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Audio-Technica has long made well-regarded pro microphones with prices to match, but also has a growing presence in the prosumer realm, creating products at more retail-oriented price points intended for bedroom producers, content creators, streamers and the like. In recent years, A-T has been engaging the podcasting world with its AT2020 and AT2035 condenser mics, and now has stepped it up even further with the introduction of the AT2040 hypercardioid dynamic podcast microphone.

Audio-Technica AT2040 Hypercardioid Dynamic Podcast Microphone

Costing a very reasonable $99, this XLR mic does a nice job of providing its target users with a microphone attuned to the spoken word, while also landing under $100, thus attracting customers for whom the top feature is the price point. At that cost, yes, it’s entry-level, but it’s “good” entry-level, providing a decent product for those who will only ever buy one mic, while providing a solid first experience for emerging audio pros who will dive deeper into the company’s product ranges in years to come.

Out of the box

Right out of the box, the AT2040 makes a good first impression — it has a sleek design that looks good on camera, whether it’s a video podcast, work-from-home environment or Twitch stream. (The priority, of course, is how it sounds, but visuals are a valid concern for on-screen content creators.) The black finish isn’t easily dinged or scratched, and at 5.72” long and nearly 22 oz., it has a real heft to it.

Pulling it out of the box, it simply feels like you’ve purchased something of significance. The thick metal casing and strong grille are joined by a hard plastic AT8487 mounting clamp already attached, so it’s clearly made to withstand some abuse. The AT2040 is solid enough that if you accidentally bang it around, it will put a dent in your desk rather than the other way around.

Rounding out the accessories in the box are a threaded adapter for the clamp and a mic pouch.

In use

The AT2040 sports a hypercardioid polar pattern that does a nice job, even capturing the voice at a moderate distance and off-axis up to 90° (with the expected change in timbre, of course), as happens with users who aren’t disciplined about staying on-mic or perhaps don’t want the mic blocking them on-camera. However, when used like a proper broadcast mic, the AT2040 captures the voice very naturally; its large diaphragm gets the low-mids warm and out front, while the highs are curled back to provide shape but not rough edges.

[Check Out More Product Evaluations in Our Products Section]

One place where the mic particularly shines is its handling of plosives — pop filtering is provided by a multistage foam mesh windscreen inside, and it yanks plosives’ impact right down. The AT2040 does pick up stray clatter from usage, however. While there’s integrated shockmounting to reduce that, the mic is still best left untouched once it’s in a mic stand or boom, as handling and cable noise are readily picked up.

Overall

In all, it’s a solid first microphone; for many of its intended users, particularly the podcaster or streamer, this is all the mic they’re ever going to need. Meanwhile, for aspiring audio pros, it will make for a positive introduction to the Audio-Technica brand.

The post Audio-Technica Offers ‘Good’ Entry-Level AT2040 appeared first on Radio World.

The Opal on one end of the “Great Night” production.

We started our podcast “Great Night” in January of 2009. We’ve gone through several names, and along the way we’ve had several Billboard-charted comedy albums and have developed a large and loyal subscriber base. Currently, we’re doing a live variety show every Tuesday night, with a video component that we stream over Twitch and publish on YouTube.

For 11-and-a-half of those 12 years, we lived in different states. For much of that time, we were doing the thing that has essentially become the default podcast comedy technique during the pandemic: We were using Skype and recording our audio locally, then editing it together in post-production.

But the delays and hiccups caused by Skype were intrusive, and we wanted to find a full-duplex solution.

We learned about the Comrex Opal from a friend of ours who works at The Blaze. We had some challenges configuring our IP networks, but once it was set up, it was easy for everyone to jump onboard and learn how to use it.

[Read More Buyers Guide Reviews Here]

We would use video from Skype and connect our audio through the Opal, and there was an immediate difference in our audio quality. Even when Skype was failing, the Opal audio would continue to be precise with low delay, and it felt as though we were in the room with each other.

Skype has been the standard for podcasting forever, but not because anyone likes it. If you get a group of podcasters together in a room, eventually they’re all going to complain about Skype. People use it because it works well enough and most of us know how to fix it when it’s broken.

But every conversation, every interview, every interaction has an ebb and flow that happens in the milliseconds between moments. Just as it’s not possible to have an in-depth conversation over walkie-talkies, it’s equally impossible to preserve that nuance over Zoom and Skype. You need full-duplex real-time audio if you want to create real magic in audio.

Only Opal has brought us that experience.

When we shifted to Opal, our audience noticed. We got a lot of feedback from our listeners about the change — they couldn’t identify exactly what was different, but it felt electric. Suddenly we were both able to talk at the same time without any delay.

