YOYODYNE – Where the future begins tomorrow.

Hyper audio: Nick Dunkerley, on Hindenburg and the future of radio
Dec 2010

Interviewer: [0:01] All right. So…
Nick Dunkerley: [0:02] All right.
Interviewer: [0:03] I’m here with Nick Dunkerley, who’s an old friend and a radio geek. I think I’ve known you for about 15 years.
Nick: [0:12] Oh, Christ. That’s a long time.
Interviewer: [0:14] And the first time I met you was when I produced my first ever radio program. You were the editor, and you were teaching me how to layer audio like a chessboard. If we fast forward to now, you are now someone who’s actually produced maybe the application that I like the best for editing audio today. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about what happened in those [laughs] 15 years because I would…
Nick: [0:42] In the 15 years in between?
Interviewer: [0:43] Right.
Nick: [0:44] Well, what happened really was that, at one point, I had left the National Broadcaster and went to Africa to Zambia, where I was working on the Community Radio Project. For this Community Radio Project, I was looking for some software that they could use for editing. [1:03] I needed something really easy to use because it needs to be used by locals not necessarily with much computer background or editing background. They should just be able to sit down, do some simple editing, and broadcast it. So, I was looking at basically everything there was on the market and couldn’t find anything that was satisfactory.
Interviewer: [1:29] What was the gap that you saw that there was a place to do something?
Nick: [1:34] The problem really as I found it was that no one had really sat down and made an affordable piece of software for radio production. There’s loads of software out there for music production and definitely we could. And they have loads of features that are really cool for music production. So, I was thinking, well, if we had a piece of software that was sold and made for radio, what would it look like?
Interviewer: [1:59] So now, you’ve created a piece of software, and I should note that I’m actually recording this interview with your software on my iPhone.
Nick: [2:06] This is one of them, yeah. We have the iPhone version and a desktop version.
Interviewer: [2:11] And what strikes me as the new thing for me is that I can quickly produce this interview, edit it on my phone, upload it, and publish it on the web.
Nick: [2:23] Yup.
Interviewer: [2:24] And that’s very different from the stuff that I’m used to. I used to work with Pro Tools as many professionals in this field do, where you have this sort of clunky big setup that does what you want to do really well, but it also has tons of other features. I could imagine that someone working in Sub-Saharan conditions just can’t work that way.
Nick: [2:44] Really, my main problem with the programs that were out there were that they were way too difficult to learn how to use. Your Pro Tools [inaudible 0:02:56] yourself and Pro Tools is fine if you’ve been using it for a long time and keep using it. I’ve been using Pro Tools for years and if I haven’t used it for six months and go back to it, I can’t remember a thing. I think the radio media should be accessible for everybody, and so it should be cheap and…
Interviewer: [3:16] Why do you want it to be accessible for everybody? I mean, in the past, it was broadcasters and people with the access to means and the technology to produce radio.
Nick: [3:24] Yeah, but that’s true, but that’s just not really the way that the distribution of media is going…
Interviewer: [3:29] Right.
Nick: [3:29] … where we had the incident basically anyone can produce. Now, really what we want is where you connect or just make a note. You can set markers there if you want to later.
Interviewer: [3:39] All right. We set a marker.
Nick: [3:41] There are a few people that really do have great stories to tell, and they should have a means and equipment and what-have-you to be able to tell those stories because that can be very important. If you’re talking about the Sub-Sahara area, there are so many stories that need to be told. The radio media is the most democratic media that we have in the sense that it can be received by, well, nearly anyone on the entire planet and can be understood. [4:12] You can’t do that with newspapers or Internet or television. So, radio is really the only media that can make a huge impact in developing countries. But, one of the problems they have in Africa with some of the radio stations that have been built there are that they have a problem with content.
Interviewer: [4:36] Right.
Nick: [4:36] And the content is just not very good, so most times, they just end up playing music. That’s not really going to help develop agriculture or health or anything like that.
