I've been using ShoutCast for several years.
I use it for my station webcast, my NOAA WX webcast and our City AM TIS program webcast. I host my streams from my home PC's and the City webcast is hosted through Listen2MyRadio.com which is free.
For the City TIS stream, I had to use an outside host as our I.S. guys don't want the "hacker" risk.
I've not had any issues with my own hosting, very stable. Listen2MyRadio has a habit of going offline, requiring me to restart it but this may be related to the "free" service provided and not a ShoutCast problem.
I'm using ShoutCast with Zara Radio software.
I started with Shoutcast in 2007 and find it mainly reliable.
There was a several week period a year ago or so when the connection between my Shoutcast server, which runs from my own computer, and the Shoutcast_YP (Yellow Pages -- the Station Listing), kept failing. That problem was found to be caused by software and server changes being made by Shoutcast when they introduced V2 of their streaming system.
Although they intended and still intend to honor V1, which is what I and many others prefer, during that switchover period the V1 support got disabled, but they eventually repaired it.
For months now it's been rock solid.
I'm impressed!
This goes to show what a Part 15
operation can do for local coverage
in a town.
FANTASTIC!
Bruce, SLUG 88.3
The cause of part 15 low power radio is more important to me than my format, so I am planning to break format to promote part 15.
My format is conversational style talk, with a small percentage of rare music programs.
But the sportscasting being done by Friday Harbor Tiny Radio is so great for demonstrating the power of low power, that I plan to carry at least one game every once in awhile.
I think Ken live streams on Fridays, and mp3s will be posted, so one way or the other, the game will air here in the Center of North America.
I will post advance notice when it's all arranged.
Ken, on the eve of the launch of KSOL, I am reading this blog thread in anticipation of eventually doing the same thing in my hometown at basketball and football games. I want to talk with you more in detail about all this, and am wondering how I do a remote feed without smartphones and etc...? Maybe just plain old cellular? I can't wait for the chance to try some of this out...good job and good luck!
Dave
KSOL 1000 AM
KSOL 92.1 FM
"Low Power is better than No Power."
> Ken, on the eve of the launch of KSOL, I am reading this blog thread in anticipation of eventually doing the same thing in my hometown at basketball and football games. I want to talk with you more in detail about all this, and am wondering how I do a remote feed without smartphones and etc...? Maybe just plain old cellular? I can't wait for the chance to try some of this out...good job and good luck!
This is pretty much what we do, and have done for years (although my two THs are currently waiting to be fired up again and serve my neighbors).
We have done both cellular calls back to a studio/central server (we used an automated vendor) and used a data connection via an aircard (which is what we do now).
We also use a third-party vendor (and have used all sorts of options -- buying time on Audio Sports Online, starting a Justin.TV site and now using iHigh.com) to host our live broadcasts rather than a dedicated station server because of the issue of peaking -- we've had 200+ simultaneous listeners during a game before.
We produce everything on-site -- commercials are all put onto a CD and played off a boom box -- and feed the server from the site.
If you want to use a cell phone and call back to the studio, you'll need a board with a Bluetooth connection -- the JK Audio board we used set us back $1,000+. It also has a landline option if you have an available phone line at the site (we found that it was about 50/50 whether or not they'd have a line). We've recently started using an aircard and simply streaming using either Flash Media Encoder or Windows Media Encoder. It has worked pretty well for us. Sound quality is solid. We had a lot of luck feeding FME to a Justin.TV site, which you could then set your station computer to pick up at the specific time the broadcast is set to begin.
The live broadcasts we use will be the centerpiece of the community-oriented Part 15/online station I hope to launch by next summer.
If anyone wants to check out what we're doing (and you have blanket permission to use): http://www.ihigh.com/hancockcountysports/. All kinds of archived broadcasts are there for the taking.