VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

My podcasting buddy has been using Zencastr lately and loves it for doing group/conferencing sessions.

https://www.zencastr.com/

What do you think of this as a solution for remote direction & dialogue?

Supposedly:

"Zencastr records each party locally from their own computer to a high quality mp3 and uploads separate tracks to your dropbox account.

Because it works in the browser, all you have to do is send them a link and press record. Thats it.

No more dropouts due to a bad connection. No more changes in quality during the show. Nothing but crystal clear audio."

But how high is the mp3 quality, and how high does it stream? I wrote to them and will report back when I hear.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

They replied to my enquiry within 12 hours on a Sunday, which is a good sign too! Smile

Zencastr records the audio in 128kbps MP3 and also optionally in lossless 16bit 44100kHz WAV. As far as the quality of the live audio stream, it varies significantly depending on the strength of the connection. It could be anywhere between 6 kbps - 510 kbps. It is important to note that the audio is recorded locally for each participant so the bitrate of the live audio stream is irrelevant to the recorded audio quality.
The advantage to recording locally is that there is no need to try and keep the live audio stream at a high bitrate which could introduce more lag. The live audio stream only needs to be good enough to carry the conversation and keep lag to a minimum.

So you run the session and everything from each participant goes to a dropbox folder as a .wav
That might not be the ideal solution, as you can't then edit dialogue keepers in real-time, but it's pretty darn spiffy in terms of running a conferenced session and having everyone's takes with no delays.

http://blog.zencastr.com/blog/2016/1/17/record-now-in-lossless-16-bit-441-khz-wav
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DenaliDave · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:44 am Post subject:

Sounds interesting...I'm up for any and all ISDN alternatives, seeing as how I live in Alaska.
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Bish · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:56 am Post subject:

For podcast work I really like the idea of "story and forward" separate tracks to a central location. Tracks can then be dragged into a DAW and mixed nicely. This may be a good alternative for remote delivery of live sessions as well.

Isn't this basically how Source Connect works? This looks more like someone eating SC's lunch rather than ISDN.
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Lance Blair · M&M Joined: 03 Jun 2007 Posts: 2281 Location: Atlanta

Move along - nothing to see here!

Jason Shablik just tested it and it's smoke and mirrors. Big drop off above 8kHz, and seems to be converting the mp3 to a .wav rather than recording loss-less.
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georgethetech · Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2016 2:19 pm Post subject:

Another variation on SoundStreak, but simpler and free. The design is really cool! I tried it but it wouldn't activate my audio device, waiting for support to respond. Can't understand how audio is low quality when it is stored locally as WAV and uploaded to the server. What gives??
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