Archive for October, 2008

A Beginner Buyers Guide to Videoconferencing Equipment

Thursday, October 30th, 2008
audio equipment
Jason Cox asked:


The technology that makes up a videoconference (also called a videoteleconference or simply VTC) is known as digital compression of audio and video stream in real time. The videoconferencing software or hardware that makes the compression happen is referred to as a codec (or sometimes it is called a coder/decoder). The achievement for rates of compression is up to approximately 1:500.

The digital stream of ones and zeros that is a result of all of this is then broken down even further into what is known as packets. These packets are then navigated by way of a digital computer network, whether it is an IP or an ISDN. Audio modems are used in the line of transmission, which makes full use of plain telephony network (abbreviated to POTS) in a variety of types of applications of low-speed, for example, videotelephony because they convert the digital pulse to/from analog waves in the audio spectrum range.

Other necessary elements of videoconferencing equipment include the video input which consists of a video camera or a webcam; the video output which is a television or computer monitor; the audio input, which is microphones; the audio output which often consists of loudspeakers that have a strong association with either the telephone or the display device and finally, the data transfer which is either an analog or a digital telephone network, and either the Internet or LAN.

At any given time the kind of videoconferencing equipment that is needed and how it is arranged about a room depends on the individual who is making use of the equipment (and his/her skill level) and the context in which the videoconferencing system is to be utilized.

Videoconferencing equipment falls under one of three kinds of setups. The equipment must all comply with H.320 standards and these standards vary depending on the kind of videoconference that will be taking place as well as the size in terms of people and place, that the conference is to be. The three kinds are room systems, roll-about units and desktop systems.

Room systems are geared towards videoconferencing involving a large group of individuals, for example a training session, a group interview, a debate a group meeting and so on. Room systems (sometimes referred to as dedicated systems) are usually housed in rooms custom built with videoconferencing in mind. They generally contain cameras and a number of computer monitors.

Room systems are all-in-one and have all necessary pieces of equipment contained together in a single location. These high quality remote controlled video cameras are known as PTZ cameras and can be maneuvered in a number of different directions. The console part houses the control computer, the hardware or software-based codec and any and all electrical interfaces.

Attached to the console is microphones known as omnidirectional microphones and also attached is a television monitor that comes complete with loudspeakers and/or could also include a video projector.

There are three kinds of dedicated (or room) systems and they include large group, small group and individual videoconferencing. Large group videoconferencings are big and cannot be moved from their original spot. Also these kinds are pricier and tend to be used for auditoriums and large sized rooms. Small group videoconferencing is sometimes portable while others are not. They are smaller in size, cheaper in price and are intended for smaller capacity meeting rooms. Individual videoconferencing is intended for individual users and are usually portable. Built into the console are fixed cameras, loudspeakers and microphones.

The most commonly used form of videoconferencing equipment is the roll-about unit and these kinds are most suited for small sized conferences or smaller capacity group meetings. The roll-about units are to be found in a cart that contains one or sometimes two computers, monitors, a camera, codec and any other essential equipment. The only drawback of the roll-about unit setup is the lack of access of a network in a conference room despite this fact.

Desktop systems are add-ons, such as hardware boards for example, that make it possible for a personal computer to become a device used for videoconferencing. A camera, microphone, software and boards are equipped to the computer and this allows the videoconferencing session to take place. The board contains of the codec and transmission interfaces and a number of camera and microphones can be made use of for the purpose.

The computer can connect to a variety of different websites but it most appropriate for one-on-one types of conferences. This form of a videoconference is also known as an e-meeting.



Constance

Have you heard of Sherwood brand (audio equipment)?

Sunday, October 26th, 2008
audio equipment
this_boy asked:


I’m looking at a turntable PM-9805, great price but very little reviews of it on the internet. Does anyone know how Sherwood rates among tech maniacs?

Adrian

What kind of engineers make audio equipments?

Friday, October 24th, 2008
audio equipment
flashboy asked:


Do electronic engineers make audio equipment like headphones, amps, and speakers? And do you learn this in engineering schools in college?

