Setup suggestions/advice

[heartcore]

Hi all, I need some advice on how to setup for best performance and usability our little web radio.

What we want:

• radio automation software for automated playlists, posts, jingles etc.(linux or windows?) when we are not live
• be able to air phone calls (voip etc), and be able to talk off air as well
• able to record live shows

What we have

• 2 PC's (1x turbo with lots of ram 1x regular)
• 1x behringer xenyx q1204 console (with usb soundcard)
• 1x behringer xenyx 1002 console
• both pc's have on board soundcards, plus with have 1x pci souncard
• 2x studio monitors
• headphones/mics etc

Any suggestions ideas would be highly appreciated, for example should I make one a linux server running jack and airtime? Should I use windows and perhaps sam? (don't like that) I have basic knowledge so far but need some advice.

Thank you in advance

 

[Support]

Hi heartcore,

Firstly, welcome to the forums. 8)

For radio automation software, you may wish to have a look at our 'AutoDJ' feature: Internet Radio Auto DJ With this you can create scheduled playlists for when you are not live. The automation software is run on the radio server itself, so it does not matter if your own PC is Windows / Linux / Mac.

You will be able to do live chat on air as you seem to have a lot of the necessary equipment already (mixer / mics etc). Unfortunately, we are not familiar with VOIP services so we are unable to assist you with this. Commonly other users tend to use Skype for such purposes. Hopefully some other users may be familiar with VOIP and can advise you on this perhaps?

You would not be able to record live shows with the radio server control panel software. However, just about all live stream encoding software has the ability to record the shows to your computer whilst broadcasting this live to the server at the same time.

We also have a beginners guide in our forums which will provide you with all of the information that you would require to get started and also help you understand how Internet Radio works some more: http://forum.internet-radio.com/guides/12168-beginners-guide-internet-radio.html

We hope that this helps. Please just let us know if you have any more questions or if there is anything that we can assist you with at all, thank you.

 

[General Lighting]

I now use Airtime for VFR Europe via a VPS hosted the Netherlands, and it works well when you want shows to transmit at exact times (and yes I must update some of the shows, but this week my day job was busy due to bad weather and electric power problems!). It is powerful and can also do live shows, recording etc and works very much like a "real" broadcast automation system should.

However its not that simple to set up unless you have some Linux knowledge and if used at studio base will tie up a PC which would need to be running this constantly and streaming.

I spent some months testing it, as well as Windows based playout systems such as zara radio - and in the end worked out even with remote access that it was cheaper and less hassle to rent a server in NL than keep computers running in my house 24/7 (electricity isn't cheap in UK!). and as a bonus I learned the hosting company I picked uses electricity only from renewable power.

If I get some time I will have a closer look at your analogue studio setup. You can indeed run VOIP calls through these mixers and get the clean feed to go back to the caller, as I was using something similar until I managed to get a second hand broadcast console. However one thing to beware of with analogue studios is getting "clean earth" and avoiding noise from computers getting into the mixer via the audio equipment.

What country are you in? in the UK you can get a trafo for £5 that will stop those problems. Elsewhere in Europe Conrad sell similar things but the Dutch and Germans like to build their own with a proper metal box...

Another thing that is "nice to have" and can be done with these Behringers if you have some electronics knowledge and a bit of ingenuity is a way of making the loudspeakers mute if you turn up a microphone, otherwise if you don't do this you will howl your programe output (and it won't be pleasant for anyone listening on cans!)

This link is a bit old (I've added a few more bits and changed around some computers since then) but is an overview of how I set up my previous analogue setup (which is not unlike yours), however when I do live shows they tend to be more about mixed dance music than talking, and iis also set up to do QC/monitoring of other streams/stations I help out with when I am not broadcasting live.

http://ratcotel.co.uk/?page_id=34