them up for us when they have expired their usefulness to their twisted cause.
And everyone blames DUBYA, like one person runs the fucking country. Meanwhile, the Congress and Senate make all the fuckin laws, the only power W gets is a big fat Veto. There isn't much the legislative branch can't override. DYBYA has an big administration, so of it is typical Right wing special interest trash, some of it is true blue pro the future of America. Shit, these people have to have some notion of self preservation. Every single Bush family relative isn't surviving WWIII, fuck, I'd be willing to be that 90% of everyone in that administration's extended families would be dead as doornails if there was an all out nuclear conflict. No one wants an extended nuclear conflict, but I would pay front row admission to see bin Towelheads skin get baked off by a tactical nuke dropped off by a Predator or some shit. You don't eve have to aim.
The geopolitical situation in the world is not solely exacerbated by the US. It is bullshit to think that this country control the world's direction. People want what we have and aren't willing to adopt our ways. We get what we want by worshipping our own dollar, more than POWER or RELIGION. Its only natural cretins don't catch on to this and feel like trying to defeat us "imperialists." Hey, quick secret you fuckers who hate us - STOP BUYING AND SELLING SHIT TO US, STOP USING OUR CURRENCY. I would be willing to bet that most of the world printed US currency isn't even in the US. Out of many one, e plurbus unum. Printed on the fucking money. I don't buy trickle down doesn't work either, our success trickles down. People think we should have the upper hand after we invent all this shit and create a venue for success because they are failures in life and have to resort to communism or socialism to make up for the fact they need Viagra to get it up, another American invention.
I love how America is seen as this pretty glass castle, and the rest of the serfs plowing the fields for a fair wage all start tossing rocks because they or their culture or their family failed to give the intellectual tools to succeed. Yeah, that's our fault.
I don't think an Islamic person will ever set foot off this planet, because anything not of the planet or Mecca or any aliens are probably UNCLEAN, UNHOLY and vile, and they MUST BEND to ALLAHS will. I cant believe people still believe in this superstitious bullshit.
Hey lefty, youll get extra credit for your shit clas at Berkelely - its called the SUNDANESE CULTURAL CLASS, 101, learn to carve a girls clitoris off! 4 CREDITS!
Why does a local radio station need computer connectivity and minidisks? What on earth is wrong with a cheap AM or shortwave transmitter? And what's wrong with analog audio cassettes? Apart from the power source for the transmitter (and AM and shortwave draw a whole lot less power than FM), this equipment should cost maybe $50 per station, including an old microphone and 2-channel mixing board. And the equipment for such a station can be fixed by anyone, using salvaged parts.
And as for using it to read internet content, how is this village connecting to the internet? If they've got reasonable phones, I guess you could do ftp-by-mail and fetch it overnight by UUCP on a 386. Surely realtime web surfing is an expensive pipe dream in these places. Why on earth is a serious computer with USB at all necessary? In a village where a modern (say, Pentium) computer could be put to much much better use, like public e-mail, research, weather and agricultural data analysis and so forth, setting up a needlessly fancy computerized local radio station is idiocy.
What part of reading news and information that (in a remote village in the developing world) will almost certainly come delayed in the form of text email requires a computer hooked to the radio station?
Can't someone just print stuff out from the village computer (on a reliable, unglamorous, and cheap-to-supply-with-ink dot-matrix printer) and read it on the air on an AM/shortwave station with ten times the range running on a tenth the power of FM? And if they've got to record it for rebroadcast or something, what's wrong with a cheap mono cassette boombox from a backpacker's duffel bag?
My god, have aid agencies gone insane?
Most audio equipment transfers at 1:1, as I'm sure you've noticed. I went shopping for portable audio recording equipment, and ended up with a Roland/Edirol UA-5.
I already had a laptop and plenty of drive space, and the UA-5 has some very nice preamps and ADCs for the price, as well as being quite small and tough. 24/96 for a very reasonable price.
If you do go this route, I'd recommend one of the modified units, or a competitor, that has simulaneous digital outs when recording for backup to another medium, such as DAT.
Minidiscs were out, because of the short record time at higher quality, and the lack of digital outs short of the large home decks. The size/battery life were nice, but the DRM lost them a customer.
There is a lively laptop-taping group at yahoo groups.
You may be interested in the newer HD-based MP3 players.. Nomad Jukebox 3 has a 20-gig drive, and an optical input, and can record to mp3 or wave, as well as an analog in, and supports firewire for fast transfers. I've never used one, so YMMV. It claims 22 hours battery life with a second battery, but I'd take that with an external battery pack (salt not required).