Jim

Things To Know About Different DJ Equipment

Friday, October 24th, 2008
audio equipment
Victor Epand asked:


If you are interested in becoming a Disc Jockey (DJ) you have come to the right place. To become a DJ you have got to first learn the art of mixing. You have to be well versed with the rhythm and remixing. But before you start you need to own a set of DJ equipment, which includes turntables, headphones, mixer and a good set of speakers.

These DJ equipments are costly and therefore it is important to do a thorough research before purchasing them. The following details the basic equipment that you need before starting your career as a DJ.

A turntable is generally a rotating platform maintaining a constant speed motor driven phonograph or a gramophone. This DJ equipment is used to mix and scratch records. It has given rise to the term turntabilism and has led to professional CD players with the same capability. When you are looking forward to buying a turntable make sure you consider the features, which include the following.

- Direct drive to give you better control over how fast the record will start and stop.

- Tone arm feature gives you the option to adjust your tone. The tone arm up and down in combination along with the anti-skate mechanism can produce a proper tone arm balance.

- Anti-shake feature gives the tone arm just enough balance as not to skip when playing.

- Make sure your tone arm has a counterweight feature, which is used to give the proper balance for the tone arm itself so as to not damage the needle while playing your vinyl.

- The pitch control is needed because the 33 and 45 RPMs (Revolutions Per Minute) settings are not enough. Your pitch control should be on the right hand side and have a positive and negative range of 896.

Another important part of DJ equipment to make it a complete system is a good set of speakers. You need to buy quality speakers, but you need to know exactly what you are looking for. Some of the important features that you need to look into while buying this DJ equipment is the watts, dimension of the speakers, quality of the speaker box itself, and magnet size. The most important thing to do while buying speakers is you need to hear how it sounds with a quality mix tape.

Another DJ equipment that you cannot do without is the DJ mixer. It is a full-featured DJ and beat mixing system to create your own custom DJ style music. They can include both audio and even video player with two independent decks and professional sound quality. It can sync beat and has pitch control. It has 2 to 6 stereo channels for connecting and mixing audio sources. Each channel has a phono input with RIAA equalization for turntables. It also has one or two lines level input options for other sources such as CD players and laptop.

Besides that it has 2 or 3 microphone inputs, peak meters to aid matching levels between channels and monitor the signal for clipping. It also has a headphone jack plugs and a headphone volume control.

Besides the above-mentioned DJ equipment, there are other software programs that can support the best DJ solutions with pro quality. They can add to your DJ equipment and give extra advantage to your DJ work. It can enhance your creativity in creating music on your PC as well.



Nicholas

how do I hide audio/video equipment?

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
audio equipment
Joo M asked:


I want to mount plasma TV over firepalce, but hide all the audio/video/cable equipment in the side of the room (15 feet away). Is there an equipment that I can buy to hook up to my receiver that allows me to run just 1 wire to the TV and control input to TV with a remote control ? Rather than having all different DVD/cable/DVR cable wires running to the TV? Ideally, it would be a HDMI that I run to TV and somehow convert cable/DVD/VHS/DVR or any other video input. Is this a possibility or is there a better solution? I just don’t want to see the equipment out in the open w/ all the wires.. They are not the best things to look at…

Clyde

Audio Books - from LP to MP3

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
audio equipment
Rolf Zimmerli asked:


Audio books are a great way to use ‘empty’ time. Load an audio book into your MP3 player or iPod - you can find audio books for just about any interest, from novels to business books and audio books about self-improvement to even the bible or the coran. You can find them 24 hours a day, just by clicking a few buttons on your computer and an internet shop delivers the contents for your iPod or MP3 player conveniently to you.

Even if they have only become very popular again recently, the concept of audio books goes back about eighty years! Initially books on tape or on LP’s were produced for the blind. Here’s a short look back in history:

Already in the 1920’s, the Royal National Institute for the Blind in England (RNIB) initiate research to find the best way to produce audio books for blind soldiers that were the result of the World War I battles. They finally decide to produce audio books on LP’s and the first ones were made in 1926. To play them they were put on the old fashioned LP players that had to be cranked by hand and delivered the sound through the big horn. This was a great development for the blind, but was hardly used by normal consumers. So these audio books from RNIB remained a niche product and never reached the masses.

