End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

Blink Does Opus

Blink-Yeti-OpusLast week there was some exciting news on the AG Projects mailing list; Blink support for the Opus codec was being released for the Mac version of Blink. A similarly capable release of the Windows version was expected shortly. Earlier this week Adrian Georgescu, the A. G. of AG Projects, passed me a Blink for Windows release candidate for experimental use.

This beta release installed readily, right along side the production release. I quickly registered it with my account at SIP2SIP.INFO so that we could have a couple of brief test calls.

Since most telephony oriented audio hardware doesn’t do justice to full-bandwidth audio I connected my Blue Microphones Yeti USB Microphone and a pair of AKG K 240 Semi-Open Studio Headphones . It seems that the team at AG Projects have also settled on the Yeti as a very good, yet affordable choice for high-quality sound pickup.

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Video Calling 2: Commercial Lighting Solutions

Polycom HDX-4000 CompositeI have seen the light…and you can, too! As I described previously, I’ve been making use of a lot more video calling in my working life. Even beyond that fact, some have said that I’m occasionally in the dark.

After some attempts to use locally existing lighting, both natural and artificial, I determined that I need some lighting that’s specifically for my use of video. My first instinct was to ask a question of my followers on Twitter, since some of those are active in the realm of video conferencing and calling.

I also reached out to some people in the broadcast space, including photographers and lighting directors. I took the answers provided and added a little of my own online research.

There has a risen a question of why my workspace is as dark as it happens to be at times? Early in my career I was an online editor. At that point I spent most of my working life in dimly lit rooms working on the final assembly of commercials and longer video programs. The forest green color on my office walls is in fact borrowed from the design one of my favorite editing suites.

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Audio Quality: Sample Rates, Bit-Depth, Human Physiology & The Golden Ears

studera800.jpgThere is a curious interface between science and the senses. Perception is often wrapped in psychological or emotional elements. This comes in many forms. It can be a group trying to share their impression of the taste of a particular wine. It can be people listening to music. Every persons experience of such things, being filtered by all that is us, both physically and mentally, is unique.

In a recent post I referred to a silly trend in very high sample rate music. This has been promoted by a variety of people, including HD Tracks, a music reseller that promises to provide “audiophile grade high-resolution recordings.” This term they use to generally describe digital recording a structure beyond the 44.1 KHz sampling and 16 bit linear word length defined by the CD format. They offer music at up to 24 bits and 192 KHz sample rate.

I’ve come to regard this trend as having very little merit. I came to this conclusion after many years dealing with digital audio production, after some experimentation and a lot of research. Like everything else on this site, I don’t profess to be any kind of expert, but I am happy to share my experience.

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Audio Sample Rates: Terminology vs Application

I’ve recently started to develop a grumpy streak with respect to the use of certain terminology with respect to telephony. Maybe telephony isn’t exactly the right word, let’s say that my unease arises from some odd terms surrounding audio quality in the context of communication. I think that some of the language needs to be more application sensitive.

A few years ago the world was a simpler place. The “Plain Old Telephone System” (aka POTS) was definitely a narrowband medium. Where “narrowband” implied digital sampling at 8 KHz and a useful audio channel of 300 Hz – 3,400 Hz.

Some people using more advanced systems enjoyed “wideband” audio. Wideband in that case was defined as a 16 KHz sampling yielding a useful audio channel of 50 Hz – 7 KHz. The TIA-920 standard, which I have referenced previously, spells this out. A variety of audio codecs can deliver this capability including; AMR-WB, EVRC-WB, G.722, G.722.1, CELT & Opus.

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