We have this weird fixation on Billy Joel, and we’ve been making Billy Joel jokes and singing parodies of Billy Joel songs for a while now. Suddenly, once we got Opal, we could harmonize. We could overlap our jokes and pick up on what each other were saying without having to deal with Skype ducking our audio. We were finally able to do our material in the best way possible.

A lot of podcasters think audio quality issues can be solved by local recording, and certainly that can be edited together even though it adds another layer to post-production. But they really don’t realize what an audio delay does to active conversations.

In a medium that is all about where a conversation goes, whether it’s comedy or a panel discussion, high-quality and low-delay audio is irreplaceable. Opal is the solution that every podcaster doesn’t realize they need.

Info: Contact Chris Crump at Comrex at 1-978-784-1776 or visit www.comrex.com.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

The post User Report: Comrex Opal Makes Full-Duplex Audio Magic appeared first on Radio World.

NEW YORK — Thirty-five years ago, if one were to tune 92.7 MHz in Queens and the western portion of Long Island, there’s a good chance the only thing “Mexican” they’d hear would be the Wall of Voodoo track “Mexican Radio.” At the time, it was the home of Modern Rock outpost WLIR-FM, licensed to Garden City.

Times change, and since 2004 the facility has aired Spanish-language programming under Univision Communications ownership. Another change is in the works, and this will see the station’s return to English-language programming, under a new owner.

The bigger takeaway, however, is the extreme valuation difference between Univision’s purchase price and that from this Class A FM’s pending sale that sees Kalil & Co. involved.

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Show hosts and station volunteers Steve Slentz and Larry Karoll are shown at the event.

December is a time of year when many radio stations perform particularly good deeds. One of them is low-power FM station WDNP in Dover, Ohio.

Radio World contributor Dan Slentz helped launch the LPFM station, and he reports that WDNP is now in its sixth year of conducting an annual Coat & Food Drive in partnership with the Salvation Army of Tuscarawas County.

“Usually we fill their truck with food and coats, but people give cash and other things that others can use,” Dan writes.

Lieutenant Andrew Allen of the Salvation Army giving a DNP mug and accepting a donation.

“Our thinking was that the station doing ‘Toys for Tots’ is awesome, but what if the kid doesn’t have a warm coat or the family is struggling to put food on the table? So we decided to focus on necessities.”

The local Pizza Hut provides its parking lot, the food and even some gift certificates for free pizzas. The radio station distributes logo mugs to each donor, and those mugs are sponsored, so there’s no expense to the station.

“It’s a good local promotion and helps a lot of people,” Dan says, adding that WDNP is run entirely by volunteers.

Submit news about your event to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Ohio LPFM Conducts Coat & Food Drive appeared first on Radio World.

Radio World is taking an in-depth look at “The Infinite Dial UK 2021” report this week.

In a bid to provide British broadcasters with the same market intelligence enjoyed by their U.S. colleagues, Edison Research conducted its first-ever “The Infinite Dial UK 2021” consumer measurement study.

Its conclusions are based on 1,000 telephone interviews with U.K. residents 16 and older, during the fourth quarter of 2021.

The original Infinite Dial survey, which is focused on U.S. consumer interactions with radio, has been conducted annually since 1998. Similar Infinite Dial surveys have been done in Canada, Australia, Germany, and South Africa.

The results of the first-ever Infinite Dial UK were announced in a Dec. 2, 2021, webinar hosted by Edison Research President Larry Rosen, and made possible through the sponsorship of Bauer Media and Spotify. This week, Radio World will be summarizing his presentation in five parts. In Part One, we’ll cover Edison’s findings on U.K. connected technology ownership and social media usage.

Connect tech ownership

According to Rosen, 83 percent of respondents to the Infinite Dial UK survey own smartphones, which is “just a bit lower than our estimate for the USA,” he said. This percentage is consistent across age groups. Meanwhile, 53 percent of those surveyed own an iPad or other tablet, while 25 percent own a smart speaker. The leading brand of smart speaker is Amazon’s Alexa, followed by Google Nest and Apple HomePod.

“The majority of people who have at least one smart speaker in their household have two or more, and 28 percent of people … have three or more,” said Rosen. “That’s a trend we’ve seen pretty consistently … People who get them tend to really like them and put them in multiple rooms around their house.”

Smart speaker ownership in the U.S. and U.K.

Social media usage

Eighty-six percent of respondents to the Infinite Dial UK study reported “they use some form of social media, including nearly everybody aged 16–34, and a very, very sizable majority of everyone over the age of 35 as well,” Rosen said.

Facebook has the highest level of brand awareness at 89 percent, followed by Instagram and Twitter at 85 percent and TikTok at 83 percent. Sixty-seven percent of people surveyed are aware of Snapchat, 58 percent have heard of LinkedIn and 55 percent of Pinterest.

