[BC] Cart Machines

[Alan Peterson]

>... I think we're the last holdout anywhere that still uses physical media for everything. (computers are live-assist only, PSA/CSA, underwriters, bumpers, promos, etc, no music). 80,000 CDs and 45,000 records. It'd be a LOT of storage to archive that library!

>>>We want to give the students the experience of a traditional broadcast facility of years gone by; so they can appreciate the changes in technology in the broadcast facility.>>
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Major props to you guys.

In my audio production class at Montgomery College (a well-respected two-year school in Rockville MD/suburban DC), I devote one evening a semester to magnetic tape technologies - which includes carts, cassettes, reels, multitrack and stereo recording. I describe the directional order of the heads (ERP), biasing, alignment and calibration, tape formulation and manufacture, cue tones, splicing and editing. I show them how to flip a tape over to hear secret messages about Paul McCartney, and how sci-fi movies in the '50s used runaway echo to accomplish spacey effects.

At the end of the evening, I tell them that unless they have a $600 audiophile cassette deck or a Teac 3340 at home, not to worry about a single thing they heard that night; then the next night we're back to sample rates, quantization and Adobe Audition. Keep it as a foundation, by all means, but don't kill yourselves trying to remember it all or trying to apply it.

 Having the roots emphasized is valuable to be sure; but here in the DC market, too much time spent on technologies that started being phased out nearly a decade and-a-half ago is like training our students to be gaslamp lighters or Linotype operators. Transfer grads will be hitting the job market in 2013-14, and odds are they will never find any of this gear at any post-college job they go to. 

-AP