Well, tomorrow is LB day at WCFI-LP. This will be my first on site remote live broadcast.
I'm still trying to get it all together, waiting on a couple audio adapters and cables.
This is all being put together with an old laptop, new mixer and freeware.
The event is a Police Memorial service at the Municipal Building in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I usually run the PA for the service every year; a couple mics and some music off the laptop.
Should be interesting trying to coordinate the whole thing by myself as it also includes controlling the transmitter site audio switching at the same time.
I'll be using TeamSpeak for STL over a cellular wireless network adaptor for the audio. That's been tested and seems stable enough. WHAR's Free Thinker Radio program has been done live a few times using the TeamSpeak STL with great success so that part should be OK.
Tight VNC (remote desktop) will be used to control the transmitter site. That allows me to stop/start the player at the transmitter site and switch the audio feed.
Today will be a dry-run setup/test to see if I have all the ducks in a row. Now if I just had a table to put it all on. Hope it doesn't rain...
It may seem like small potatoes to read about MRAM 1500 in small town Ohio doing a remote broadcast on an LPFM station, but there are reasons why it's a historic event.
The year was 1959 when I sat in a broken office chair facing a rebuilt Westinghouse audio mixing console surrounded on both sides by 16" RCA turntables and two Ampex 350 tape decks. On one side of the room was a rack containing the transmitter remote control device connected by telephone line with the 70,000 Watt FM transmitter and 400-foot tower on top of a bank building 10-miles away.
History was made then because all the AM station in town were under union contracts with engineers, turntable operators and announcers, requiring an enguneer on duty as the audio board operator, an engineer on duty at the transmitter, a turntable operator on duty, and an announcer on duty. For a remote broadcast another engineer went on duty at the remote location. To cover the overhead an army of ad sales personnel were needed and they had to be good at what they did.
My job at the FM station replaced all those people, the unions let it happen because FM was new and did not have the financial support to hire so many people. But when we did a remote broadcast more personnel had to be hired to cover the far end.
What Bob is doing in Cuyahogo Falls is replace EVERYBODY at all ends of the radio event by controllong it himself with a string of inter-connected devices and software. This may be the making of a major article for Radio World.
Just one bit of advice, MRAM, don't replace the listeners by listening by youyrself. We still need them to make radio work, however few people it takes to make radio happen.
The ALPB was there.
Have a good day Bob, Im sure it will go great.
Well Johny I sure hope so.
I'll be running the PA with 3 mics and an audio player for the event, running the radio board with local mic, 2nd laptop player and PA feed and controlling the transmitter feed at the transmitter site all from the event site.
I decided to use two laptops as I need to keep the event background music and station program separate.
The cable and adaptors showed up at lunch time so I was able to cable everything up and try it out. So far so good.
Nervous? Yeah...
Well, I can smile now-it's all over.
My main failure was to not have enough setup time. The PA had to work regardless of what the radio connection was doing. As such the PA setup was first.
Unfortunately by the time that was ready I was left with about 15 minutes to setup and cable two laptops, a mixer, a couple wireless mics, establish a connection with the transmitter and transmitter site computer and get the local players running.
I ran out of time so the switch was a bit rough but I made it. Once the live event went to air the only glitch was a scheduled event in Zara at the transmitter site started and I had to stop it. So for about 30 seconds there was some James Taylor in there.
Comments were that the event audio was very clear. There was a short break when the wireless mic on the bagpipes dropped out but switching to the podium mic worked OK.
As for the TeamSpeak connection using a cellular network adapter it was nearly perfect. Comments were of only two very brief dips in audio from packet loss. Pretty good for nearly and hour long program.
Switching back to normal programming was the worst part. I forgot to set Zara back to "Repeat" from "Manual". As such I would start the player, everything looked good and I would disconnect from the transmitter computer. A short time later the transmitter would switch to backup audio due to Zara stopping.
After a couple times I noticed the problem and switched Zara back to "Repeat".
If anyone happended to be listening to the stream, your feedback would be appreciated.
Moral of the story: Figure your setup time and then double it.
We need a Grand MRAM Bust (a statue from the bust up) on the grass in front of Cuyahoga Falls City Hall.
People would drive from as far away as Cleveland to drive past without noticing the edifice because they wouldn't understand its importance.
But we would.
Excellent and daring work, MRAM!