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2. AUDIO TECHNOLOGY
2… AUDIO TECHNOLOGY
PICKUP is designed for use as a personal audio guide for exhibitions or similar public
arenas. It is used with Dataton infrared transponders as part of an audio tour. Transponders
are mounted in the exhibition area next to the items that form the subject of the tour. The
visitor selects a transponder by clicking at it with PICKUP and the relevant sound segment
starts playing. The basic features in PICKUP are similar to a regular digital audio player, as
described in the next few pages. Get to know these well and you’ll find it is a smooth transi-
tion to creating audio tours.
BaSic conceptS…
mp3 audio file
This popular audio format features all the inherent advantages of a compressed format
while retaining superior sound quality. With MP3 encoding it is possible to shrink original
sound data from a CD by a factor of 12, with virtually no perceived loss of quality.
There are other compression methods, such as AAC, WMA, Ogg Vorbis. PICKUP currently
only supports MP3, which is the most widely used format.
The various formats differ in quality, most obviously at high levels of compression, for
example, compression 20 to 40 times. The deterioration in quality is audible but varies in
degree according to the method applied.
PICKUP is primarily used to reproduce sound in a descriptive or narrative context, which
does not usually motivate such hard compression. Bearing this in mind, MP3 is considered
