Who is Q Media?

Q Media is an award winning production company formed in 2002 to create effective and innovative audio tour productions for museums, galleries, parks, and municipalities. Our founding partners, Stasha Boyd and Mike Lutz, bring over 20 years experience from the fields of theater, television, music, and film to audio tour production. Stasha is the executive producer for Q Media, and Mike governs the technical side of our productions. They provide the hub for an outstanding team of writers, directors, talent, and technicians that come together to produce our outstanding audio tour content.

What is Q Media’s mission?

Q Media's mission is to create productions that deliver our client's communication goals to their visitors, customers, and end users. We believe your message is the most important thing that needs to be brought out in our productions, and we will keep your desires and needs foremost in our creative choices.

Are you directly involved with the production process?

Yes. At Q Media our core business is production, supported by decades of experience; however, our pride and distinction lies in our attention to our clients and their specific goals. A positive relationship with our client is central to our definition of a project’s success. For this reason, we are present for all stages of production, from initial meetings through final installation and follow-up. At no point is the client assigned to a sub-contractor or “passed on” to unfamiliar individuals who are assigned to the project once the contract is signed like other audio tour production companies.

Please listen to examples of past productions on the samples page. Also, we strongly encourage you to review the letters of recommendation from past clients on our reference page, or, better yet, contact our past clients directly for their impressions of working with us.

What type of productions have you done?

Q Media has produced audio and video content for a broad array of facilities from Japanese gardens to vintage aircraft museums--ranging in scale from art galleries to national shrines but we treat every project as “one of a kind.” A typical Q Media production brings a select team of writers, producers, and technicians to meet with your resident experts. In collaboration with you, we identify your specific message and craft an exceptional tour that exceeds your expectations of excellent message delivery.

How long will the production process take?

A typical production timeline lasts 3 to 4 months from contract to completion, from initial meetings to final audio masters. We can also itemize our services, a la carte, for clients who wish to do portions of their production in-house. For facilities who want to produce their own audio tour, we provide workshops in both script development and production techniques, drawing upon our years of experience to teach the essential basics.

Who owns the copyright?

At Q Media, we assign the copyright to the client at the end of the production process, rather than holding it “hostage” for future changes or upgrades. If changes are desired by a client we can provide these services, as evidenced by our many repeat clients who have come back to us for tour changes and upgrades based on their original experience with Q Media. However, at the end of the day, the tour’s copyright belongs to its proper owner: you.

What type of distribution is right for our needs—Audioguides, Cell Phones, or Ipods?

Every hardware mode offers its own unique qualities, and Q Media is eager to help you make the best choice for your facility. Considerations include facility architecture/layout, ease of operation, end user demographics, costs, sound quality, and other issues that may be entirely unique to your operation. We will work with and advise you which hardware most perfectly conveys your message to your audience.

Do you do leasing and revenue sharing agreements with a facility?

Yes. Depending on a facility’s annual attendance, Q Media can work out billing structures which may lower or even eliminate up front costs for installing a tour. This allows a facility to install a tour which is then paid for over time by the tour revenue shared by both parties.

Do you do produce tours in other languages?

Yes. We have produced tours in Spanish, German, Japanese and even Lakota. As a member of the Orpheo Network, we have many partners around the world as a resource with language translations and native speakers.

What is Orpheo?

Orpheo is the name given to audio and video tour products manufactured by Ophrys Systemes. Originally formed in 1992, Orphrys has over 50,000 audioguide devices in use around the world, with over 27 partners in over 20 countries in the Orpheo Network. Q Media was chosen to be the first certified Orpheo Partner here in the U.S. We became a partner as a result of our confidence that Orpheo provides the best audioguide products on the market for features, value, and price.

What is the warranty of Orpheo products?

The manufacturer’s warranty period for Orpheo products is 2 years and covers everything with the exception of rechargeable batteries and lanyards. This is the longest warranty in the audio guide industry, and Orpheo has over 15 years of backing their products with excellent service and product design.

What is the Orpheo Manager software?

Orpheo includes Orpheo Manager software free with their audio tour systems; therefore, if a client wishes to make changes to their tour, they can easily do so in-house. Most other audioguide companies either charge expensive upfront fees for using their software to organize a tour into their audioguides or charge high fees to make future changes to a tour. The Orpheo Manager software eliminates both these costs to the client.

What about servicing?

Q Media is committed to minimizing or eliminating disruptions to your audio tour operations and most Orpheo product repairs can be accomplished quickly through exchange shipping. Through our partnership with Ophrys, we have the resources and inventory of a large multi-national company to provide excellent service. Typical servicing of a damaged or defective unit usually means shipping the wand to our offices here in Florida while we send you a replacement wand from our in-house stock, keeping your tour up and running. We will complete the servicing and return the repaired wand.

How much storage space is needed on an Orpheo guide for our tour?

You can program over 6 hours of CD quality mp3 sound on a 256MB Compact Flash card.

How many languages can the Orpheo Audioguides store?

Orpheo Audioguides are capable of storing as many languages as you need. You are only limited to the internal memory space of the devices.

Can the Orpheo audioguides be triggered by IR (Infrared), RF (Radio Frequency), or GPS (Global Positioning System)? What about syncing audio to video?

The Orpheo guides can do IR triggering as a standard feature. The Compact and Classic models also have RF capability as an upgrade. The Classic and Neo models can be upgraded to have GPS triggering and all can be programmed for video sync.  

How long do the players play when charged?

An Orpheo player will play continuously for ten hours with a full charge. It only takes two hours to fully charge a wand.