Tech Talk With Leon – December 2011
Sydney | 16 December 2011 – Leon Holloway is Stellar Inflight’s Audio Manager and has spent many years getting to know the vast array of Pre-Recorded Announcement (PRA) and Boarding Music (BGM) reproducers (between them: PRAM) in the IFEC market in intricate detail. Yes, the fact remains that in (almost) 2012, many airlines are still flying with Philips Cassette based technology when it comes to PRAM content. And, most airlines have at least two and often more formats, model numbers, content layouts and various other challenges to deal with. Leon being the ‘guru’ of this part of IFEC decided to make such challenges his problem – not the airlines – and subsequently Stellar Inflight has been producing a huge volume of PRAM media for many airlines in recent years. If you find yourself facing the same challenge – you need only point your email client here: leon.holloway@stellargroup.com - and you’ll find your problem solved!
Analog Cassette or Digital Compression – Are Your PRAM requirements AC, DC or AC/DC?
Interesting question – and if your aircraft have previous or current generation IFE equipment, or perhaps a bit of everything as we tend to find, this does not always limit what you can do with your PRA & BGM content requirements. It simply means it needs management, by being informed of what each of the systems are capable of and having a partner like Stellar Inflight to handle the job for you.
In the last couple of years, I’ve worked on many Pre Recorded Announcement (PRAM) jobs for several airlines and have enjoyed the challenge of my experience of both the latest in digital PRA and BGM systems, but I remain regularly impressed by the versatility of older cassette and flashcard based PRAM systems.
There a many types of such systems still in the field (and the air!) today - and when it comes to systems with the vintage of Panasonic’s RD-AX7001 series for example, it is amazing to think this was originally released back in the 1980’s. This being the case though, don’t be fooled into thinking that it can’t be programmed for many announcements in multiple languages. The technology might be old, but the challenge was the same back then as it is today – airlines carry people speaking a myriad of different languages and dialects and need to cater for all of them.
The way in which these vintage systems such as the aforementioned RD-AX7001, its stable mate RD-AX7271 and the entire catalogue of similar models operate is very clever considering the engineering challenges and technical limitations that existed at the time of their design and build, compared to todays almost limitless and instant playback digital systems. The most common devices by far that we create media for are the Matsushita/Panasonic family of PRAM systems, such as the RD-AX7201, RD-AX7271, RD-AX7360, RD-AX7675, RD-AX7673 to name just a few. However we also support many other OEM’s and formats.
From a cassette media perspective – it uses a series of pips and tones, created by a rack mounted device known as a ‘cue inserter’ to create marker points and cues for content storage and playback.
Whilst in order to comply with the creation of masters that work correctly in the PRAM devices, we’ve introduced digital methods to create the various elements of the masters that result in accurate and surprisingly hi-fidelity recordings.
There is definitely a misconception that due to the age of a lot of these systems they can’t be used for any volume of content or be relied upon anymore – when quite the opposite is true of both. Cassette systems can support anywhere between 1-128 announcements and flashcard systems up to 490 announcements in different applications – especially useful where an airline has a very busy cabin crew who don’t have time for live reads and also where they are catering for customers in a multi-cultural and multi-language environment to their various destinations.
With the most modern PRA/BGM content being stored on AVOD servers as part of the IFE digital media load – the capacity has increased even more – to the point where we are catering for such initiatives as different music in the cabin, the lavatories and more.
So – enough from me until my next column – but if you’ve got an AC, DC or AC/DC style PRAM challenge – just drop me a line and I’ll be more than happy to help. Our services not only include the technical expertise, but also the logistical – all you need do is supply us an English language script approved by your safety department and we’ll do the rest – translate, record, edit, encode, duplicate – whatever it takes.
For further information – please contact:
Leon Holloway, Audio Manager | T: +61 2 8197 9811 | E: leon.holloway@stellargroup.com
