The device sure won't win any audio awards, but we are talking phone audio here and it does provide a basic battery powered adjustable preamp for your mic. It seems to work fine with the iPhone and Androids I have around the lab.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Product Review: Tascam iXZ smartphone audio interface
Speaking of apps, here's a cheapo little device that will let you plug your pro dynamic mic into your smartphone. Accent on cheapo, it can be gotten for around 25 bucks online.
The device sure won't win any audio awards, but we are talking phone audio here and it does provide a basic battery powered adjustable preamp for your mic. It seems to work fine with the iPhone and Androids I have around the lab.
The cable on the iXZ has a TRRS plug on the smartphone side for connection to the headset jack. The input is XLR/Phono jack and the headphone out is shunted to a 3.5mm TRS jack. Note the headphone pass-through is passive, so you'll still be driving them with your phone's headset amp.
The device sure won't win any audio awards, but we are talking phone audio here and it does provide a basic battery powered adjustable preamp for your mic. It seems to work fine with the iPhone and Androids I have around the lab.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Mind the app
No doubt about it, Comrex customers want smartphone apps. Our philosophy has remained constant: Wideband audio apps are cool and have their place, but are a poor substitute for hardware codecs. They don't work on Ethernet, they don't support stereo, and are constrained by the mobile phone audio section. To their credit, most customers I talk to see the sense in this and agree,
But we have put a lot of effort into support for apps.
A few years back, we even published our own Android app (ARC) and offered it for free. Unfortunately, we found our chosen platform extremely difficult to support as Android matured. The entry on the Android store became laden with angry commenters who reported various failures on ICS and Jelly Bean, so given the proliferation of good third-party stuff, we decided to pull it. Hopefully it proved useful in its time.
Because we get asked about apps so often now, we've posted an extensive primer on what's out there, and how well it works. In particular be sure to check out Luci Lite Live and CSipSimple options, both of which now have their own individual cheat sheet on our website.
Checking in with NYC
We try to visit the world's biggest media market regularly, and since it's a relatively short hop from our base in Massachusetts it's easy to do. So we made the trip last month, and it's always interesting to hear from Comrex users there. A couple of things we've learned, especially regarding wireless operation:
1) Many reporters have transitioned to Mi-fi style devices for using ACCESS codecs over 4G. It allows them to share bandwidth with their laptops and tablets easily without extra accounts, and the 4G performance of these devices is usually as good or better than USB modems
2) Verizon coverage is usually found to be adequate for audio on the upload path in Manhattan, but in several areas (at least on our mid-town tests) really doesn't cut the mustard for LiveShot video yet. In contrast, we find AT&T upload speeds to be remarkable given the market congestion and proliferation of iPhones.
3) Despite all the warnings, ISDN remains available. But it's not simple or cheap, so IP is the first choice most of the time.
1) Many reporters have transitioned to Mi-fi style devices for using ACCESS codecs over 4G. It allows them to share bandwidth with their laptops and tablets easily without extra accounts, and the 4G performance of these devices is usually as good or better than USB modems
2) Verizon coverage is usually found to be adequate for audio on the upload path in Manhattan, but in several areas (at least on our mid-town tests) really doesn't cut the mustard for LiveShot video yet. In contrast, we find AT&T upload speeds to be remarkable given the market congestion and proliferation of iPhones.
3) Despite all the warnings, ISDN remains available. But it's not simple or cheap, so IP is the first choice most of the time.
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| Billboard on 6th Ave. I don't get it either. |
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
NAB post mortem
It's been a few weeks and I've been meaning to write a little about our experience at NAB 2013.
NAB is always great for us, and we all very much enjoy meeting with customers and dealers and friends and press and talking about what we've been up to all year (who wouldn't?). One big disappointment is the increasing tendency of radio networks not to send local and regional tech folks. We love talking to the network chiefs, but they often approach us already pretty glazed over from the amount of data they are expected to absorb at the show.
A particularly proud moment was a "Cool Stuff" award for our STAC VIP system from Radio World Magazine. The VIP product (and the companion app) are especially dear to me, as I'm a self-confessed evangelist for banning telephone audio on the radio. And VIP has the potential to do that.
