I’ve been listening to a lot of talk radio lately, now that my commute time has been sextupled. It always seems like the hosts (or their cronies) always have EXACTLY the right sound clips/samples, etc. to play at their finger tips. Like Howard Stern always has the “News” song ready as soon as Robin starts the news. Or the various South Park/Blazing Saddles/whatever sound bytes that Opie & Anthony always seem to have ready.
I mean, I know that this is their job and all, so they should know these things (and most of it is probably planned). But when the topic of conversation drifts, they seem to pull up the “Oooh, it’s all gooey” or “Scuze me while I whip this out” or whatever clip in a matter of seconds. And they’ve surely got hundreds of clips.
Is there some computer program that they use? Can I download something like this? (<geek>I think it would be handy for D&D to pull up sound effects/music</geek> )
When I worked briefly at my college radio station, we didn’t have the luxury of a sound guy. If there were two people in the booth at the same time, one person was doing the talking while the other was furiously arranging the “carts,” looped cassettes that had your announcements, credits, and sound effects. If I was alone, I had to line 'em up during songs.
Not too terribly different from old 8-track players, the cart player I worked with had the standard cassette player buttons and a set of headphones. You flipped a switch on the control board to open the channel to the cart player when it was ready to play. And yes, I forgot to close the channel often enough that the damned thing would loop over and start playing again in the middle of whatever I had moved onto half a minute later. It was sort of my signature.
It’s not making the sounds that’s the problem (I’ve got or can get everything I want to use on MP3), it’s (quickly) retrieving and playing them that I can’t figure out. I don’t want to be fumbling with a mouse. I figured the radio guys have some kind of automated system nowadays. Surely carts are a thing of the past, no?
What I’m picturing is a few dozen “pages” of sounds on screen (maybe categorized somehow) and each sound on the page linked to a key on the keyboard (computer, or maybe synthesizer keyboard). Maybe that’s not how they do it, but it’s what I really want. I’ve heard references to a “sound board” on the radio. Is that what it is?
I thought winamp (or a plugin) would have a decent way to link keys with songs. (hit “a”, play song 1 and stop. hit “b” play song 2 and stop. hit “shift-A” and play song 1 on repeat, or something like that…) (Where “song” might be an actual song, or might be an effect or clip.)
I thought winamp would have that, but it doesn’t. you have to use keys like stop/start/next, or hit J to “jump” to a song, but you can’t even jump by number, you have to scroll with the mouse for what you’re looking for and hit it. How hard would it have been to make it even “J<song number><enter>”?
Plenty of times on the Opie and Anthony show (in years past), they would NOT find the desired clip/sound effect in time (and the person hunting for it would be razzed as a matter of course).
Eventually it would be found, and then played out of context (i.e. long after it would have been funny) with more attendent razzing and complaints.
Of course, the more structured your show, the more organized you can be in getting the correct sound bites queued up and ready to go.
I think most stations still used the cart method. Every once in a while a DJ will get caught with a cart that isn’t cued up, and s/he has to ad lib like mad while s/he corrects the problem.
If you listen long enough, you’ll realize that the DJs are using a limited number of sounds over and over again. They keep those nearby, neatly organized. Professional DJs have the ability to talk while they are doing 2 or 3 other things and, since you can’t see them over the radio, it’s unnoticed by you.
The times that they use new sounds are definitely planned in advance.
I’ve always thought this was because radio shows are a lot more scripted than the audience realizes. And since phone calls can be taped during a song, sound effects can be added during playback. Not that I have any evidence of this of course! Just a working theory…
SK, what kind of cart recorder were you using that didn’t put stop tones on your carts? That’s the whole point of using them–when it hits the stop tone, it’s automatically been recued. Shame on your station engineer for not fixing that!
MachV is right as well. I’ve done plenty of hours on the air and as a button-pushing monkey behind board. During commercial breaks (or, in the case of college radio, PSAs) we’d say, “OK, in the next segment I’m going to talk about X, Y and Z, so have these five sounds ready for when I cue you; then after the top of the hour we’ll do news, so have the bumber and these effects ready.”
It’s also not uncommon, if you want a particular effect, to stretch your talk while furiously scribbling “GET BOING SOUND EFFECT NOW!!!” on a note and holding it up.
This is just a WAG, but perhaps talk shows use a digital delay. While the primary purpose for this is to give the censors ample time to bleep out bad words before they are aired, it would also give the sound guys a few seconds to cue up the right sounds in advance and then play them so that they sync up with the delayed broadcast feed.
I’ve heard references to a “sound board” on the radio. Is that what it is?