I get literally dozens of emails daily with offers for discounts on products from sites all over the Web. If I purchased all the deals from even one day, I’d be broke. And how many CF and SD cards do I really need anyway? In the spirit of tracking all the great offers I get I’m adding the Camcorder Discounts category to the Camcorder Answers forums. If you found a great deal somewhere online, share it here with everyone else in the community. We can all go broke saving a few bucks on gadgets together.
The forums continue to be a great source for getting free stuff. The random freebie for one lucky poster who bothered to submit something in the month of October was a 128MB Creative MuVo portable audio player and 2 free audio books from Audible.com The forum member going by the name awrightythen is the recipient of the MuVo and free audio books. You can get your own free Creative MuVo by subscribing to Audible for a full year (I’ve been a member for almost 3 years now, I believe) or you can take your chances on winning a portable player the next time we give one away in the forums. If you aren’t posting in the forums, you’re missing out on getting free software and hardware. It’s as easy as posting a bargain to the Camcorder Discounts forum or asking a question you’ve been dying to find the answer to.
Speaking of bargains, I’m currently looking for gear to set up a radio station studio in my house. Ultimately, I need to be able to bring in phone lines for communication between show hosts and online callers, have the option to have 4 live microphones simultaneously, and pipe in music and sound effects when I need to. I’ve priced the hardware new on several audio gear sites, but I’d rather save a few dollars where I can. I’ve tried searching eBay, but that doesn’t seem to be a good source for radio station gear (or at least their search function doesn’t recognize my requests). I know I’ve heard from several readers in the past with a background in radio; I’d love to hear your opinions both on the type of gear you recommend and the best places to buy it. Feel free to email me directly from the contact link on the site.
Hi Jake,
Interested in your tribulations re the radio station. I’m in the process of doing the same type of project and would be most interested in hearing the current state of your progress re hardware and software etc. I think thgayt I have found a software solution but am seekin any more researched advise.
Keep up the good work on the newsletter.
Peter
Jake, I am confused. What’s so different about plain old audio gear and radio audio gear? (Careful with that answer as I am co-owner of a recording studio and was one of the co-founders of Cincinnati’s non-commercial, non-university affiliated public radio station way back in 1976.)
My contention is there is NO difference at all. A good mixing board will suffice for either purpose. The only “unusual” thing in your hunt would be the fact that you want to interface with phone lines. That’s no big deal as there are many purveyors of telephone to audio devices.
My suggestion is to drop the word “radio” from your search.
Gary Shell
P.S. Jake, drop me a note and I’ll send you my phone number so we can talk directly about this.