Interviewer: [4:52] So, how does a piece of software help that problem?
Nick: [4:55] Well, the way a piece of software can help is if you’re with the software, it can take the focus away from the engineering point of view of making radio. Creating a radio program can be very geeky. You have to know stuff about levels and broadcast outputs and what have you. [5:15] But, if we can alter these processes so people could basically just sit down, do their recordings, and edit it as where it’s a text document, and when they’re finished it’s finished for or ready for broadcasting. If they can do that and we can make it very simple for people to actually tell stories, we can get more people telling stories.
Interviewer: [5:40] So, if I look at that situation and compare it to someone who works in a broadcaster, that would be more restrictive, as we both know from the past.
Nick: [5:49] Yeah, definitely.
Interviewer: [5:50] There’s actually often been in a similar situation in my life where I actually found that the tools that I had access to and the ways of working on the web were very different and much more agile and fast in the way that I think outside the broadcaster. So, actually, the tools I had access to in this big expensive building were just not satisfactory.
Nick: [6:10] Well, if we talk about the broadcaster situation at the moment, because when we started out this project we were basically thinking of the developing countries. But, as it turned out, we started developing the programs together with some of my old colleagues. Within a few months as the program became stable, to our astonishment, they started using our program instead of the ones that they were using previously. [6:39] So, they have the same problem. They just need something that works, that is optimized for radio production and apparently nobody has really done this before.
Interviewer: [6:50] How do you see the web and radio production merge? And what can you do, for example, with this application that lends itself more to the way that the web works today, that people can take a bit from here and there and put it together? They can look at each other over their shoulder. They can build on each other’s work. [7:06] How do you see this kind of work ethos the way that the Web natives work? How do you see that converging with your software in the way that radio could be…
Nick: [7:16] Ideally.
Interviewer: [7:17] If we go five years forward in time, how would you like radio production and the web to merge?
Nick: [7:23] What I would like to see is that people are able to collaborate on stories. So, it would be a lot easier to collaborate with someone in Eastern Europe or France, whatever. So, you can say, “Well, this is a really interesting intro. Do you want to do a version of your own?” So, they could just exchange sessions with each other.
Interviewer: [7:48] Could you imagine the situation where you have a standard for exchanging audio and that any broadcaster could exchange files and any journalist could take another journalist’s audio and use it in their editing? And if you disregard all those things that are copyright and business models…
Nick: [8:06] Yes, definitely. That would be an obvious way to go.
Interviewer: [8:10] So, when you look at the way radio works today, what annoys [laughs] you the most? What are your itches?
Nick: [8:14] Well, some of the largest challenges there are are actually finding anything. One of the things that would be nice to have is being able to make a text search in an audio.
Interviewer: [8:28] Right.
Nick: [8:29] That is one of the things. I think I’m not quite sure what the solution will be, but actually just finding anything can be an immense problem. How do you find anything of quality? And if you find something, can you use it? There are loads of issues there just when it comes to search engines. Where will the search engines be in the future?
Interviewer: [8:56] So, how would you describe a scenario where radio works more like you would want it in your everyday life? We just talked about Radio Lab, which we both are big fans of, and you listen to one of their shows and you take it out on your… Like how would it work for you if both the geek in you or also the consumer or just the listener is satisfied? How would that look?
Nick: [9:19] Well, radio, obviously, is going from just being an audio media to being a multimedia experience. So, if I was listening to Radio Lab, I would like to be able to see pictures at the same time. I would like to see links to more background information, just adding that slightly. [9:43] We both have an iPad, and I use my iPad in that sense. I just have it in the kitchen, so it just stands there. I use it often for listening to radio in the background. Then I like to be able to turn away from the washing up or whatever and go back to the iPad and say, “Oh, that was really interesting,” so I want to learn about that specific topic.
Interviewer: [10:03] Right.