We're finding VIP is finding it's place with folks that need to integrate VoIP phone lines to the studio. But word about the potential benefits of the wideband app and Skype capability is slow to get out. Behind the scenes, I'm working hard to make this case. It's pretty obvious what STAC VIP does for radio when you get a live demo of it. In print or web ads, not so much. More on these efforts later.
So the makeup of NAB attendees is shifting slowly year-to-year. Much fewer traditional radio techs and many more new media representatives. But that not true of the Latin American visitors, who continue to send large contingents of traditional engineers and managers. Latin American visitors (from our perspective) are approaching 50% of our traffic. Very few European or Asian visitors this year.
What was cool at the show? General sentiment titled toward evolutionary changes rather than anything revolutionary. Lots of companies jumping in to compete with our LiveShot. And drone copters for news and film-making! (everyone loves those!). In video, 4K is becoming much more approachable from a hardware standpoint thanks to companies like Black Magic.
I know so many people who start technical careers and get left behind as they hit middle age simply because they didn't have the time or incentive to keep up with all the latest tech. It's such a fast-changing part of life in general that shows like this should be required attendance. I'm not saying a trip to Vegas is justified every year, but if haven't been educated about industry trends within five years or so, you are in danger of falling into that trap. Find a way to get to NAB. We're there to spend time with folks like you.
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| Our Nicole aka Natasha modeling the helmet cam |
A particularly proud moment was a "Cool Stuff" award for our STAC VIP system from Radio World Magazine. The VIP product (and the companion app) are especially dear to me, as I'm a self-confessed evangelist for banning telephone audio on the radio. And VIP has the potential to do that.
We're finding VIP is finding it's place with folks that need to integrate VoIP phone lines to the studio. But word about the potential benefits of the wideband app and Skype capability is slow to get out. Behind the scenes, I'm working hard to make this case. It's pretty obvious what STAC VIP does for radio when you get a live demo of it. In print or web ads, not so much. More on these efforts later.
So the makeup of NAB attendees is shifting slowly year-to-year. Much fewer traditional radio techs and many more new media representatives. But that not true of the Latin American visitors, who continue to send large contingents of traditional engineers and managers. Latin American visitors (from our perspective) are approaching 50% of our traffic. Very few European or Asian visitors this year.
What was cool at the show? General sentiment titled toward evolutionary changes rather than anything revolutionary. Lots of companies jumping in to compete with our LiveShot. And drone copters for news and film-making! (everyone loves those!). In video, 4K is becoming much more approachable from a hardware standpoint thanks to companies like Black Magic.
I know so many people who start technical careers and get left behind as they hit middle age simply because they didn't have the time or incentive to keep up with all the latest tech. It's such a fast-changing part of life in general that shows like this should be required attendance. I'm not saying a trip to Vegas is justified every year, but if haven't been educated about industry trends within five years or so, you are in danger of falling into that trap. Find a way to get to NAB. We're there to spend time with folks like you.
A little update on ISDN
There was a lot of talk at NAB about the demise of ISDN as noted here. Since then, there have been "clarifications" issued by Verizon that maybe the situation isn't quite as bad as once feared. I think the jury's still out, and I'll abstain from judgement until after the May 18 deadline. We'll talk then.
Friday, March 29, 2013
RIP ISDN 1992-2013
I have to admit to a bit of deja' vu. I wasn't at Comrex at the time, but back in the mid 80's AT&T made a similar announcement, that long-line dedicated loops (that crossed LATAs) were going away. Broadcasting survived the change, and Comrex legend holds that it made a very nice sales bump in the then newly introduced two-line frequency extender.
While I certainly won't complain if our IP codecs sales see an impact on this, my real concern is in making sure customers who find themselves in a pickle get the best possible information about IP codec alternatives. There's a lot of opinion on the Internet <shocker, I know> and it can't always be trusted. The truth is, given the nature of ISDN these days, an IP codec on a suitable wired Internet connection really does rival ISDN in terms of reliability.
We may have been a couple of years early in obsoleting our ISDN products, but we saw the writing on the wall some time back.
