Sonifex has won a major contract to supply BBC local radio stations in England with its award winning Courier portable hard disk recorders. The order is the largest one-off order for Couriers that Sonifex has received and is part of the BBC's programme to redevelop BBC regional broadcasting sites, including London, Kent and Sheffield, project managed by BBC Consulting and Projects. The order for over 100 Couriers, means that every BBC local radio station in England will be issued with a number of units.
Marcus Brooke, Managing Director of Sonifex, said "Everyone at Sonifex is obviously elated. A lot of hard work and collaboration has gone into making the Courier the powerful journalists' tool that it is. We had already sold a number of machines to various parts of the BBC before this order but the BBC's confidence in the Courier is confirmation of its position as the best solid state recorder available for the money."
The new version of Courier has a USB B connector supporting USB 1.1 and enables downloads to the PC of up to 40 times real-time speed. Supplied with the new Courier is software to enable connection to Windows Explorer in Win 98 and Windows 2000. Files can be quickly downloaded to a PC by USB, the disk wiped and recording started again in a fraction of the time normally needed. An additional benefit of the USB connection is that the flashcard or harddisk used for recording can be permanently stored in the Courier without the need for removal. This lessens the risk of losing or damaging the disk, thus avoiding the need for costly replacements. The USB port works in addition to the RS232 serial port and the optional ISDN connection.
Extensive and rigorous testing has been undertaken by the BBC to ensure that the Courier copes with the demands that life in the field will throw at it. The large order is testament to Courier's impressive feature list and capabilities. High quality broadcast audio, seamless transfer to studio editing systems, non-destructive on board editing facilities and live recording or data transfer capabilities via ISDN are just some of the features designed to make the reporter's life easier. In addition, the Courier weighs in at only 1.5kg, it runs on readily available camcorder batteries, AA cells or via a car cigarette lighter, and it is constructed in strong, robust, shatterproof ABS plastic. All of this is teamed with simplicity in use, which ensures that the reporter can concentrate on the report, not the recorder.
As a recorder, Courier supports most standard audio file formats that use linear .wav files or compressed mpeg layer 2 files including Dalet, Sony BMS, Enco DAD, SADiE, Netia, Radioman and AppleAIFF. The BBC will use Courier in conjunction with Radioman editing system. For live audio broadcasting, mpeg layer 2 compression is used to send and receive audio over a single 64 kb/sec circuit. Audio can be sampled at either 24kHz, 32kHz or 48kHz. Courier is compatible with CCS CDQ Prima & CDQ1000, Telos Zephyr, Dialog 4 MusicTaxi and Prodys Pronto 2 codecs.
