Streaming audio question

[dss56]

I am getting ready to get my show back on the air streaming. I do an oldies show and talk show live with call ins and use AOL messenger for request all works well.

My question is how can I keep all my playing music to one level.
All my music is on hard drive and external hard drive. All my commercials are on some disc so I have a mixed source.
As you know all music is never recorded in the same volume.
I use a mixer for the music and mic that i use.
I will see if I can upload pictures of my set up I'm a new here and my first post.
How can I get the audio to pass through a processor using the computer and my mixer to keep the audio at a constant level also the mic with the same audio level.
I can almost control the audio watching the meters but its a pain constantly doing this to most songs.

I hope you get what im trying to do.

I use winamp as my interface and works well for all my playing of songs and would like to stay with that as Im familiar in the past using it

 

[Support]

Hi dss56,

Welcome to the forums.

Some DJ software, such as Traktor Pro 2 for example, has a "auto-gain" feature which matches the level of the next track to the volume of the currently playing track. It might be worth you having a look into some software like that.

We also highly recommend having a compressor and limiter in place. Be that in your streaming software itself or perhaps you could invest in the hardware versions. A compressor basically reduces the volume of louder sections of audio and also increases the volume of quieter sections of audio for a more even dynamic range. A limiter is like a compressor, but instead it basically limits the level of an audio signal to a specific threshold. Limiters prevent any signal peaks which may cause clipping and distortion. A limiter generally follows after the compressor in the signal path. This is the way that professional broadcasters go about this.

There is probably some plugins available for Winamp which provides audio processing such as compression and limiting.

If any of this is not an option for you, then its really a case of just riding the gains for each track and microphone and adjusting them all accordingly. We can appreciate that this is not easy in Winamp, so it is probably worth looking into other alternatives if there are no such plugins available as we mentioned above.

 

[dss56]

Thanks for the welcome.

My question is how would I incorporate a compressor or limiter on my system I'm talking a piece of hardware instead of software. Been looking for software all day and cant seem to find anything that will work for me.

Is that possible with a pc audio card. I would have to take the out of the audio into the compressor/limiter and then back to the computer for it to actually work? Is that possible?

I'm not sure how I have or hooked all my equipment up but I think the audio out of sound card to mixer with microphone and phone line patch and this back in to the mic input for the integration of the music, mic and phone patch.

I guess I could put the compressor/limiter in line with the out and back into the mic and hope I get some good results.

I also have Total recorder that I start when I start on the air and record my complete show so I have a recording of all my programs/show.

I would like to do it with software but think the easy way would be a piece of hardware but will cost more than the software.

 

[Support]

Ideally you would really want a second PC with its own soundcard for this if you was to go down the hardware route. The audio will then come from your current mixer into the compressor / limiter and then into the line inputs of the second soundcard / PC. The second PC would then handle the streaming side of things.

You can get some hardware compressors / limiters for a fairly cheap price. Behringer do a compressor / limiter unit for around £86 for example. Behringer MDX1600 AUTOCOM PRO-XL Expander / Gate / Compressor / Peak Limiter | DV247

Personally not a huge fan of Behringer products, but they do the job and are always at a good price. Alesis also do a compressor / limiter for around £100 which we have heard is pretty good for its price Alesis 3632 Compressor | DV247 The Alesis 3660 compressor is famous for giving the early Daft Punk records their signature sound by the way

You could of course also pick these up second hand for a lot cheaper on ebay or something. So its always worth shopping around and also reading some reviews on them all.

We recommend looking at the 'Sam Broadcaster' software as well. SAM Broadcaster | Spacial.com
Its a good all in one piece of streaming software. It has plenty of built in audio processing features such as compression and limiting. It also allows you to control your mic volume and add sound effects and jingles / commercials with ease.

What you might end up spending on hardware and the time invested learning how to use it correctly (an understanding of compression is very important as it could very easily make your audio sound worse if used incorrectly) it might actually be worth investing in and sticking with some software that can handle all of this in one package. Something like Sam would have presets ready to go for those who do not have an understanding of correctly applying compression and limiting.

We hope this helps some more.