VO-BB - 19 YEARS OLD!

[jrkaiser]

I am using Packet 8 and Vonage for home and office respectively. Any recommendations on a phone patch that will be useable with VOIP? There has got to be someone who is using VOIP in the studio along with a phone patch. If so, which one?

Thoughts or suggestions welcome.

[jrkaiser]

Still looking for thoughts and suggestions or other possibilities of providing a phone feed to a producer?

[brianforrester]

Justin,

I'm using a Symetrix TI101 with a "digital phone line"... the cable company providing the service refuses to refer to it as VOip, but I don't see how it could be any different... anyway, I have no problems.

Run a search of the board content for "Phone Patch" and you'll find a whole tonne of info on various pieces of hardware. I don't see how VOip would affect the operation of the unit, since it's simply sending an analog signal down the digital line, in exactly the same manner as your telephone does, but I could be wrong.

Good luck

Brian
_________________
Brian Forrester Voice Overs
www.brianforrester.com
brian@brianforrester.com
778.668.5715

[Hart]

I've been told by my engineer geek that normal phone patches don't work with VOIP. But I don't know why that is. Brian's post seems to indicate otherwise.

We recently switched the office lines over to VOIP but not the studio lines running through a Telos One unit because supposedly it wouldn't work, but I don't think anyone actually tried it.

I'll ask him about it later today and see what he says.
_________________
Hart Voice Overs Blog
Brian Hart Productions

[kgenus]

It will work, as long as there's a router configured to accept an RJ-11 jack.

Your engineer geek left out vital information. If you're going to use a normal phone patch, you have to use a device that converts the packets to a pots terminal, to which an RJ-11 connector can be plugged. Cisco sells these things all day long.

I swear, engineers are becoming more and more like 90's software salesman, many know radio, few know OSI and what's on top.

Don't let them fool you.
_________________
Genus

[Hart]

[dhouston67]

[Deirdre]

Jeez-- at least your engineers DO something after they complain. The Engineer at a radio station I work for has completely stonewalled any notion of networking the production rooms. It's not lack of funds, either, it's hatred and fear of modern technology. The guy is probably the past master of adjusting the output af antenna arrays, but when it comes to computers and digital editing he's in the dark so he prevents it from being part of the production environment.
_________________
DBCooperVO.com

[kgenus]

DB, I happen to know a rep at Cisco who came out of radio who works in their voip group and spends much of his time up in Boston - he worked with Infinity setting up everything for the HFStevial here in DC. I'd be more than happy to pass your engineer's name to him and ask him to stop in and have a long chat with the guy.

Same for you Hart....
_________________
Genus

[Hart]

That might be in order.

We actually have two. The full time guy is the one I refered too and he's pretty young. Handles all the IT stuff, and is responsible for everything that gets the signals from the studio to the two transmitters. I'm going to have a chat with him today about all this, more for fun than out of need.

Then there's the old RF guy. He's contract and is responsible for the stuff in the transmitters and to the towers. Real nice guy, but he's stictly old school.
_________________
Hart Voice Overs Blog
Brian Hart Productions

[Deirdre]

[Bruce]

Man, could we start a thread on ancient engineers, or ENGINEERS FROM HELL!

Back in the 70's I was working at the top country station here in town. Everyone smoked back then and the engineer was tired of cleaning the tar and grit out of the control board. He lobbied hard with management to ban smoking totally from the studios. Talk about junkies getting the shakes over a looming supply shortage! He lost the argument thank goodness.

This is the same guy who, when I first got hired, gave me the 3 minute lesson on how to take meter readings and work the remote controls for the transmitter that was several miles away. That night at midnight I have my first break-in session. I introduce my second record and then my headphones go dead. I look at the transmitter controls and the needles are waving back and forth wildly. The back phone line rings and the voice says "you're off the air", Thinking it's a listener I say "I know, and we'll be back on shortly. Hang on." After a few minutes of fumbling and bumbling I get us back on (everything but turning the station on is on my mind of course).

I get another record on and pick up the phone and it's the engineer. "I'm up here on the mountain doing some maintenence and I thought I'd see if you were paying attention earlier today. That was pretty sloppy. Let's do it again." and the MF shut me off again!! Needless to say we hit it off "great" the remainder of my tenure there.

Bruce

[donrandall]

Hey Bruce - back in the seventies it was always: First the filaments, then the plates. Right?

[Bruce]

I believe that's what I screwed up in my first radio job in little Winslow, Arizona. I flipped the switches out of order at sign-on (zap poof!) and we were off the air for a day and a half until some part came by Greyhound bus. Ouch.

At that same station we had one of the old teletype news machines from the AP, and one day the letter "e" stopped working. Well that was fine. If a letter was missing you knew it was an e. But the next day the "r" stopped working. Then the "s" and then the "t". We became cryptogrphers, trying to guess what the news copy said until days later when the Greyhound brought us a refurbished machine. We also read day old stories from the newspaper when it became impossible to read the teletype.

Ah the good old days...

B