Or for lower-quality, but cheap and portable, look at dictation tape machines, as you mentioned voice content. Many can 'squeal' at higher rates, and you can correct for this by adjusting your sample rate.
There are much higher-end units out there, but they don't seem ideal for rough field conditions, and are overkill for a short-range mono station.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
MiniDisc is an excellent format for Amatuer-Semi Pro Use in this capicity. Some of Sony's new portables have usb built in and transfer at least 4x. Most recorders have optical ins, which when combined with the appropriate out allow you to fill a disc at 1x without interaction. I have used MD for years as a theatrical sound designer and I can not say enough good things about it. I build my shows on the pc and burn them to minidisc so that I can edit on the spot.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
I did days of research on USB digital recorders. I came to the conclusion that the Sony ICD-BP100 (now ICD-BP150) was the best. It is very expensive, $150.00. It does not have Windows XP certified drivers, which means that it crashes Windows XP when trying to hibernate if the unit is plugged in.
However, the sound quality is excellent. There is provision to save to
Recording directly to a computer doesn't work well, because of the intense radio frequency interference associated with the fast components inside the computer. USB microphones may help with this, but they are half the price of a digital recorder.
Perhaps it would be useful if the question were taken simply at face value and answered without needlessly questioning the premise of the question.
I'm guessing that those who are ripping apart this fellow's need for the things he asks for are not development specialists (economic development, that is), and I'm guessing that they don't have a great deal of experience in India specifically. The debate they have sparked is dilatory.
Sony's MZ-N1 Minidisc Recorder might be what you're looking for. I have one and I love it. It can record audio data coming through the USB port of a computer at 32X realtime while in MDLP4 mode(which means that one regular 74 minute MD lasts 4 times as long).
MDLP4 sounds indistuingishable from MP3 audio, but if that's not good enough, MDLP2 touts speeds of 16X and regular recording (highest quality) records at 8X. It can also upload just as fast, and even though you currently have to import it from Japan, the software installs itself in English.
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR.
I worked at a radio station in Oxford, UK, for a couple of years. We had Minidisk gear, and we found that all of it (but particularly portable players) was fragile, and prone to breakdown and failure at awkward moments.
We used it because there was nothing better; but in the environment you are talking about, this is definitely not appropriate technology.
Gerv
the midiman quattro is a good USB digital audio device...not faster than real time, but then again the question didn't make much sense.
http://midiman.com/products/m-audio/quattro.php
Kenny Sabarese
www.kennysabarese.com
Take your audio stream, and encode it down, then it will transfer in no time at all.
even at 50Kb (modem speed) its not going to take more than a few minutes to download an hours worth of spoken voice.
If you setup an ftp site, it would make archives readily availble in the future.
I'm still not clear where digital audio comes into this. Is this data requested for broadcast being read aloud and digitized by a central team and being e-mailed out to the villages? It sounded more like text was being sent to the villages.
Even so, I still don't see why faster-than-realtime dubbing is at all important to something like this, or why unreliable, developing-world internet connectivity (read: slow modems doing UUCP or such) is seen as a good way to move audio around, even 8 kbit/sec low-quality audio. Wouldn't broadcasting the audio via ham radio on a regular schedule be much cheaper and more reliable? To fetch the appropriate audio for a given village in order to rebroadcast it, all you'd need is a cheap tape recorder, a cheap shortwave receiver with BFO, and.. well.. a lamp timer to start recording at that village's assigned time. No phone lines, no computers deployed in villages, and no $300 minidisc recorders that'll be broken within six months.
Need the ability to edit in locally-produced audio, too? Okay: give them a second cassette recorder, a couple of blank tapes and a dubbing cable.
This would cost a fraction as much as the computer/minidisk arrangement, be more reliable, more maintainable and more sustainable.
Less glamorous, I'll grant, and maybe it doesn't give IT people involved in the aid organization much to do, but imagine the warm fuzzy feeling you'll get when followup site inspections a few years down the road find equipment still in working order.
Am I missing some key thing that necessitates computers and digital media in each village?
Man, our public radio station must be doing really bad if little Indian villages have computers.
We have cassette and minidisc. and it took 8 months to convince our stingy finance director to let go of enough money to buy an MD recorder.
you do not need a computer for recording. It basically just replicates what the MD can do. I doubt that your people want to do complex editing.
put your money into microphones, codecs, and your transmitter.
No, it does not disable. Windows XP malfunctions.
The Sony doesn't use a legacy driver. It uses a driver that has not been approved by Microsoft.