[Read more of our coverage of ‘Infinite Dial’ report]

Actual usage of social media in the U.K. varies by platform and age group. The social platform used most often was Facebook (55 percent for 16+; 48 percent for 16–34; 56 percent for 35–54; and 62 percent for 55 and older). Second place was a tie between Instagram (9 percent for 16+; 14 percent for 16–34; 7 for 35–54; and 7 percent for 55 and older) and Twitter (9 percent for 16+; 7 percent for 16–34; 9 percent for 35–54; and 10 percent for 55 and older).

These were followed by:

• Snapchat (8 percent for 16+; 15 percent for 16–34; 6 percent for 35–54; and 3 percent for 55 and older);
• TikTok (7 percent for 16+; 10 percent for 16–34; 8 percent for 35–54; and 4 percent for 55 and older);
• Pinterest (5 percent for 16+; 3 percent for 16–34; 6 percent for 35–54; and 5 percent for 55 and older);
• Other platforms (7 for 16+; 3 for 16–34; 8 percent for 35–54; and 9 percent for 55 and older).

In another chart, Larry Rosen compared social media platform usage in the U.K. and U.S.

Social media platform usage in the U.K. and U.S. compared

“There’s a lot more usage in the United States of Facebook, Instagram. and Pinterest,” he said. “Snapchat is pretty equal; Twitter is a little higher in the United States. The two [social media platforms] that have higher usage just by a small amount in the U.K. as compared to the U.S. are LinkedIn and TikTok.”

All told, social media in the U.K. is a potent force for radio broadcasters to deal with, with Facebook being far and away the heavyweight in this market.

In Part Two of Radio World’s summary of “The Infinite Dial UK 2021,” we’ll look at Larry Rosen’s numbers on radio listening and radio/smart speaker ownership.

The post First-Ever ‘Infinite Dial UK’ Survey Provides Insights for U.K. Radio appeared first on Radio World.

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It was interesting to read the shortwave article. It was also high time to address the issue of SW transmissions, as the death of radio, of shortwave and even of medium-wave is being aired again while the progress of streaming and podcasting is hugely hyped — again trumping global realities.

The article would have benefitted by stressing the actual huge size of SW listening. BBC World Service alone has an estimated weekly audience of 269 million, with radio delivering around 150 million.

This top international broadcaster has 200 transmitter sites, of which four are high-power AM, with 12 others hired. Content is distributed to 800 locations globally (often using SW) for direct broadcast or inclusion in partner broadcasts. And AM services reach many tens of millions across Africa and Middle East, the future potential audience of DRM shortwave as well.

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The Radio World piece clearly was aimed mainly at the enthusiasts, as indicated by the receiver prices mentioned. The average non-enthusiast listener who has a laptop with connectivity would probably just listen to radio via the internet.

There is definitely merit in portable SDRs, which (depending on price) will likely keep some of the audiences and make it easy for them to pick up analog shortwave but also DRM.

India, China, Russia, U.K., even Brazil, Pakistan and other countries are testing, broadcasting or seriously considering shortwave DRM at the moment.

The natural and only son of analog SW, DRM, with its huge spectrum, energy and audio quality advantages, does not get a mention in the article, though. This is definitely a missed opportunity, as some of the big public broadcasters mentioned — BBC, All India Radio, Radio Romania, etc. — are already in this space and report excellent reception and increasing listenership.

Most of the new DRM receiver solutions cater for both the analog and digital versions of shortwave reception. Work is afoot to deliver more affordable receivers aimed precisely at the huge and less affluent shortwave markets of Africa and Asia.

Ruxandra Obreja, Chair
Digital Radio Mondiale Consortium

Radio World invites industry-oriented commentaries and responses. Send to Radio World.

The post Letter: Shortwave’s huge audience appeared first on Radio World.

When I started doing radio back in 1994, a camera in the studio was unheard of, but now it’s pretty much mandatory to have a streaming component to your show. It helps get your listeners more engaged in what you’re talking about and it helps you do more things.

For instance here at “The Shannon Burke Show” we have a watchmaker as a sponsor. We can have him in to demonstrate his collection of watches to the listeners.

[Read More Buyers Guide Reviews Here]

Towards the end of last year we found ourselves looking for an efficient streaming camera system. A lot of stations around here have employed someone to switch their cameras manually, and that didn’t seem like a very good move to us.

That was part of what led us to a BroadcastPix system. RadioPix is microphone-activated and the cameras just follow whoever is talking.

Once we had the system settled in with our Wheatstone board it’s been fantastic. We haven’t had any issues.

The monitor that it runs off sits back in my engineer’s area; he turns it on at the beginning of the show and we’re off to the races. It just works.

On the rare occasions when we’ve had to call somebody about it, mostly when we were getting up and running, the BroadcastPix folks were attentive.

