“Our broadcasters can now come in and record shows at any time of the day (even with after hour access) without an audio engineer having to be present to record their voice breaks for their shows.”
Andre Mandella, Access Radio Taranaki 104.4FM, New Zealand
By Peter Fowler
Innovation from Access Radio Taranaki 104.4FM in New Zealand has seen the Community VoxPop Studio platform literally plugged into the station studio, following everyone back to work from COVID-19 lockdown/shelter-in-place orders. Using VoxPop Studio in lockdown, audio technicians were not needed to record talent. Hosts and contributors just used the VoxPop tap interface to record in studio-quality and send it to the operators who would remotely edit the show together.
104.4FM producer and audio technician Andre Manella realised VoxPop had introduced great efficiencies to the recording process in lock down. Without the need for an audio technician to be present, production quality recordings could be made any time.
So Andre plugged the Android version of Community VoxPop Studio into the station studio.
Mr Manella said he wanted the many hosts and contributors who use the studio to be able to record without an audio technician being present. “I wanted to create the opportunity for broadcasters to independently come into the studio and record their voice breaks with the VoxPop App but in full studio quality sound,” he said.
Working with the VoxPop development team he has done exactly that, “Our broadcasters can now come in and record shows at any time of the day (even with after hour access) without an audio engineer having to be present to record their voice breaks for their shows.”
The broadcasters simply select their show from the menu, tap to start recording, tap to stop, and then press send. The audio is sent to the Content Management System (CMS) where the voice is automatically transcribed to text, making it easy for the audio technician to identify and edit together.
Mr Manella said he used an OTG USB cable that he wired into a digital desk that has a studio mic plugged into it. “I’ve also hooked up some headphones for monitoring and to listen back.”
Andre Manella’s work has introduced a new element to the VoxPop platform which can save time and money for busy radio stations, who no longer require technicians to be present for studio recording.
Innovations such as this are valuable to us at VoxPop. Often it is the users of your product that come up with the best ideas on how it can be developed, and our technical team continues to work with the Access Radio Taranaki team to further enhance this new model. Voxpop is no longer just a remote recording studio or audience interaction tool. It is now also a valuable tool for organising self-drive recording in the studio.