🚀 go-pugleaf

>I heard on the radio the other day that instead of using conventional
>cassette tapes to store commercials and other such clipettes,
   Actually broadcast (Radio and TV) stations use 'Carts',  A 
technology that dates back to 4-track tapes!  (Note that I said 
4-track and not 8-track.)

>radio DJ's are beginning to use 3.5 inch microdiskettes instead. It was my
>understanding from the news I heard that the information was not
>stored digitally, but rather was analog, much like conventional
>cassette tapes. The advantage in doing things this way was that they
>could program a computer (I think they mentioned a macintosh) to play
>clipettes at appropriate times, do special effects, etc. 
>
>Can anyone tell me if this is a common thing, that is, storing analog
>information (or rather, storing information in analog) on media
>conventionally used to store digital info? Obviously the hardware
>needed to read/store such analog information would differ from
>conventional disk drives; does anyone know which manufactures make such
>equipment? Also: storing a song or a picture in analog takes up much
>less media space compared to digital, is that not true? (Of course at
>the expense of many other things, I am aware . . . .).

    I havn't heard of anyone storing analog data on Diskettes.  It would
mean a major modification of the drives, and media.  Digital information
is encoded much differently than audio.  Digital drives saturate the 
media with magnetic flux where Analog uses a method known as biasing and
doesn't saturate the tape.  

    The latest 'hot' item for stations now is Audio Workstations.  A 
Audio Workstation is basicly a computer, large hard disk (100-300MB or
more), and A-D and D-A converters.  The software creates graphic 
representations of the audio.  This may be the actual waveform plotted
out or a block that represents the waveform.  The software normally will
support cutting and pasting of the audio, say by dragging a cursor 
across the waveform and selecting it and then commanding the software
to either copy or cut the section.  Much the same way you would use
something like a word processing programme on the Mac to cut and paste
text.

    The cost of audio workstations have come down quite a bit in the
past few months.  Companies like Studer and AKG have stations between
&10K and $100K.  The costs are almost what a good 2-track may cost.

    Workstations are the production end of theings.  If you want
digital audio for the 'air' side of things, you can purchase a box
like the CompuSonics drives that will store the produced audio on
a Bernulli disk.  The drives look and act much like a 'Cart' machine
where they only have simple functions like 'play', 'stop', and 'cue'
where you can select the cut you need.  The drives will display the
'cart' title, out-cue, and time in a LCD window on the drive.  

   These digital 'cart' machines go for some where between $6K to
$15K.  Or about twice to three times the cost of a good cart machine.

                              Tim

-- 
Tim Pozar    Try also...
uunet!hoptoad!kumr!pozar      Fido: 1:125/555      PaBell: (415) 788-3904
      USNail:  KKSF-FM / 77 Maiden Lane /  San Francisco CA 94108