The concept was successful and in 1936 the Royal National Institute for the Blind launched the ‘Talking Book Service’. The first two books they produced were:’The murder of Roger Ackroyd’ (Agatha Christie) and ‘Thyphoon’ (Joseph Conrad). Because the records could only hold 25 minutes of spoken text, an average audio book had to be recorded on an average of ten records.

During WWII, the studio used by the RNIB was bombed, and one month later a replacement studio was bombed as well, destroying much needed equipment to continue the production. The American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), who had started to produce audio books in the USA sent replacement parts and equipment to London so that the production could be taken up again.

The old fashioned LP’s were replaced by modern LP’s and finally cassettes, making listening to audio books more convenient. Sony’s Walkman made it possible to take your audio book with you and listen on the go. This is when audio books started to be bought by the general consumers. The next step was to produce these listening books on CD, making them even more convenient.

Over the last few years the audio book technology has made a quantum leap: Digital MP3 files can be packed onto a player that weighs only a few grams and runs on a set of batteries for many hours. The most popular player is without doubt the Apple iPod, but there are many other MP3 players on the market that have helped to make listening to content on the go very popular.

Finding an audio book is as easy as typing an address into your internet browser, consulting the catalog of the audio book shop and then downloading your audio book within minutes. No more need to visit your local library or book shop. If you want to shop at 3 am - no problem, the shop is open 24 hours!

One shop that offers a wide variety of audio books is the AudioBooksCorner Store. High quality audio books from publishers like BBC, Hachette and many others cover a wide variety of topics. Best selling authors offer their books as audio books and the well known foreign language courses by Pimsleur are available for download too.



Jay

Audio Visual System Integrations- What, Why and How?

Saturday, October 18th, 2008
audio equipment
rajan mr asked:


What grabs the eye of the audience at the first go? The answer is the display. What is necessary for keeping up with the pace of the display attention you are getting? Answer would be the audio clarity of the message that is being conveyed. Now how is it supposed to happen at the same time? The answer is audio visual system integrators.

Audio visual systems play an immense role in the technology enriched life of people these days. Be it any event, occasion or episode which involves giving presentations of any sort, it requires proper audio visual system settings.

Sometimes the event has to be held in a small meeting room for maybe 50 people and sometimes there is a mass waiting to listen to what you have to say, the need is nevertheless imperative. The system integrations requirements for a small scale event might be different from the large scale events, but the importance of having professional audio and visual integration is more or less the same.

Audio visual machinery helps to collectively organize the audio and the visual sound effects for clear communication of the message. Display devices like the video monitors, projectors, plasma screens, video cubes or walls could be used to give the visual effect that one asks for and the audio devices like the microphones, speakers could be used to providing the clarity to communicate the message. One could also use the video equipments like the DVDs, video peripherals and computer supplements to bring life into the entire event.

For having a perfect conferencing environment and make the impact more overpowering there is a requirement for organized audio-visual system integrators. Usually business presentations are audio-visual to have a pronounced effect, instead of the traditional “single-person” giving the entire presentation without any audio-visual aids. These kinds of presentations involve the person giving the presentation which is the audio and projector and certain such devices like slide projector, or digital projectors connected to laptops of computers to give the visual effects. This was talking about the business formal presentations. What if there is a grand ceremony or a party? You would like to have the best lights settings, proper screens fixed and speakers all throughout the place. Integrating all of these to get what you want is audio visual system integration.

For tech freaks this Audio visual system integration industry is nevertheless the best it could get, in the terms of the newest and biggest brands investing in this and the ever-changing technology up gradations that occur for these audio visual systems. There is always someone coming up with some new feature and some new technology or machinery. There are innumerous products in market which meet the audio visual system integration requirements for you. Even if you are not tech savvy, to make all this audio visual system integration a task which could be managed easily there are the control features induced these days. These are like the medium that surpass the complexity of handling these systems with ease. Touch panels, remote controls, wireless remote controls, wall fixed touch screens and button controls and such similar stuff make the entire audio visual system integration thing easy to handle.



Francis

How much would it cost to rent video and audio equipment to make a short film?

