Hi All,
I work for an English Language radio station in Spain on the Costa del Sol, and we sometimes go out and about doing Outside Broadcasts. I’ve been considering recently getting a tablet PC, with the hope of solving a couple of things.
For walk about live interviews, I hope to connect a mic (either directly to a mic in, or a USB) and headphones and run LiquidSoap to carry a stream back over WiFi to the master playout desk.
However, for recorded interviews, I’d like to use a tablet to record, and then run Audacity on the tablet to make any cuts and changed before encoding to OGG or MP3 and sending it back to a share on the PC for the live presenter to drop in at a time of their choice.
Can anyone recommend a tablet PC that would manage this? I was looking at the Dell Inspiron Duo, but that might be a little too heavy for lugging about for a while. It would also need to run Linux, if I’m wanting to run LiquidSoap to stream Lives, so any suggestions would be really appreciated.
Cheers,
Bon
I have no experience with tablets, so I can’t really give you any insightful opinion on that…
http://www.linux-laptop.net/ used to be a good reference website for running linux on laptops. Not sure what’s the current state of the website nor if it has a tablet pc section…
http://tuxmobil.org/tablet_unix.html seems to have a comprehensive list of tablets running linux.
I never used liquidsoap either… I usually use IDJC (internet dj console: http://idjc.sourceforge.net/ ) for streaming my live dj sets (to either icecast or shoutcast servers)
I’ll bet the pads have some sort of Personal Recorders available. I know the iPhone does and I believe the latest Touch variations have one, too. Streaming may be a little ambitious unless you know it works and have actually tried it.
One of the problems with live recording is historic. There is a stunning variation in volume between different parts of a live recording, music or speech. Most devices won’t record stunning, so you have to have some way to reduce the volume variations – either by carefully controlling the capture situation, or auto gain control – or, gasp – a human riding volume during the capture.
All have their shortcomings.
– Controlling the situation means restricting the artistry and opportunity.
– Auto Gain Control has always sucked with its pumping and “rising tide” noise levels.
– The sound guy is always behind and misses the first word or two.
And you have to do something, because if you don’t, you’re going to get low-noisy or crunchy-overload in the show.
Polished radio shows are very highly controlled and you can lose yourself in them with no trouble. Ratty podcasts require constant juggling of the volume control to enjoy them and some are bad enough to just give up. I tried one podcast with no volume control or processing at all and the talent liked to laugh at full volume. It was painful.
Koz