Encouragement

That is all encouraging Ken....

You are doing things so ahead of the future that I do not understand it much, but I would like to, and will follow your reports.

Is the air plane a drone? I'm only half kidding about that.

So, this is what I picture....
You are running your whole radio enterprise from a tiny cell phone from anywhere on the island?

That's future city.

Carl, you can't quite do everything from a cell phone (or even a remote laptop). For example, you can't physically turn the computer off and then on when it is frozen. If someone eventually gets that done, then they've got something.

I really cannot stand cell phone use in broadcasting. Too many drop outs, too much packet loss causing swish swoosh drop outs and that does not belong on broadcast radio, of any kind IMO.

I do not understand why stations would stoop to a low level in standards. Those tv news channels using the internet and skype for their video remotes is pathetic.

Well...it's no mystery since the programing is also stooped to a low level as well, why not audio quality too.

No cell phone will be going out over the air on my stations..if I have to interview someone, it will either be via a land line, or in studio or pre recorded using real field mics and digital recorder and played back later.

This is the 21st century..time to get out of the tin can and string sound habit.

RFB

So much for 'encouragement'.

There's a role for cell phones in broadcasting. The audio quality may not meet everyone's standards, but who cares? No one has to listen. I suspect that for most audiences, it would suffice, particularly if you only care about the content, and not the surrounding audio quality - that's the point of talk radio, is it not? Now, music would be something else.

But I think the main point of this thread is that Ken is using the cell phone to control his station. While that has limitations (as I pointed out, sometimes there's nothing better than a pair of hands), it certainly takes you away from being studio-bound, particularly for small operations such as Part 15 radio. All the more power to him.

My new cordless phone does not have the resources to remote control a radio station in the same way Ken is doing it on a cell phone.

Without having a cell phone, I gather that they are mini-computers with on-board Operating Systems that can Wi Fi their way into larger computer networks.

I am impressed that such a tiny hand toy can do so much.

Controlling is one thing, feeding audio to go out on air is another.

Just my opinion on it. This is not saying Ken's idea is bad or unworthy or not of any encouragement. It simply means for me, for my stations and high standards on them, cell phone audio NEVER goes out on the air here. If its a program produced by someone else that airs on my stations, that program goes through a "preview and correct" process prior to airing, where any cell phone garbage that is there is clipped out.

I used to use logmein to control 5 local stations JFYI.

All 13 of the stations in the group had Sine remote systems at the transmitter sites, and yes a cell phone was used to access them and monitor, adjust etc etc.

RFB

On the call in shows a lot of bad sounding cell calls are heard, and there are some good sounding ones. Maybe some cell models have better audio.

Have also heard a lot of bad skype audio, and am not sure if there is ever good skype quality.

The thing I hate the most is audio recorded with the microphone 10-feet from the talker, such as a public speaking event or a camera shoot using the camera's microphone.

I can give you an example of how a cell phone carrier can cause issues with audio quality. I used to be a customer of a certain dirt cheap regional wireless carrier (name rhymed with ricket). Their audio quality was so bad people could barely hear me at times. Also, I had alot of dropouts all over town.

I switched to one of the bigger national carriers that everyone said was good (name starts with a V) and I don't have anymore issues with dropouts. Also, the voice quality is so much better.

My point is cell phone audio can be good if the carrier has done a good job developing their network. Some carriers sound better than others. Also, the phone can do alot also. I had a cheap phone before. Now I have a nice name brand phone.

I can only imagine what can be done with a smart phone. I bet you could hook a mike to one along with your music collection and run the whole station from your phone. By the way, the poor audio quality is on calls and picture message quality AMR recordings NOT mp3 recordings or mixers.