Now let's be clear-- those touting "5 9's" reliability in regard to ISDN are kidding themselves. Talk to our support staff if you don't buy it. ISDN has become a legacy technology with legacy support for problems that arise (and they do arise).
So if you're worried about the demise of ISDN, do yourself a favor and find us at NAB or have a call with our knowledgeable sales or support staff. Knowledge is power and we all love talking about this stuff, even if you choose other products in the end.
Monday, March 25, 2013
In Which I Rage Against Digital Rights Management
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The copyright clause of the US constitution is very important in setting up government's role in granting limited protection to copyright-able works. But it's far from perfect, and has been subject to significant corruption. I'm going to leave aside the foolishness instilled by the Supreme Court in allowing virtually unlimited retroactive extension of copyright, and focus on another really annoying facet of modern copyright law that has an effect on Comrex product development.
This is the ability of rights holders, as a collective, to dictate copyright protection mechanisms in commercial electronics. I think there's no other more outrageous example as the inclusion of HDCP protection in the actual interconnects (like HDMI and DVI) between media devices.
Now if I wanted to be told by a device manufacturer what I could and could not do with the product I purchase, I'd buy Apple products (cue rim shot). But the copyright industry has managed to require the use of device-hobbling technology on the actual wires we use to interconnect devices.
It achieved this using a two-pronged approach. First, the Consumer Electronics Association was forced to mandate inclusion of copyright protection mechanisms in digital media outputs (and therefore require the corresponding protection on monitors and other inputs). This became a requirement of licensing the technology required for playing out DVD and BluRay discs on digital ports.
Next, the industry lobbied the U.S. congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1996, which made it illegal to market any device that circumvents copyright protection, even if for non-infringing use. There are some narrow exceptions carved out, but none that would allow disabling of HDCP on an HDMI output. So no such devices exist.
HDCP is a fairly complex security layer which rides on the HDMI interface. The source and sink devices exchange a set of encrypted keys, and then decide whether the sink device is worthy of receiving the copyrighted works existing in the source. If the works are copyrighted, and your monitor doesn't support HDCP, no media for you.
The mechanism is licensed by a controlling body called Digital Content Protection LLC. In order for a manufacturer to support HDCP he must pay the high licensing cost and assume the huge liability of maintaining software keys that open these ports. It's certainly beyond the range of any company not involved in the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of consumer devices to consider.
Let me be blunt. HDCP is stupid. Here's just a few of the many reasons:
1) It does nothing to stop piracy. As anyone even slightly knowledgeable about digital media knows, the way to extract data is not through an uncompressed, real-time interface. Real pirates have already cracked digital media protection and use it at will.
2) It annoys the consumer. Besides incompatibility with sink devices manufactured before the mandate, HDCP is the cause of a raft of consumer headaches. User support forums for consumer devices are chock full of reports of users getting "blue screens" even when properly connecting HDMI devices.
3) Manufacturers of media playout devices are stupid, lazy, or both. Instead of properly detecting whether media has copyright protection enabled, they'll take the short cut of simply enabling HDCP on all outputs, all the time. Many consumer video cameras implement permanent HDCP on live video outputs.
That's right, the copyright industry restricts what you can do with video you are taping live! This type of "protection" is just a huge power grab by copyright holders that has become completely embedded in our industry and culture.
Why do I care? For the past three years I've been working diligently on our LiveShot video codec product. One of the important features of the encoder is the ability to interwork with cameras and other sources that output video and audio via HDMI. But if you go to Amazon and buy yourself an HD Handi-cam, there is at best a fifty percent chance it will work with the HDMI port on LiveShot. Or if you try to get live HDMI video off your phone, it will almost always fail. And it's because of HDCP.
Now when this happens to a LiveShot customer and I get the call, I can go into details on all the reasons this is so, but the end result is an unhappy customer, and me with no options to make him happy. And I really hate that. Hence the rage.
The HDCP ship has sailed, and no amount of rage-blogging will change things. I think the responsibility of the tech professional now lies in keeping an eye on the copyright industry and lobby to prevent further abuse. Since the DMCA was enacted in '96, it's become much easier for groups opposed to copyright interests to organize and publicize abuses through social media and other on-line resources. I also think it's a good idea to be aware of what your political rep's opinions on excessive copyright outreach is. It's hardly a topic that will make or break a political campaign, but it's a good topic (along with patent reform) to ask questions about to find out whether your congressman or senator is working for you, or "big copyright".
