Production Facilities

There are two ways a radio commercial can be produced, the first is through a commercial radio company such as Key 103 and Capital who will have their own production studios and will be able to produce commercials independently. However other smaller radio stations may employ an independent radio production company, which will have their own radio studios.

An example independent productions company is http://www.radioproductioncompany.co.uk/studio.html

An isolation booth is a small room in a radio studio, which is soundproofed to keep out eternal sounds and keep in the internal sounds and, like all the other recording rooms in sound industry, it is designed for having a lesser amount of diffused reflections from walls to make a good sounding room. A radio presenter along with microphones, is acoustically isolated in the room because the audiences wouldn't want to hear the background noises and so the presenter isn't interrupted when they are on air.

A mixing console is an electronic device for combining, routing, and changing the levels and dynamics audio signals. A mixer can mix both digital and analogue signals, depending on the type of mixer. Mixing console's are used to introduce songs to change the volume levels and to play jingles along with many other techniques.

A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. Radio stations will have designated workstations that will have software on for editing. There are lots of different software and some that we use on the college radio station are reaper, audacity and adobe audition.

 Reaper is digital audio workstations software, a complete multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing, and mastering environment. Reaper works with almost any hardware and can be used in combination with a vast universe of other software and plug-ins. I used Reaper in college to put all my audio clips together to make  new stories.

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multitrack audio editor and recorder for Windows, Max OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. The interface is translated into many languages. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio
• Record computer playback on any Windows Vista or later machine.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more!

I haven't used Audacity as a part of my college work.

Adobe Audition is a digital audio workstation from Adobe Systems featuring both a multitrack, non-destructive mix/edit environment and a destructive-approach waveform editing view. There are lot of new features that Adobe Audition uses these are: 

• Sound Remover
• Advanced Sound Design
• Enhanced Spectral Display
• Preview Editor
• Roundtrip Editing Workflow
• Audio Finesse
• Enhanced Multitrack Editing
• Automatic Speech Alignment
• ITU Loudness Metering

I haven't used Adobe Audition as a part of my college work.