ISDN in the 80s and 90s

Before the proliferation of high-speed internet in the early 2000s, remote audio production relied on ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) lines. The introduction of ISDN codecs that ran on these lines created the first opportunity for remote recording at a time when travel was the only way to record in a remote studio. ISDN used circuit-switched lines, which means that data sent from one location was sent directly to another, lowering latency and packet loss. This allowed for reliable transmission. By using two lines, it was possible to send very good quality audio using AAC and MPEG II codecs.

For all the new benefits, there were several challenges:

• Hardware dependency: ISDN required dedicated physical phone lines and expensive hardware codecs.

• Studios needed to ensure a complex handshake would succeed, requiring technical knowledge and telecom support.

• Along with a monthly fixed-line fee and hardware costs, calls were charged on a per-minute rate, where the greater the distance, the higher the rate; it could cost up to 5 USD a minute for cross-ocean calls.

• While talent and stakeholders were no longer demanded to be in the studio, working remotely still demanded booking an ISDN-equipped studio or installing an ISDN line at the hotel.

Lower costs and convenience were achieved by new designs that adapt to those new developments. The arrival of software and hardware that made use of high-speed bandwidth and low-delay codecs quickly made remote audio and media possible, opening affordable cross-country and international collaborations. For the first time, professionals began to work from home setups with standard broadband.

5G, Satellite, Fibre-optic

Massive funding by governments in the 2010s has led to fibre-to-the-home, where today 1 billion households have gigabit subscriptions. Commercial Starlink now offers up to 500 Mbps, and with the 5G rollout in cities offering affordable, fast, and reliable connections from 10 Mbps, remote production is possible across much of the world.

Segments

• Sound Engineers: Engineers use remote audio solutions for ADR, recording, and reviewing high-quality time-based media within their existing digital workstations.

• Voice Actors: Collaborate globally without the need for travel, or while travelling and away from the studio for advertising, audiobooks, film ADR.

• Composers: These workflows enable composers to work with remote clients and collaborators while maintaining high media quality.

• Sound and picture studios: Remote solutions must meet the practical needs of those working in professional production workflows.

• Orchestras: It’s very expensive for an orchestra to travel, and still expensive for a composer to travel, especially if it’s for a short session. Remote audio allows composers, orchestras, ensembles, and music directors to work with the recording engineer and ensure their ideal session recordings go through.

• Commercial Users/Advertising: These users typically prioritize reliability, efficiency, and predictability over experimental flexibility.

• Artists and Musicians: Beyond conventional production, the platform supports artists and musicians engaged in ambitious creative experiments and international real-time sessions.

• Educators and students: High quality allows the ability to teach instruments, studio techniques, and even remote audio collaboration techniques.

• Podcasters: Most podcasters rely on remote connections to record a wide range of guests

• Broadcast: live sports broadcast, synchronization of remote streams

When we are not at the same place, we can choose whether to work or not to work together. We may choose to travel, or not choose to travel. If we decide to work together, and not travel, then remote audio production offers two possibilities in remote audio production: to work together asynchronously or synchronously.

Synchronous workflows

Synchronous solutions expect that there are two or more parties interacting at the same time, remote from each other. There are several challenges: the mediation of presence, where their voices and images are digitally recreated and transmitted. This means, we don’t necessarily know how accurately we are represented to our remote partners and must take care to be more communicative. It also means we are subject to latency, which is largely managed thanks to the human brain being able to accommodate for certain delays in speech. But it will interrupt how we experience working with music together, which has less tolerance for delays.

• Benefits: The key benefit of synchronous workflows is that users get and can give immediate feedback: there is an important difference between being present together, and hearing the feedback of someone who has heard the work.

• Challenges: Audio streaming introduces latency, security concerns, ear fatigue, and frustration due to the lack of standardization. Further, there is an acoustic hurdle that requires attention: high-quality microphones, and proper audio interfaces may give excellent audio quality, and a software connection can be flawless, but if a voice actor is recording in an echoey kitchen, the audio is unusable.

Synchronization

A key technical breakthrough is the harnessing of synchronization methods using SMPTE timecode or MIDI timecode, which allows two or more different DAWs located thousands of miles apart to ‘lock’ their timelines. This enables review and approval workflows, and sample-accurate overdubbing and ADR in real time, allowing actors, directors, and stakeholders to all be fully remote. Timeline synchronization workflows also mean that we get a better picture quality experience since we can use local media, and studios are ensured that their valuable video assets are not streamed over the public internet.

Data security and privacy

Major studios require strict security protocols like end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and strict NDAs for remote ADR to prevent pre-release content leaks. Modern platforms are fully enterprise compliant while supporting compatibility with smaller studios.

The future holds more of what is important to audio professionals: reliability, efficiency, integrations, and specialized, dedicated workflows.

• Remote servers will become faster, cheaper, more sophisticated, and mobile; synchronization; and fewer people want to or are able to travel long distances.

• We’ll see increased bandwidth capabilities, particularly in regions that are trailing behind and do offer easy and affordable access to 5G and gigabyte fibre-optic connections.

• Mobile devices are increasingly powerful: in collaboration with higher bandwidth, more powerful devices lead to achieving 8k and higher video transmission and even lower latencies (though until we have invented time travel, physics will limit transmission times).

AI analysis

In the world of real-time media transmission, AI offers many potential improvements and benefits:

• We expect any mundane and repetitive tasks to be automated and accomplished through AI-enhanced tools and processes.

• We expect to see AI-assisted network negotiation to find the most efficient path over the wide area network, and to adjust buffers for smoother transmissions, and to automate our firewall rules for the best security.

• We expect to see new AI-assisted codecs that are even more capable of reproducing dropped packets — a task already started in some codecs. The work will continue and improve.

• We expect to see major advances in acoustic processing, to remove the room sound and undesired sounds.

• Media security is a critical feature of remote applications: we must be able to trust and verify our collaborator’s actions. AI-assisted generative security features such as visible and hidden watermarks are increasingly robust and powerful, to indicate where, to whom, and when exactly media is distributed and shared.

• AI agents to keep us informed of current connections, statistics, and telemetrics.