Social Networking and ISDN

I did an ISDN link yesterday connecting with WBUR in Boston for NPR's radio show On Point. In Studio C at Studio West was James Fowler, professor of Political Science at USCD. One of the cool perks of this job is that we do lots of ISDN connections with various NPR stations, so we get to hear lots of different interviews on all kinds of topics. It's like being back in college and having to go to sociology lectures, but getting paid for it too! Yesterday's session had an interesting twist. I'm using social media right now (this blog), to comment on a show that was discussing the underlying twists of social media. 

Do your friends' friends' friends actions and opinions have an effect on everything you do? Is it possible that what you do today via your social media network may influence what your friends' friends' friends do tomorrow? For example, if you loose weight and blog about it, are your friends likely to loose weight, too? You'd be surprised at the findings; I was!  It was a very interesting show; If you've got a free few minutes, check out the podcast. 

A little about the studio setup. James was seated on a stool in the Studio C booth at a Neuman U87. I ran the 87 through a Focusrite Red 7 mic preamp with slight compression, 3:1, with a light threshold of a light threshold of straight up on the Red 7. We use Telos Zephyr ISDN interfaces in Studio B and Studio C. Our connection codecs were XMIT L2 128 and RCV L2 - a very standard configuration. I recorded the ISDN send to WBUR (James' voice) and the ISDN feed to us as a backup. It was a standard ISDN session configuration. Session setup was 44.1, 24 bit, WAV. The session consisted of a single audio track for James, a stereo aux track for the ISDN feed received from Boston, and a mono aux that we patch the DCommand's talk-back into - so we can easily send console talk-back both to the mix going to Boston and the cue mix going to the booth. It's a standard configuration we use in Studio B and Studio C for ISDN and phone patch sessions.  

In case you're wondering, "What is ISDN?", think of it as a special, very high quality phone line. It uses compression technology to encode on the sending side and decode on the receiving side. Two phone lines are required. Both studios involved in the session need to have similar ISDN Interfaces installed and correctly configured. This way, we can have a voice talent in San Diego connected to an agency in New York and it sounds like they're right in the agency's booth. Very cool technology - kind of expensive, but still much cheaper than flying to New York for a three hour session! 

Remember to support your local NPR station! 

Mark Kirchner