The next level of advances in digital audio will concern its movement and storage from studio to studio and the distribution of digital audio over various computer networks using some of the same technology discussed in this chapter. LAN, WAN, and FTP represent the beginning. With the development of these technologies, radio is fast becoming a decentralized medium. It no longer matters where you physically do your production; you can deliver it instantly to wherever it needs to be. In fact, many major voice-over and imaging talents now work out of their homes. To get some vacation time, one such person featured in this text has been known to take his microphone, laptop, and a GSM digital cell phone on vacation and produce imaging and liners in the Krystals Hamburgers' drive-thru on the interstate!

Further, new audio compression software allows users to store large quantities of audio in very tiny places. "Keychain," or flash memory sticks, easily hold a gigabyte of data. Do you know how much CD-quality audio you can wear on your ID badge lanyard around the radio station? The newest devices are micro-drives. These miniature hard drives are small enough to slide into the card slot on a laptop, and they can hold nearly five gigabytes of data.

Predicting the next level in digital audio is a no-win situation. As soon as I make a prediction, some hot-shot MIT student will develop a new data compression scheme that will rewrite the book on digital audio!