Specifications

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Why Use Professional Sound Cards?
Professional Audio Cards are the most important investment that you can make to transform your high
quality PC into a professional audio device. Professional audio cards provide the highest possible audio
quality from your PC. Think of all of the efforts of all of the people in your organization, from the GM, to
your talent, to your sales people… All of the efforts of all of these people flow through that one audio
device. This alone is a great reason to step up to professional equipment. Quality audio devices also
provide the functionality that you need to make your station sound the best! Here are a few examples of
the types of features available with professional grade audio devices:
Multiple audio devices provide true overlap. Many single professional grade audio devices can perform
triple overlap playback all by themselves!
Record while you’re playing back. You can play back, record, or do both at once. With many of these
cards you can record Rush Limbaugh while doing triple overlap. Try that on a consumer grade card.
Decompress and play back files with very little strain on your computer’s processor. That’s right, on-board
decompression takes over the load so that your processor is free to handle other automation tasks.
Remote Voice Tracking in Simian Remote requires 3 descrete playback devices with mixer functionality to
fully support the requirements of the Remote Voice Track Editor. Anything less and you may not get the
full functionality of the Voice Track Editor’s capabilities.
It all boils down to one simple fact. You could run your radio station with that “pro” soundboard from Radio
Shack, but you don’t. So why run your million-dollar radio station with a consumer grade sound card?
Production Issues
While Simian can be run on the air while you’re doing production work, we cannot guarantee that the
production features will not slow down the computer and affect on-air playback. Look at it this way; A few
years ago it was not uncommon for a radio station to pay $3000 for a single cart machine. A production
computer with a pro sound card can cost as little as $2000, and you can run Simian in Production Mode,
which is much less expensive than Full Mode. Do the right thing for your business and your employees…
Set up a production machine. You’ll thank yourself later. Simian Pro 2.2 does have the ability to connect
to its own Simian Gateway, so you could have a separate Simian Remote connection that allows you to
remote control your Production machine, too.
Choosing Audio File Formats
One of the most common questions people ask when they’re setting up Simian Gateway is “What audio
file format should I use?”. Unfortunately, the answer from Technical Support is that there is no single
“right” file format. The reality is that you’ll need to do some research. In the interest of making this
question a little less daunting, we’ve gathered the information that you’ll need to make an informed
decision regarding your choice of file format.
Considerations
Simian itself handles four main formats of audio, PCM Wave, CBR MP3, Mpeg 2, and ADPCM. Because
the Simian Gateway has to interface with other target platforms (e.g. PC and iPad/iOS), it is more limited
in what audio formats can be used. This means that Simian itself is more limited in what formats are
allowable in conjunction with the Simian Gateway/Remote.
Simian Gateway/Remote requires that your audio (at least the audio used for Remote Voice Tracking) be
in either PCM Wave 16bit or CBR MP3 formats. This is because the Simian Gateway creates highly
compressed intro and segue cuts of your audio files used for Remote Voice Tracking. Only PCM Wave
and MP3 files can be efficiently trimmed and recompressed, and all the target platforms that run the
Simian Remote client support.