Salamandra Automation update

I bit the bullet and am trying out this software.

It does not operate exactly like Zara, at least when starting up with a random folder (I had to hit play twice), but once going it seems to work fine.

I ran into a lot of bugs entering in my events.  Quite simply, the process was terrible - I had to keep cancelling entries and reentering them.  But once completed, everything seems to be OK.

I'll let it run with the exact same Zara configuration as my production computer for a few days to make sure there are no other problems, and then cut over if there aren't.

Postscript: I got the latest release from Github, as I don't use Facebook.  I'm wondering if that's really the newest version, due to the random folder issue.

I'm continuing to follow experiences of those of you who are giving Salamandra a test drive. I looked over the download steps and get stuck when sample pages of Salamandra are displayed... I am unable to clearly see the tiny white on black palette and am not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing. But like everything there's probably a way to take control of the situation. Meanwhile Zara is still doing its job but having an alternative is always good practice.

I discovered what I think is a bug in Zara as a result of my running Salamandra.

I have a playlist that has in it:

- a .rot file

- then an mp3 for a jingle, followed by

- a folder for random play.

Salamandra plays this correctly.  In Zara, the .mp3 disappears and doesn't even show up in the track list.

The main play is the .rot file - I use it to contain the files for Tim's Oompah hour.  The other two entries are there in the somewhat rare case that the file in the .rot is less than 55 minutes in length and are used to fill up the hour with something other than empty air until the top of the hour rolls around (with VOANews).

The fact that the .mp3 doesn't play isn't at all unusual, and, in fact, it rarely does.  I just never noted that it never played in Zara.

I have no idea why this occurs in Zara, and can live with no jingle until I cut over to Salamandra.

Other than my trials entering events, Salamandra has been running smoothly for the past few hours.

I'm still not certain whether the event issues are due to bugs in Salamandra, or the fact that I was using UltraVNC to connect to the computer to enter them (it's remote to my studio).  UltraVNC doesn't act up with other progams that I've noticed, but then, you never know what the programs are doing behind the scenes.

In any event, I'm mostly concerned with Salamandra running smoothly for automation - the data entry is now complete (at least for the moment).  I really like the fact that it maintains all settings between runs, and it can play virtually any file I throw at it, regardless of its format.

Other than that, it's pretty much a clone of Zara.

@artisan-radio One thing I forgot to mention is make a copy of your .seq and .rot files when you play them in Salamandra. Salamandra does something to the file and they will not show files if you load them back in Zara but they still show in Salamamndra. I found that if you open the files in a txt editor and copy the contents to a new txt file and resave them as a .rot or .seq they will then show up in Zara again.

Posted by: @artisan-radio

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I discovered what I think is a bug in Zara as a result of my running Salamandra.

I have a playlist that has in it:

- a .rot file

- then an mp3 for a jingle, followed by

- a folder for random play.

Salamandra plays this correctly.  In Zara, the .mp3 disappears and doesn't even show up in the track list.

The main play is the .rot file - I use it to contain the files for Tim's Oompah hour.  The other two entries are there in the somewhat rare case that the file in the .rot is less than 55 minutes in length and are used to fill up the hour with something other than empty air until the top of the hour rolls around (with VOANews).

The fact that the .mp3 doesn't play isn't at all unusual, and, in fact, it rarely does.  I just never noted that it never played in Zara.

I have no idea why this occurs in Zara, and can live with no jingle until I cut over to Salamandra.

Version 5.4.2 is now available for download. 

I don't use a computer at all for my audio.  I use a flash drive player and load everything on flash drives. I also have cd player and tape cassette hooked into system . During extreme weather i hook a Noa weather radio into my system.  I could hook my record player into. It but yet to do so. I try to keep down expenses...The flash drive module was 7 US dollars.    In reality a station could be run off flash drive for weeks without a repeat of audio.  