The copyright clause of the US constitution is very important in setting up government's role in granting limited protection to copyright-able works. But it's far from perfect, and has been subject to significant corruption. I'm going to leave aside the foolishness instilled by the Supreme Court in allowing virtually unlimited retroactive extension of copyright, and focus on another really annoying facet of modern copyright law that has an effect on Comrex product development.
This is the ability of rights holders, as a collective, to dictate copyright protection mechanisms in commercial electronics. I think there's no other more outrageous example as the inclusion of HDCP protection in the actual interconnects (like HDMI and DVI) between media devices.
Now if I wanted to be told by a device manufacturer what I could and could not do with the product I purchase, I'd buy Apple products (cue rim shot). But the copyright industry has managed to require the use of device-hobbling technology on the actual wires we use to interconnect devices.
It achieved this using a two-pronged approach. First, the Consumer Electronics Association was forced to mandate inclusion of copyright protection mechanisms in digital media outputs (and therefore require the corresponding protection on monitors and other inputs). This became a requirement of licensing the technology required for playing out DVD and BluRay discs on digital ports.
Next, the industry lobbied the U.S. congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1996, which made it illegal to market any device that circumvents copyright protection, even if for non-infringing use. There are some narrow exceptions carved out, but none that would allow disabling of HDCP on an HDMI output. So no such devices exist.
HDCP is a fairly complex security layer which rides on the HDMI interface. The source and sink devices exchange a set of encrypted keys, and then decide whether the sink device is worthy of receiving the copyrighted works existing in the source. If the works are copyrighted, and your monitor doesn't support HDCP, no media for you.
The mechanism is licensed by a controlling body called Digital Content Protection LLC. In order for a manufacturer to support HDCP he must pay the high licensing cost and assume the huge liability of maintaining software keys that open these ports. It's certainly beyond the range of any company not involved in the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of consumer devices to consider.
Let me be blunt. HDCP is stupid. Here's just a few of the many reasons:
1) It does nothing to stop piracy. As anyone even slightly knowledgeable about digital media knows, the way to extract data is not through an uncompressed, real-time interface. Real pirates have already cracked digital media protection and use it at will.
2) It annoys the consumer. Besides incompatibility with sink devices manufactured before the mandate, HDCP is the cause of a raft of consumer headaches. User support forums for consumer devices are chock full of reports of users getting "blue screens" even when properly connecting HDMI devices.
3) Manufacturers of media playout devices are stupid, lazy, or both. Instead of properly detecting whether media has copyright protection enabled, they'll take the short cut of simply enabling HDCP on all outputs, all the time. Many consumer video cameras implement permanent HDCP on live video outputs.
That's right, the copyright industry restricts what you can do with video you are taping live! This type of "protection" is just a huge power grab by copyright holders that has become completely embedded in our industry and culture.
Why do I care? For the past three years I've been working diligently on our LiveShot video codec product. One of the important features of the encoder is the ability to interwork with cameras and other sources that output video and audio via HDMI. But if you go to Amazon and buy yourself an HD Handi-cam, there is at best a fifty percent chance it will work with the HDMI port on LiveShot. Or if you try to get live HDMI video off your phone, it will almost always fail. And it's because of HDCP.
Now when this happens to a LiveShot customer and I get the call, I can go into details on all the reasons this is so, but the end result is an unhappy customer, and me with no options to make him happy. And I really hate that. Hence the rage.
The HDCP ship has sailed, and no amount of rage-blogging will change things. I think the responsibility of the tech professional now lies in keeping an eye on the copyright industry and lobby to prevent further abuse. Since the DMCA was enacted in '96, it's become much easier for groups opposed to copyright interests to organize and publicize abuses through social media and other on-line resources. I also think it's a good idea to be aware of what your political rep's opinions on excessive copyright outreach is. It's hardly a topic that will make or break a political campaign, but it's a good topic (along with patent reform) to ask questions about to find out whether your congressman or senator is working for you, or "big copyright".
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