VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[Drew]

Sounds promising. When you live in a venue such as I do, and the AT&T (formerly SBC) Tech guy says: "Sure I'll rent you a pair of ISDN lines at
$53 a pop, per month. But that's old technology. We may not be offering it in another year." I think we all gotta take note.
_________________
www.voiceoverdrew.com
Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[Charlie Channel]

I think I'm beginning to see the light, Frank. I've got to agree. Open Source is the only way to go.

The reality is simple. The consolidation of the telco's is well underway. I mean, Drew's comment got me thinking that I must be getting old. Did AT & T "just" get broken up into Baby Bell's to (1) promote competition, (2) provide better service and technology advancement and (3) yield better pricing for consumers?

The re-integration of the industry is moving along, to wit: SBC is now, again, AT & T. That got me to thinking (dangerous for me, even under the influence of sobriety).

First, the backbone of the Internet is controlled by the majors, AT & T, Sprint, etc. I think there are only 4 or 5 of them. The got the big switches and bridges. So, packet switching is it. Secondly, ISDN is old technology that's going bye, bye! Yet, the reliability of the telephone network is better than Internet. We're not at web-tone, yet. Web-tone will work, eventually. Thirdly, we (vo talents) will need to work with anyone, anytime and, anywhere (the Internet montra). Forthly, all content delivery has been affected by the virtual world, as has been advertising, marketing and sales.

So, the fact is, proprietary solutions do not promote use. My analogy would be to the browser wars. Incompatible browsers result in obstacles to use. And, obstacles are discouragements, frustration and waste of time (money).

Side note: I've been playing around with Audacity. As a product that promotes webcasting, it's really pretty good. It even comes with a noise filter that (1) analyzes noise and (2) removes it effectively. Built into it's compressor is a normalization sub-routine that's also effective. To get something like it costs bucks from Pro Tools, yet it is given freely. And, did I mention that it's free! I'm serious when I say this: Had I known about Audacity, had it been distributed a couple of years ago, I'd have likely NOT even bothered with Pro Tools. The truth is, all I was looking for when I was starting out was a cheap analog mixer. But, then, somebody said, "Oh, what you want is a digital recorder." That got me on the path I didn't intend to get on.

That's not to say I don't enjoy Pro Tools, Garage Band and whatever else I have to use. It is to say that I could have saved a wad a cash and not been the worse off for it as a newbie.

So, getting back to the thought: The real issue appears to be real-time interactive work. As it stands, high quality audio content can be produced and delivered using Internet. It's just working in real-time that presents bandwidth issues that affect the performance, right? And, for that, an open standard is required. Can you imagine having telephones that only work with equipment made by a particular telephone company? It has to be a no-go.

OK. I'm done. Back to work!
_________________
Charlie