Subj : I watched a movie the oth
To   : BOB WORM
From : Mike Powell
Date : Mon Sep 08 2025 08:43:27

> This echo is unlocking memories left and right :)

Good!

> One of my good friends used to work in a radio station (in the UK, where we
> both live). The button, down in engineering at least, to drop the 8 second (?)
> buffer contents was marked "DUMP", which my brother and I always thought was
> hilarious for, well, being another word for poo. We never got to press it :(

That might be appropriate, considering what the buffer might be used for. ;)

> Anyway, the real reason I'm replying about this is because the mechanism they
> used to build up the 8s buffer was a little bit smart (for the nineties, at
> least). It used to, supposedly imperceptibly, extend the tiny bits of silence
> in between songs, adverts and spoken words, until it had added the magic 8s of
> extra silence and the program was running 8s behind live ready to dump again.
> am not sure what happened if your next caller swore as well before it had
> banked enough time. Possibly you got dead air, then. But that might have
> tripped off the dead air detector.

That is interesting!  I wonder what made them settle on 8 vs. some other
number (like 10).  Maybe that is the number of seconds it takes the average
user to realize something is being said and hit the button?

> Unlikely, though, being as my mate had it tuned to a different radio station
> which was more his taste to listen to in the engineering room :)

LOL

Mike

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