What Could Possibly Go Wrong
R. Powers wishes us well: "Glad you got it squared away".
That would be nice if anything could ever be squared away, but when experience meets reality there's often "the unforeseen".
All right, so in the Winamp Playlist the three test stream addresses are stacked up, including Radio Sputnik, WPRR Public Reality Radio, and APM American Public Media.
Whichever one I "play" should continue streaming until I either stop it or switch to another.
But the Radio Sputnik stream (so far) doesn't stay latched. After awhile, maybe an hour or whatever, the stream drops and Winamp starts playing the next stream on the Playlist.
This morning when it switched to WPRR that station was having its own problems... Amy Goodman's Democracy Now was playing AND a second program at the same time. This went on and on, indicating that no one was on duty at the station.
In the middle of the night it switched to the classical stream at APM and I was driven insane by the bon bon fluffy pop syrupy selections they were playing. Sleepus interuptus.
Luckily this trial run is happening on a holiday morning when most people are preoccupied searching "hangover remedies" on Google.
This morning when it switched to WPRR that station was having its own problems… Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now was playing AND a second program at the same time. This went on and on, indicating that no one was on duty at the station.
I've noticed the same happening semi-frequently on a local AM station (1290AM), two different things will be playing at the same time, sometimes going on for 3 or 4 minutes. On other occasions a commercial will end and then it will be completely dead air sometimes as long as a few minutes before the broadcast resumes.
Terrible.
Inertia VS Time
This morning at 7 AM was to be roll-out-day for Live carriage of "Loud and Clear" from Sputnik, but when we joined streams with WPRR Amy Goodman was opening Democracy Now.
The WPRR Schedule indicates that "Loud and Clear" starts at 6 AM, which, if Ada Michigan is on Eastern Time that would equate with 7 AM here in the Midwaste, right?
No. That's backwards. Time arrives in the east BEFORE it comes to the Mississippi Valley. It is EARLIER here than it is there.
But is Ada in the Eastern Zone?
At Wikipedia everything is given about Ada, Michigan EXCEPT its time zone, and I can never keep straight where Michigan is in relation to the lower states.
Long story long, it turns out that "Loud and Clear" starts at 5 AM in the "Our Time" Zone.
Because starting the In-House Server that intercepts the WPRR stream and feeds it to our KDX-OGG Outgoing Stream requires a MANUAL step, there is no one alive here in the building at 5 AM so this ISN'T GOING TO WORK.
I would be very smart if all my knowledge weren't jumbled up like it is.
Well, you could solve everything by just moving to their time zone.
I recommend UTC. That way, you and Ada, MI are on the same time.
Ya, Sure
End 80s Advice: "You could solve everything by just moving to their time zone."
Right. I'm going to do that.
Meanwhile, my "perfect system" is sitting idle while I take clock lessons.
There are improvements I'd like to make but the Windows 7/Realtek Audo System is so goofy it has me outsmarted. Allow me to get in over my head.
There are two physical stereo-audio "cards" actually part of the motherboard within this HP computer, but unlike my other (XP) computer, the audio cards are not identical nor exactly inter-changeable. There are marked differences between them.
The card known as "Audio 2" is reserved by me for closed-circuit audio work, such as recording Blare OnAir using Audacity, or previewing a radio program before putting it in the Zara playlist.
But I need an audio channel to connect between the Winamp stream Player and the B.U.T.T. MP3 Encoder which connects the stream to Zara by LAN. Don't be confused yet, this gets less easy to explain.
Using the knowledge of my professional understanding, the Virtual Audio Cable utility is described by its author as a "virtual audio card" and this should serve in place of a physical card, and it does, with one gotcha:
The Realtek-Windows Audio Routing software ALSO connects the path to Audio 2, with no option for breaking that connection. I think it's a careless error left behind by somebody at Microsoft.
So why not just use Audio 1, which in this computer is labeled "Speakers"? Well, that does work, but there's a mini-speaker inside the HP computer that plays the sound coming from the Winamp stream-player and evidently the mini-speaker can't be turned off without also killing the audio passing through Audio 1.
As a student of human psychology I realize that self-pity won't help, but I don't care. I'm going to wallow in it anyway.