Rodney Belizaire Reviews AETA Scoop Reporter II

Rodney Belizaire Reviews ATA Scoop Reporter II

ROCKAWAY, New Jersey -- WQXR’s Rodney Belizaire, known by many as one of New York City’s top remote engineers for radio broadcast, recently reviewed ATA Audio’s Scoop Reporter II. He shares his thoughts on the remote ISDN/POTS codec:

"After putting the Scoop Reporter II through its paces, I feel that there was a lot of thought and consideration put into the unit," says Belizaire. "The automatic battery backup is very impressive. If you lose AC power in the field, as long as you have batteries in the unit and the battery switch selected to ‘Backup’, the Scoop Reporter II will continue working on battery power without dropping the line or missing a beat. For real world applications, that’s critical.

"I called into ATA Audio’s New Jersey office with the unit’s POTS facility. When it connected at 24 kbps, it was one of the best POTS line units that I’ve heard as far as the algorithm, sampling and lack of artifacts go. POTS encoding will always have artifacts, but the Scoop Reporter II was one of the cleanest 8k units that I’ve heard. And I’ve used most of them.

"Another thing that I felt was very important was compatibility with other units. At WQXR, we have a number of ISDN units from several different manufacturers, and the Scoop Reporter II passed with flying colors on all of them.

"I’d recommend the Scoop Reporter II to any station wanting both ISDN and POTS. It’s an excellent all-in-one solution. This is the first unit I’ve seen that has both dedicated POTS and ISDN facilities. This combination also makes the unit attractive as far as price point is concerned. Having to purchase separate ISDN and POTS units would easily be double the cost of the Scoop Reporter II. The price of the ATA is right."

Belizaire currently serves as an engineer for The New York Times-owned classical station WQXR-FM. He built his outstanding reputation by doing studio and remote broadcasts from locations as varied as Venice, Italy (the city’s first ISDN broadcast), Barbados and Disneyworld, as well as spent five years engineering sports remotes for the New York Giants. Today, he continues to remain an active remote broadcast engineer by also doing freelance work for three other New York City radio stations.

ATA Audio is a leading manufacturer of audio products for the broadcast industry, specializing in audio codecs, with US headquarters located in Rockaway, New Jersey.

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