Nick: [10:05] I can see the audio. I think we should not really talk about it as radio because you’re kind of stuck with that impression of what radio is. It might as well just be a newspaper or a magazine where you can have an audio experience on top of the magazine or the newspaper.
Interviewer: [10:30] The problem as I see it right now with audio is that it’s a flat thing that’s on the web. You can play it on the web page, but that’s kind of it. It doesn’t transfer to your car. You can’t take it on your bike. If you hear something you want to, as you say, interact with, you can’t really do that. What is the value that we need to fix now in radio or audio storytelling, and what’s the sort of low-hanging fruit that can be just done now with your software, for example?
Nick: [10:55] Oo! You said “low-hanging.” Oh, I was just going for the high-hanging fruit. [laughs]
Interviewer: [10:59] Let’s say both then.
Nick: [laughs] [11:00] Even though we’ve talked about this a bit earlier, but what would be really interesting is if your audio media was in the cloud and you can access it from any device, be it from your computer, your radio, your tablets, your car radio, your fridge for that matter, it should always – as we were talking about before but that’s not interesting in this sense – you should always know where you are. All devices should connect to your Internet or your space or whatever it might be.
Interviewer: [11:43] Right, so you can pick up from where you left off.
Nick: [11:45] Exactly.
Interviewer: [11:46] And one of the things that I really would want is that if I listen to something really interesting and I think, “Oh, this would be really interesting for Nick to listen to because he’s building this application,” I would like to be able to reference a quote, a specific time point. And by text or just sending you the audio, like 30 seconds. [12:05] Is that something you could do now with your software? Like you can imagine implementing ways of people to insert time points and things in the session and then have that as a way to interchange audio? I’m not going to have to spill the beans in your very sophisticated research and development in your software, but…
Nick: [12:29] But, where would…
Interviewer: [12:30] … this is something, I guess, we both would want to see.
Nick: [12:32] Yes, it’s definitely something that would be nice to see. The question is if it’s our software that is going to do that or is it in the player, because what you’re talking about now is more of the player experience. So when you’re listening to it, you say, oh, this bit is really interesting, and just email that to me. [12:53] What we will be able to do with our software is put markers in it, put chapters in it, put metadata in it, put pictures in it, put hyperlinks. Embed all that into either your finished file, or you can just export your session. Instead of listening to a finished file, you can say somebody can just download the entire session with all the tracks divided.
[13:21] It really depends, because that will be great for producers to be able to exchange sessions data, but for the users, they’ll really just need a finished file, because the whole remixing of radio and doing your own retake of the news or something like that, it’ll be fun to do, but it’s not really anything that makes sense in the real world.
Interviewer: [13:50] But, the real challenge that I’ve experienced as a journalist was when you were in a news environment, that you’re in a position to… you’re chasing up interviewees, politicians, for example. [14:01] You go out there, and there are 15 other people who need to get this audio bite the same morning with the same politician. They’re tired of repeating the same story, and everybody just needs the same thing, so there’s a lot of friction and a lot of wasted work.
[14:17] Inside the broadcaster, often you share. So, you can take each other’s sound files from the background from the server. But, if you’re outside that broadcaster – let’s say you’re producing an independent news program – you just don’t have access to that data.
Nick: [14:29] No.
Interviewer: [14:30] Could that be fixed with something, I could imagine.
Nick: [14:33] It could. It could, but that would require huge databases.
Interviewer: [14:40] Would it?
Nick: [14:42] Well, have you heard of…
Interviewer: [14:44] I heard it’s not that heavy in terms of load.
Nick: [14:46] No, but still, if everyone should be able to upload their interview to a database… At the moment, there’s something like PRX in the States.
Interviewer: [14:55] The Public Radio Exchange?
Nick: [14:57] Yes. Thank you very much.
Nick: [14:59] You’re welcome.
Nick: [15:00] … Where you upload your finished programs, and then basically any broadcaster can then buy that program and retransmit it.
Interviewer: [15:11] They don’t have access to the source audio.