We have two moving cameras installed at the moment in high-up positions. We’ve got a small table with four positions, and the boom mics would be in the way if they were stationary on the table. But saying that, we’re looking at getting a third camera and we’re toying with a tabletop unit for the center of the table so we can get a closeup of myself or the guests.

I’ve not used any other modern systems, but when looking at other people’s shows, a lot of the time the picture is terrible. The quality is just not there. Our pictures are great, and it’s all from a system that we just set and forget. It’s just rock ’n’ roll, it’s fantastic.

For product information contact Patrick Murphy at BroadcastPix at 1-978-600-1100 or visit www.broadcastpix.com.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

The post User Report: BroadcastPix Brings the Video appeared first on Radio World.

The author is director of production technology for Vox Media.

Tieline Report-IT in use at Vox Media.

Vox Media is a leading independent media company, and the Vox Media Podcast Network is one of the largest collections of popular podcasts spanning technology, news, pop culture, futurism, current trends and more.

Our portfolio features the most relevant and respected editorial properties including Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, Vulture, The Strategist, Polygon, SB Nation, Intelligencer, Curbed, Grub Street and Recode.

Tieline’s Report-IT Enterprise app is an important tool within our technology offerings and it helps us tell stories that affect our audience’s daily lives and entertain as much as they inform. Podcast producers and hosts primarily use Report-IT to interview remotely located guests outside of the company, because the app facilitates high-quality recordings and simple file uploads.

How It Works

The Report-IT Enterprise app is a free Android or iOS download for guests. They download the app and then we send them a URL link created by Tieline’s TieServer Console.

When the prospective user clicks the link it launches the app and automatically authenticates and logs each guest in. The guest then just taps “Connect” to dial a secure Tieline codec (Gateway, Merlin, Merlin Plus, Bridge-IT) at one of our studios. When they connect they can communicate in real time with hosts at our studios in New York, Washington, San Francisco or elsewhere.

Sometimes guests have accessories they plug in to improve listening and sound quality during the interview, but often they just use the phone itself, which usually provides pretty good quality these days.

[Read More Buyers Guide Reviews Here]

High-fidelity audio is automatically recorded as a file on a guest’s device as they chat directly to Vox Media’s producers and hosts. At the conclusion of their interview it is securely uploaded directly to a server over Wi-Fi or cellular for ingest and editing as required.

In my experience, achieving high sound quality and simple file delivery are our biggest challenges. Uploading or sending files can be a huge challenge with nontechnical guests. Report-IT helps us deliver the best possible recording quality from our guests with simple file delivery to our servers. This is a great option for Vox Media Podcast Network producers.

We also use Tieline’s Cloud Codec Controller software, which provides remote control over critical Report-IT functions like input gain, as well as record functions on the app. This makes it easy to adjust settings remotely if a nontechnical person is on the other end.

Ease of Use

We use Report-IT multiple times each week and ease of use is everything with our external podcast guests. The simplicity of configuration regarding file uploads and connection points is crucial to the workflow. The app’s user interface is simple. Plus, it’s easy to connect, record and then seamlessly upload a recorded file.

Producers appreciate the reliable file delivery and quality of recordings. I particularly like the user interface and how you can have different user accounts configured for specific Tieline codecs and server folders etc. It’s very flexible for automation.

Achieving high-quality sound and reliable and timely file delivery of recorded interviews are our biggest challenges. Report-IT delivers superb features and a robust solution at a great price. The app helps achieve the best quality possible from our guests as well as easy file transfer, which keeps our talented producers happy.

Info: Contact Doug Ferber at Tieline at 1-888-211-6989. For international queries contact Charlie Gawley in Australia at +61-8-9413-2000 or visit www.tieline.com.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

The post User Report: Vox Media Uses Tieline Report-IT for Interviews appeared first on Radio World.

From April 2018 until July 2020, it had been in a simulcast with WLIR-FM and branded as “Real FM,” offering Classic Hits programming.

Soon, an FM translator with 10 watts of power covering such Long Island, N.Y., cities as Coram and Medford is set to be come a part of the WNET Public family.

The owner of NPR Member station WLIW-FM 88.3, which serves Suffolk County’s east end and is licensed to Hampton Bays, N.Y., is agreeing to purchase W245BA at 96.9 MHz, licensed to Manorville, N.Y.

The seller is Michael Aliffi, and he is earning $150,000 from the sale.

The deal negates a transaction consummated in November 2020 sale valued at just $10,000. It would have seen the translator become the property of former Big City Radio executive Michael Kakoyiannis.

With the translator, WLIW can expand its coverage westward into populous central Suffolk County.

WNET, known for its Thirteen PBS service, acquired WLIW-FM in October 2019, when it was known as WPPB-FM 88.3. It closed on the $944,834 acquisition in June 2020.