[Updated: Transcript now available]

Nick is an old friend and radio geek. He was the technician when I did my first radio programme, and taught me the basics I still work by. Since then much has happened. I work for Mozilla, and have recently started thinking about how audio and radio and the open web can merge. Nick works on Hindenburg, an excellent piece of audio software for journalists,  which could be part of the kind of radio experience, I now work on creating a demo for.  A seamless experience that supports the most important element in journalism: the story. One in which technology simplifies and enhances the experience while the power of the open web – adding depth,  detail, and infinite time/space. Nothing less!

Nick and I met in Copenhagen to discuss where we’d like to see radio go in the future. Here’s the interview – if you make it to the end, it ends with a question, which I’d love to hear your comments on!

I recorded using the iphone field recorder app and edited using the Hindenburg desktop app. Download the raw interview and session files here,. You can grab an Ogg Vorbis version of the edited interview here, mp3 here.

Not surprisingly, Nick and I share a bunch of itches about the present way things work in radio production.   I’ll elaborate on mine in a separate blog post, but Hindenburg scratches a few of those I had when I was a freelance radio journalist. That’s a good start. Of course, Hindenburg is not free software (at least in the freedom sense – there is a free version with limited functionality), but it orients itself towards standards, and Nick and his team have open minds.

Why is Hindenburg interesting for hyper audio?

I won’t elaborate much here, but basically, the term hyper audio combines the hyperlink with audio. Nothing original here, I’m basically riffing off this blog post by Tristan Nitot, and drawing inspiration from technologies brewing at Seneca College – most notably popcorn.js. Everything that can be done with <video> can be done with <audio>. But that’s a whole different story.

The strength of Hindenburg is it’s ease of use and it’s ability to let you focus on the story. It allows you to add markers while you record, and it would be fairly simple to add images and other audio from your recording device (in my case an iPhone 4). These transfer with the file to your editing software, and Hindenburg outputs XML- based session files that could be used for sharing session data, merging your audio with semantic data seems seams a realistic feat. As a journalist, why not not add the sources used, list the Wikipedia entries you drew from, and link to the people in your story? Comments. Geo data. Copyright information – whatever helps strengthen the conversation that audio could be part of. As Nick and I discuss, simply combining time coordinates with transcripts and making these searchable would be a huge improvement over the flat audio we mostly encounter on the web. Imagine a Soundcloud player that shows your markers and links and integrates with comments on your blog -  a player that build solely on open standards. I could go on.

Nick: “You can do anything. It’s just code. But really, want you want to do is something useful.

Henrik: And what would be useful for the listener?

Nick: That’s a really good question. You should put it out to your listeners.

Henrik: We’ll do that! Thanks.

Hindenburg – quick hands-on impressions

- Hindenburg is easy to use, lightweight, intuitive and does 99% of what I need. It just .. feels right and is extremely user-friendly; and it has a very lean workflow from start to end. This is so different from any other audio editing application that I’ve used in the past.

- Auto levels rock. Period. This, on it’s own, is a killler app in itself, and also the main difference between the free and the paid app. It doesn’t replace using your ears (or experience) but it helps a lot.

- No hardware. This is the most sucky feature about Pro Tools – I bought their hardware/software soluation 3 times (but never paid for upgrades – and never felt I got my money’s worth from Digidesign’s Support) and always had to carry around a clunky, external sound card, that I did not need 90% of the time (unless recording into pro tools); the “micro” sound card dongle ruined my USB port, and of course, if I needed to make a quick change in an earlier session and did not have the hardware with me I was out of luck. The Hindenburg app is slim, powerful and fast, as opposed to Pro Tools.

- The iPhone integration is brilliant. Soundcloud integration is coming, hopefully. This means you can record a quick and dirty interview, edit on the iphone, and publish, on the fly.

- It’s WAY better than Audacity or any other freeware apps I used, and very stable. I have not yet worked on advanced projects, and of course automations and filters are still the domain of the Pro Tools of the world. And that’s fine.

- It’s FAST! Putting out this 25:27 interview in .WAV format took 6 seconds (!). Mp3 took 40. Pro Tools would have to “bounce” in real time, which means outputting  happens at 1:1 speed. Ridiculous for radio journalism, because you always have to fix something after you’ve finalized your project.

- Of course, knowing the developers makes the customer experience so much more personal – they actually listen to feedback!

This is my first post about Hyper Audio. Expect more – maybe a podcast; I like this conversation-based approach.