Good day all. It's been awhile since I last visited the site. Love the new, cleaner looking webpage. That said, I have been experimenting off and on with Zara Radio automation software. I love it. This automation, the free 1.6 version is a broadcaster's dream. It is ridiculously reliable and always works!
I have been using it to stream a live internet radio station/feed continuously and without interruption for the past week. I was told and subsequently thought it would only play the audio stream for 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds before timing out. Not true. After it's run, it will restart the audio stream! Moreover, it's easy to use and clean sounding. As you know, finding a reliable audio streamer aside from Win Amp, VLC & other media players-which all "time out" after only a couple of hours and eventually begin buffering is frustrating. Well, Zara Radio has been working perfectly for me thus far! No buffering of any kind and no audio/music stoppages!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was told by another broadcaster that the only "reliable" way to stream audio between two locations, from one to the other, was impossible unless I were to buy and use the $295 Barix box encoder at one end and the $395 Barix extreamer decoder on the other. Nice unit, used by many licensed broadcasters I know with budgets, but the same can be accomplished with Zara for FREE and an isolated computer.
That's all I have for now. Good luck with your efforts. Take care.
Because of vision problems I'm
somewhat computer illiterate.
You brought up some good basic
points that are a big help to me.
Thanks again,
Bruce, The Dog Radio Group
Your method of linking audio to your transmitter using Zara and a spare computer is a kind of "Network Media Player", a term I just woke up to after reading Radio8Z's "XM" post, and takes on special interest because I'm exploring ways of replacing FM as the link carrier.
By coincidence today B&H Video Pro Audio just sent a fat catalog of goodies, and they show two pages of Digital Media Players.
But, all the players include video, and I would prefer audio only.
According to the Wiki link on the subject, audio-only players were developed as far back as 2000, so it's a matter of plenty of research to find what's out there now.
I will also need to understand what card or device to add to my main computer to wirelessly send the stream to the Network Media Player.
On top of all this, I am one of those people that believes that microwaves can contribute to tumors and other health disorders, yet my cordless phone is right here and probably needs to be moved farther away.
Even if this ends up being a dead-end side trip, it makes for a fascinating discussion.
Hi
I will say that Barix is best for many reasons to stream from a station to a trasmitter.
I have set many of these up and wroks very well, you also have many controls on Barix that allow you to add bass, temple, etc, etc.
The way I setup one is a stand alone computer at trans site and stream by shoutcast it has a 20 second delay but also the high pitch in the stream is there by using a eq you can control a little bit of this.
If you have done with two computers have you gotten the high pitched tone down on the stream??
barix by far. Also, if the network drops they will re-connect
I have never come across a high pitch tone with any streaming.
What would explain such a thing?
Is it simething that can happen with digital streaming?
Carl, it may be noise from the power supply.
Wow, yes. Power supplies can put a big mess on wires and in the air.
I also thought of another possibility to explore.....
If very wide band audio is pushed into a limited digital bandwidth, I think aliasing-distortion can occur in the out-of-range upper frequencies. But I'm not sure this would be a steady tone.
Could be the PC sound card. My laptop sound card output produces a lot of noise which is obvious during quiet passages.
On some PC's I've had to keep the SYNTH mixer channel output muted for that reason.