Nick: [15:15] No, it’s just the finished program. But still, some of the problems they have already there, because it’s a great idea. But the independents actually don’t really get any money out of it. [15:30] And just finding the material, again, finding the material – how does an editor sitting at a national broadcast somewhere, how do they figure out that this information is out there already? It would probably be easier to send a journalist out in town, do their own interview, and get back again than trying to find it. Again, we’re getting back to searching audio.
Interviewer: [15:57] And standards.
Nick: [15:58] And standards. I still see there are some huge challenges there. I hope that we don’t have to deal with all of them.
Interviewer: [16:05] Right. So, another itch that I have goes along those lines, that you have a lot of radio stations, for example, NPR in the States, that transcribe all their shows. You can search the clear text on the web, but it doesn’t work with the audio you actually listen to. [16:25] If you imagine just hooking up transcripts with the XY time coordinates in an audio file, could you imagine, then, the feature as a layer you can add to your files, so that if I share something with you, you could remove one layer, which is the written stuff, and replace it with something similar.
[16:48] So, if I had a radio program in Danish, I would be able to remove the speech and just add the same speech in English and spit it out. Imagine the potential for that for broadcasters.
Nick: [17:01] Just imagine having a TalkRadio.eu, or something like that. That would be fantastic. Then instead of just submitting the whole program, you’ll submit it as a session, or you can have a whole program and a session with a transcript. Like they already do with EBUs and – what’s it called? When they did the [inaudible 0:17:25] .
Interviewer: [17:26] Right, which is an award for the best sound-montage storytelling. Last year, I think it was a German piece that won?
Nick: [17:37] Mm-hmm. Basically, when you’re listening to it, you’re listening to it in German, and you have the translation as a transcript. But, why not do it in English? Why not do it in French? It’d be great to be able to do it in…
Interviewer: [17:51] Because everybody has only the flat audio file.
Nick: [17:53] Yes, exactly. If we are able to exchange them as session files instead… What would be great to do – because obviously anyone can just put their session files out there, but what would be great to do is have an open standard for session files. [18:09] There are standards for exchanging the session data between different programs at the moment, but it’s still very geeky and doesn’t really always work. So, if we could have better open standards for that, that would help a lot.
Interviewer: [18:26] One of the things that I am fascinated with in your software is that you’ve actually integrated standards for audio so that you can create your audio so that it adheres to the EBU stand for audio levels and other technical specifications. [18:42] Could you imagine an effort on standardizing the world of audio so that it’s easier to interchange outside of the broadcasters?
Nick: [18:54] Well, it’s very difficult to make standards outside the broadcast, but it would be nice to do so. Actually, it’s very difficult to make standards with inside the broadcasters. Right now, we’re having talks with some people in America about trying to make a standard for NPR. They don’t even have a standard for that one yet.
Interviewer: [19:13] Right.
Nick: [19:14] And when it comes to your [inaudible 0:19:17] broadcasting, they’re just the difference between the Danish national broadcaster, which is our background, and BBC. They’re not the same. So, if you had a worldwide standard for the delivery of radio material, that would be great.
Interviewer: [19:35] But still, if you imagine the BBC using Hindenburg, which I’m sure you would be thrilled to see…
Nick: [19:43] Oh, yeah. That would be nice.
Interviewer: [19:44] … and they spit out their finished productions as a session file that I could then import at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation or any other broadcaster, and then just add the levels that we work with. [19:55] Then you’re already at a place where it’s much easier than just getting a finished audio file where the levels aren’t the same so it doesn’t sound like you like your radios to sound.
Nick: [20:05] I need to explain here that we have in our program something called Auto Levels. So, as soon as you drag an audio file into the program, it will set itself to the correct broadcast levels. All you need to think about is editing.
Interviewer: [20:21] But, I’ve learned the hard way that the talk has to be approximately about 15 dB higher than the music underneath for it not to sound messy.
Nick: [20:34] But, all these things that I’ve been telling you over the years, they’re rules of thumb.
