I just got back from IBC in Amsterdam, and tucked away in the corner of the Audio hall was a little german company called Dialog4. This is apparently an established company with a pretty broad product line targeted at broadcasters. The basic theme with their products is using MP3 to compress "broadcast quality" audio down to something that can be transmitted over ISDN, multiple POTS lines, etc. It's a clever application of the technology, to be sure.

But what really caught my eye was a new product called the Soundtainer (no real info online yet). This is targeted at the Broadcast/ENG market, so bear that in mind when looking at the specs:

The device is a portable MP3 recorder/player, and is about the size of a Palm VII. It has two slots for MultiMediaCard flash, giving a total capacity of 256MB. There's a small LCD and a minimal GUI for organizing files, but you can record with the lid closed. It's based on "the latest" Motorola embedded CPU, and the encoder is software, so there's some hope for overcoming the number one limitation in my eyes: Max bitrate is 128kbps (Joint Stereo).

It has four connectors: Mic In, Line In, Line Out, and USB (slave). Target price is $450US, and quantity production is expected in November.

Now, MultiMediaCard wouldn't have been my first choice (I'm a CF believer...MicroDrives are good things), and I'd really like to record at a higher bitrate, but a Rio that records....I think I need one of these.

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39