It’s been 628 days (but who counts these things, right?) since the last time I had a guest in my audio booth talking through the ether with distant broadcasters. The last time I fired up the microphones for real was February 27, 2020, to connect a faculty member from our Marine Mammal Institute with CBC’s Quirks and Quarks program to discuss whale skin care. A bit more than two weeks later, we were shut down by a pandemic.
A lot has changed over this time – 21 months! – and some of those changes are in our booth. Back then, our primary broadcast connection to radio stations was an ISDN line, a 1988 technology standard that allowed for high-quality audio connections. (The codec we used was retired in 2018.) Today, for the first time since we went into remote/lockdown/isolation, I’m staring at the controls of a new IP-based audio codec, watching the virtual meters bounce between my studio and the BBC.
The many technologies that supported our remote operations, Zoom being the 800-lb gorilla in our particular sandbox, transformed the way we did our work – all of us. With a Zoom, Teams, or Skype connection, or any manner of audio-over-IP solutions available to broadcasters, the need for a dedicated facility to provide “broadcast quality” audio became more or less moot. To a point.
It was frustrating to me as a listener during the COVID interregnum. Working from home, I had more opportunities to listen live to my favorite radio programs, and would hear sub-standard audio as a regular feature make it on the air. Even our campus had people on programs via cellphones who once would have been in my booth. At times, the way folks used Zoom to get on the radio made a cell connection seem like pristine audio – why producers would take a laptop computer’s shitty microphone in an echoey room over a cell phone baffled me.
But, as a nod to a step towards a return to what will be closer to normal (even if we don’t fully return to normal as we knew it), today I had someone in my booth talking with the BBC. I have another one booked in two weeks.
We’re back on the air, with our folks sounding like they are in a studio again, instead of at their kitchen table. For this, I am grateful.