Interviewer: [20:39] Exactly.
Nick: [20:40] And that’s the problem, because in the real world, you have to use your ears. What we have done is we have embedded a silent sound engineer with really good ears. So, you don’t have to know how loud should this sound be compared to this sound; it’ll do it automatically. [21:08] And even if you have two different pieces of music side to side, if you just have a rule of thumb that says all music should be at this level, it wouldn’t actually be correct, because if you had a really compressed piece of music and a non-compressed piece of music next to each other, they would sound very different.
Interviewer: [21:28] So, putting that down into a simple container would be to say that anyone who hasn’t worked with radio and has that background can still get whatever they’re doing to sound relatively close to the professional radio experience.
Nick: [21:41] Definitely. Especially since the professionals have co-managers. So you could probably actually make it sound better.
Interviewer: [21:49] Right. So, just to finish off, where would you like to see this whole thing going in the next five years in terms of making…? Obviously, you want a lot of people to buy your software, and I can definitely recommend doing that. I just did.
Nick: [22:06] It’s very good.
Interviewer: [22:08] But other than that, could you imagine other software vendors adhering to standards that make it easy, even though you don’t necessarily use Hindenburg, that people can participate with the audio medium easier across different vendors, across different software.
Nick: [22:25] I would love to see it as a plug-in for a browser. Imagine this scenario that you’re just listening to a podcast through your browser or whatever. You can say, well, this sounds really interesting, or I’d like to see the whole session, and just in your browser see those eight tracks, ten tracks, whatever. Usually, radio is no more than five or six tracks but still…
Interviewer: [22:53] Right.
Nick: [22:54] That would be interesting.
Interviewer: [22:55] Why would that be interesting?
Nick: [22:57] It just would.
Interviewer: [22:59] For me, it would be interesting because I often listen to things on the radio, and I’m like, wait a minute. That person actually wanted to say something more. [23:06] There’s the famous, “Information wants to be free,” where the guy actually said, “Sometimes information wants to be free, and sometimes information wants to be really expensive.” Something along those lines. But, of course, you’ve only ever heard the first part because that’s the sound bite that made it out into the world.
[23:22] Similarly, when you listen to radio, the power leverage between the interviewee and the interviewer has been skewed in the sense that the person editing can make anything sound like you want it to.
Nick: [23:33] That is true.
Interviewer: [23:34] So, if you can look over the shoulders of those that produce, you can also check the source, and that’s obviously from someone coming from an open-source background. That’s a great leveler of power, that journalists can’t shape reality into the form they want without others being able to see how they did so.
Nick: [23:53] Yeah. I’m doing it as a read-only. It shouldn’t actually be that difficult, come to think of it.
Interviewer: [24:00] Good.
Nick: [24:01] It’s not a bad idea, but that would be read only.
Interviewer: [24:05] Right.
Nick: [24:06] Would that be interesting?
Interviewer: [24:08] I think it would be interesting now.
Nick: [24:09] Or just have access to the source file would be really interesting. And then if you want to just check the editing – I mean, for most news broadcasts, it’s only simple editing, so a couple edit points. [24:20] Do you really need – because sometimes we just don’t think out of the box enough. We’re used to looking at editors and seeing all the small Lego bits on there, or just borders you would say, referring to it before.
[24:35] But, people that don’t have any audio experience, would they want to see it that way? Maybe you just want to listen. This is who’s talking at the moment. We just want to link to that. This is what he looks like. Here’s a link to it. You can see some of the background information on that.
[24:56] Because you can do anything. It’s just code. You can basically do anything. But really, what you want to do at the end of the day is do something useful.
Interviewer: [25:07] Exactly. And so what would be useful for the listener?
Nick: [25:11] Exactly. It’s a really good question. You should put it out to your listeners.
Interviewer: [25:14] Let’s do that. Thanks. Just leave it there.
Nick: [25:15] OK.

Transcript by CastingWords