VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Mike Sommer]

This maybe an investment, or a tool of convenience, depending where you are at with your career.

This is like having an full time employee or an assistant, there needs to be enough work to justify having one.

Let's say a Zephyr box cost $4000.00:
With 8 ISDN sessions at $500 each, and you are booking 5 session per week, the unit is paid for within the first two weeks.

If you're only earning $250 per ISDN session, it will take 16 sessions to pay for the box, and at five gigs a week you can easily pay for the box within four weeks.

This is way I have set the usage bar that I have, (actually someone else came up with that bar) because you not only have the cost of the unit, you also have the monthly service cost. The monthly service bill may not be a staggering amount, but if you're paying for something that you're using maybe once a month then why have it? Especially when you can use an outside studio and pay only the session fee- which often times the agency you're working for picks up.

Sidebar [I know some talent that do 5 or more ISDN sessions a day. This of course makes this tool indispensable.]

There are of course conditions that may justify the cost, such as there are no rental studios in you area that have ISDN. But if have a $4000 box, and you're only booking maybe one ISDN session a month, you need to consider the fact you are working for free on the those gig for the next two years or so. This would now be considered an investment with no immediate or guaranteed return or dividends- in short, a gamble. This is because you are paying yourself back over a period of time. The risk involved are: you will either blossom and grow, or it will become an overhead burden, and this rest on many factors.

I think we all know this is a considerable investment, but I think it is better to make a smart investment, rather than one out of want or hope.

Lastly, if our captains of telecommunications industry get off their butts and give the US enough digital bandwidth, like Japan, Europe and Scandinavia, we would not be worried about ISDN.

Believe it or not-- There are fringe areas of LA that still do not have DSL via coper phone line or cable. The only connection to the internet is Dial up, satellite or G3 network - sometimes. Most disheartening.
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Acoustics are counter-intuitive. If one thing is certain about acoustics, it is that if anything seems obvious it is probably wrong.

[Yonie]

Not only is the broadband service pretty bad here in the US. It's expensive as well. The price for a service rendered quite often amazes me, like with cell phone operators. Slower speeds and more money to pay. I guess the upside is that technology hardware is cheaper here than in Europe.