[malcyh]

Has the emergency tape just kicked in?

[Jono]

I doubt it, I don't know, but I think one of the team members back at the studio put it on

[clublander]

nah Hard Fi is a nice safe emergancy tape style track. I suspect it kicked in fast because it wasn't looking for silence, just the lack of feed link.

[jamiec21]

The gap was too short for the Emergency DAT to kick in. I suspect, it being an OB, they had someone back in the studio ready to play records in the event they dropped off the air.

[microchip08]

What does

DAT

and

OB

mean?

[Quincy]

OB = outside broadcats ie the BT tower

not sure what DAT stands for excatly but its basically like a tape. a guess is Digital Audio Tape??

[Chris4]

don't know what DAT means but OB means Outside Broadcast

[mlawton]

DAT - Digital Audio Tape


OB - Outside Broadcast

[Chris4]

thanks for clearing that up mlawton

[Chrz]

Chris said before the news that Hard Fi were coming up, does that not mean that it had to be played from the studio that they were in... or something??

[clublander]

and I like I said, it could be that the E-DAT was hooked up to the tower feed, and set to go as soon as it could no longer see the live feed coming in, rather than looking for silence.

[Chrz]

and this is the sort of topic that chris'll pick up on and start calling us all geeks

[microchip08]

I suppose you're right.... let's ask Aled to keep it quiet!

[Tunster]

The music for definately is played remotely. Down to the clever playout software they have, Chris tells the studio at Radio 1 to play all the stuff. What's the point of taking music with you to an OB when the BBC have huge fat speedy satellite lines and links? Especially at the BT Tower!

When the voice link dropped, all what was needed is a push play from the OB studio or at BBC HQ. If it was the DAT, they wouldn't of been able to get back on-air in that quick amount of time (from their broadcast tape discussions from times before).

I better shutup my geeky part of brain, lol. I just wanted to clear it all up.

[microchip08]

Can someone just tell me what time the "emergency tape" was broadcast? I'm listening to Listen Again.... again

[Console]

It was 8:35:14, although all you actually hear is the feed stop and the music start, it isn't that interesting.

[microchip08]

And how come you can be so precise?

It makes me feel like you sit by an atomic clock, noting down anything that's interesting on Radio 1, 3, 4 1Xtra, 5, 6 and 7 and it's time to the last millisecond. Notice 2 is not on that list.

[Console]

That or I record the show.

[microchip08]

I preferred my idea.

[Console]

Yes, but mine has the benefits of being both plausible and true.

[microchip08]

Do you know what it is in milliseconds, though?

[Chrz]

does it matter??

[David]

The music for definately is played remotely. Down to the clever playout software they have, Chris tells the studio at Radio 1 to play all the stuff. What's the point of taking music with you to an OB when the BBC have huge fat speedy satellite lines and links? Especially at the BT Tower!

Thats a lie. All the music is played off CD at an OB... I.e. Aled not being able to press the button at the right time.

But they'll need to be someone in the studio at all times should the link go down, and they probably have the playlist sitting on the computer should, like today, the link go down so they can fire off the music.

No mater how good playout software is, to be able to get the person in the studio to press play when Chris wants a song to start, or dip the levels when Chris wants to speak, it wont sound as good as the music physically being there with Chris.

[mlawton]

They have the control permissions on remote location but the actual hard music is at the radio1 studios on a server. They never play playlist songs from cd, they are stored on a central (probably web based) server at bbc center.

[Quincy]

I was going to question that they used cds