How do you eliminate or greatly reduce the silence between tracks with a flash drive or an MP3 player. I have never seen an MP3 player or USB flash drive that has true gapless playback. Anything can be your audio source but the silence between doesn't sound good on the air. Like the silence between one track and another on a record. You also can't be automated and have stuff pre programmed to air at certain times/days.
When I started doing this hobby back when I started with an MP3 player, that was before I knew about automated broadcast programs like Zara, Play It live, etc. These need just entry level laptops on sale that cost the same or less than a cheap basic turntable. I keep it simple also. We don't need an array of gear costing $1000s or a whole studio, we just need a basic laptop with a Celeron processor 4000 series, 4 gigs RAM and a 64-128 GIG SSD storage will do fine, a processor like the Schlockwood 200 and a transmitter. They don't make automated broadcast programs for other operating systems like Chromebooks or you could use those so you need Windows computers.

Posted by: @mark

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How do you eliminate or greatly reduce the silence between tracks with a flash drive or an MP3 player. I have never seen an MP3 player or USB flash drive that has true gapless playback. Anything can be your audio source but the silence between doesn't sound good on the air. Like the silence between one track and another on a record. You also can't be automated and have stuff pre programmed to air at certain times/days.
When I started doing this hobby back when I started with an MP3 player, that was before I knew about automated broadcast programs like Zara, Play It live, etc. These need just entry level laptops on sale that cost the same or less than a cheap basic turntable. I keep it simple also. We don't need an array of gear costing $1000s or a whole studio, we just need a basic laptop with a Celeron processor 4000 series, 4 gigs RAM and a 64-128 GIG SSD storage will do fine, a processor like the Schlockwood 200 and a transmitter. They don't make automated broadcast programs for other operating systems like Chromebooks or you could use those so you need Windows computers.

  I load up my audio content to flash drive using a computer. ...TheRe no gaps at all . My flash drive module will skip over any mp4 files or pictures.  It also has an equalizer  . I set that at medium,  too high fidelity isn't practical with most am radio's. 

With Zara using the overlap about 2 seconds greatly reduces gaps. The best was Play It Live which analyzed every track as it loaded for best cue in for playback. It eliminated all the gaps but I couldn't understand how to program the events and even on their Facebook page no one would walk me through it. Also with Play It Live you can't back it up and just put it on a new computer. You have to redownload it from the web site and have a license key and all this nonsense if you try to do it from back up. Also it kept a log automatically in army time and was confusing and that also continuously takes more and more space on the computer.
With Zara you have it forever even if the program is no longer available.
But to try to eliminate gaps with 3000 things is not an undertaking I will do!
But with MP3 players even if no gap on the file the player itself creates a gap like the space on a record between songs and that gap can't be eliminated. At least overlapping lessens that to acceptable levels with Zara. I should suggest the Zara have a feature that analyzes all tracks for best cue in like Play It Live.

    I never heard of Zara until  yesterday.  Sounds like a decent system  .I'll take a look at it . In this area Internet access  is poor , especially during rainy times and a few days after. I have never said a word over the air in almost 50 years of broadcasting.  My stations are not operated like typical American radio .  I guess since I rarely ever talk to anyone except my wife that I really don't know  to say . So my station  has no dj ...just music . If anyone is listening  out there , they must wonder  what's  going on ... if I hear a song I don't like I'll change it if nearby part way through .  

I actually prefer to have small gaps of silence between songs (and voice tracking).  Not having them makes the programming seem rushed, and, for me at any rate, very tiring to listen to after a while.  I prefer sedate.

It's relatively easy to create batch files to process large number of audio files to your taste.

I wrote one that, for mp3 files:

• validates the structure of each file and repairs it, if necessary
• normalizes the audio
• converts everything to mono and a constant bit rate (for vintage jazz, 50s & 60s 45's)
• chops off silence at the beginning and end of the file, then adds back 1/4 second at the beginning, and 1/2 second at the end
• adds voice tracking at the end

The batch file uses a number of tools, including mp3val, id3, sox, ffmpeg and balabolka (TTS for voice tracking).

The only difficulty I've found is that some files have an ultra long fadeout, which makes it seem, if you're not listening carefully, that there's a lot of extra silence at the end.  But there are not too many of those, most cut off rather abruptly.

You could certainly add more or less silence at the end of each track if desired.

Since I'm the main listener to the station, all this gives, at least to me, the perfect sound.