Alternatives to ISDN
The subject of ISDN does not come up on a regular basis for me, but it does come up. When a producer asks me if I have ISDN or access to it, I have to tell them that, well, yeah I have access to it but it would cost $100 an hour in addition to my own fee. I had a call last summer from a large producer of audio that colleagues have described as “the real deal”, inviting me to join their ranks, but I had to have ISDN. No guarantee of work, so making the investment in ISDN would have been a big leap of faith. The average ISDN codec is around $3500 US and the monthly charge is about $85 if you commit to 12 months – month-by-month it’s closer to $110 – and that’s if you can even get an installation. In some areas you can’t get ISDN at all anymore.
Many people who have ISDN and use it regularly insist that it’s not going anywhere. Those of us who don’t are waiting for a good alternative. Source Elements has come out with Source Connect, a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software that is considerably less costly than ISDN: $395 for the basic version with limited audio quality settings and $1495 for Source Connect Pro (which is customized for musicians and has a wider variety of audio settings). The catch is that it is only for Pro Tools users. Among voice-over professionals, Pro Tools is just one choice for recording and editing. Adobe Audition and Sound Forge have a significant share of the market as well. So what is one to do?
I was pretty jazzed to learn recently that my friend and colleague Frank Frederick will be offering a new answer to the problem of how to get studio-quality audio between remote studios in real time, which is platform-independent. It’s a VOIP called iSpeek, designed with voice-over people like me in mind. The software will cost $150. Or you can get it on a jump drive for $175 and take it with you wherever you go. Monthly service fee is $25, but for $40/month you can share it with up to three of your clients. If you need more iSpeek Clients they are only $15.00 per month each – and even if they have ISDN, surely they will be happy to try it for free (they will only be able to use it with you, unless they buy it for themselves). You can read more about it at http://www.ispeek.org/. It certainly sounds like the way to go!
The subject of ISDN does not come up on a regular basis for me, but it does come up. When a producer asks me if I have ISDN or access to it, I have to tell them that, well, yeah I have access to it but it would cost $100 an hour in addition to my own fee. I had a call last summer from a large producer of audio that colleagues have described as “the real deal”, inviting me to join their ranks, but I had to have ISDN. No guarantee of work, so making the investment in ISDN would have been a big leap of faith. The average ISDN codec is around $3500 US and the monthly charge is about $85 if you commit to 12 months – month-by-month it’s closer to $110 – and that’s if you can even get an installation. In some areas you can’t get ISDN at all anymore.
Many people who have ISDN and use it regularly insist that it’s not going anywhere. Those of us who don’t are waiting for a good alternative. Source Elements has come out with Source Connect, a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software that is considerably less costly than ISDN: $395 for the basic version with limited audio quality settings and $1495 for Source Connect Pro (which is customized for musicians and has a wider variety of audio settings). The catch is that it is only for Pro Tools users. Among voice-over professionals, Pro Tools is just one choice for recording and editing. Adobe Audition and Sound Forge have a significant share of the market as well. So what is one to do?
I was pretty jazzed to learn recently that my friend and colleague Frank Frederick will be offering a new answer to the problem of how to get studio-quality audio between remote studios in real time, which is platform-independent. It’s a VOIP called iSpeek, designed with voice-over people like me in mind. The software will cost $150. Or you can get it on a jump drive for $175 and take it with you wherever you go. Monthly service fee is $25, but for $40/month you can share it with up to three of your clients. If you need more iSpeek Clients they are only $15.00 per month each – and even if they have ISDN, surely they will be happy to try it for free (they will only be able to use it with you, unless they buy it for themselves). You can read more about it at http://www.ispeek.org/. It certainly sounds like the way to go!
posted by MCM Voices at
10:49 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home