One of the most important literary events in the Hispanic world, this was the sixth edition of the Hay Festival Cartagena, but the first time that a technical specialist from the UK office had attended to train local engineers in the art of archiving. "We were seeing too much material coming back in a variety of different formats, often low quality recordings, which in turn restricted what we could do with it," says Martin Abell.
The Hay Festival organisation currently offers access to an extensive archive of recordings, and is discussing other applications such as commercial podcasts. "The better the quality of the recording, the better our options," says Abell, who looks for WAV files which can be compressed down for archiving. "My task was to show our colleagues in Cartagena how to quality control, which I did with Roland's R-4 Pro 4-channel recorders, probably the most user-friendly units I've ever used."
Abell deployed the R-4s as his primary recorders on the full range of events in Cartagena, with guest speakers ranging from Germaine Greer to local Columbian intellectuals addressing audiences of up to 400 people. "In one venue, the R-4 was taking signal directly off the desk; in another, we intercepted the mic lines before they went into the desk, which meant we weren't affected by local equipment provision.
"The sound quality was perfect, and we were happily uploading material onto the Hay Festival websites within one hour of the events." Abell's enthusiasm was endorsed by Paul Elkington, technical director of the Hay Festival, who confirmed that "the quality of the Cartagena recordings is superb, everything I was hoping for."
(Jim Evans)