Friday, October 17th, 2008
audio equipment
Jenny P asked:


I am developing a summer program for class that teaches youth about diversity and socially responsible media. Specifically they will learn how to develop, produce, direct, and edit film. The youth will have the opportunity to develop their own media piece (e.g. a short film or music video). I am trying to come up with a rough estimate for how much it would cost to rent the equipment the youth will need to develop their media piece. I would need the equipment for approximately 16 weeks. The problem is I know nothing about film production, and don’t know the equipment I would need. So my question is two fold: (1) what equipment would I need to create a short film and/or music video, and (2) roughly how much would it cost to rent that equipment for a 16 week period? THANK YOU!

Dennis

M-audio Products for Students

Saturday, October 11th, 2008
audio equipment
Nicole Sadjadi asked:


Many schools are looking for affordable, and portable equipment for their classrooms. Today’s music hardware can be replaced by software and affordable USB controller keyboards and audio interfaces. M-Audio provides digital audio and MIDI solutions for today’s electronic musicians and audio professionals. Equipment like this is important to music educators looking to provide exceptional educational music experiences to their students, within budget constraints. Educators and students are discovering that M-Audio is affordable, easy to use, adaptable, and overall very helpful in the music technology world. M-Audio uses the industry standard Pro Tools, which gives music lovers more choices about their production tools. One of the best selling products from M-Audio include the entry-level Fast Track USB, which is a great way to start recording guitar and vocals one track at a time. Genesis Technologies, Inc. offers great academic discounts on products such as the Fast Track USB, M-Audio Pro Tools M-Powered, and the M-Audio MBox2 Mini from Digidesign. These products are very popular and used widely by many schools. Genesis Technologies offers M-Audio for students and teachers at prices that are significantly cheaper.

M-Audio and Digidesign products for students may be purchased through Genesis Technologies, Inc. by visiting their website. Genesis Technologies offers academic discounts on software for students, faculty, and staff of K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Genesis Technologies also offer discounts on software for 501(c)3 non-profit organizations. To see if you qualify, visit www.genesis-technologies.com.



Gail

Audio Book Listening Has Many Benefits

Saturday, October 11th, 2008
audio equipment
MIKE SELVON asked:


It used to be that they were called “books on tape” and people would get a cassette deck installed in their car just to listen to them on their commutes. Today, they are better known as audio book volumes, but they still deliver a great deal of information and entertainment as well. Audio books are enjoyed by people of all walks of life, young and old, and they can turn a potentially dry and boring time in a vehicle into an opportunity to learn and grow.

One of the best benefits of a book in audio format is that is can be listened to at anyplace and anytime. It is a favorite companion for people while they are traveling, commuting, exercising, shopping, working in the garden, or even dusting and vacuuming the house. Using headphones with your favorite audio book player allows you to listen and absorb the information no matter what might be going on around you.

Even when you are in a situation that is quiet and are able to enjoy a good audio book, there are still advantages to using your headphones. You can often improve your retention and comprehension of the material when you use headphones because they help reduce distractions from other noises and help the listener focus better. Also, some people learn better by hearing and some people learn best when they can read and hear at the same time.

There are a number of different books in audio format these days that people can choose from. There are audio books on CD, on audio cassette and also as MP3s and any standard CD player, cassette recorder, or MP3 player that you might use to listen to music can function as an audiobook player as well.

If you buy a CD audiobook to play in the CD player in your car, then you can also make that same book into an MP3 that can be used on your digital music player, such as an iPod, if you have one. This makes it even more convenient to listen wherever you are and whatever you might be doing.

But, if your car is also equipped with an MP3 player, or with a connection that you can use to make use of your MP3 player in your vehicle, then the best way to buy an audio tome is online. This is because you can download audio books online and this is not only much faster than ordering a cassette or CD audiobook, but it is less expensive as well.

If the publishers of audio books don’t have to burn the recording onto a CD or copy it onto a cassette, then they save time and money, and they can pass on these savings when you buy an MP3 audiobook. On top of that, you won’t have to pay for shipping and handling and you can download your new audio book within minutes.

There is a great selection of books available every month, no matter which audio book format suits you best. If you can find printed materials that cover a certain topic, then you will no doubt be able to find audio versions of at least some of those books. It should be noted, though, that the audio cassette books are becoming harder to find.



Jessie