Check out www.mixtime.com. My stations computer recently crashed on me I had to wipe and reload every thing. I was running zara radio but I was not to happy it seemed to lock up on me and I did have complaints from my listeners about it playing two song on top of each other, maybe it was my computer but I didn't want to take any chances so I downloaded this new software and I love it. It sounds more like a commercial station. Just wanted to let every one Know.
Brian Bethke
under dog radio
I downloaded DirEttore and tried it for a while, but I found that most of the features weren't very intuitive. The first day that I had ZaraRadio installed I was able to get a complete schedule functioning without any issues.
For most people, if your looking for a great live assist application I would recommend DirEttore, however for just a generic random play application I would probably recommend ZaraRadio...
BTW, the ZaraRadio website is back up (and the English forums)!
I tried MixTime and I didnt like it,my computer didnt like it either. It seems rather hard to work with and would lock up easily (P4-500mhz,512m Ram) and skip on playback.
I wound up using Zara and I love it! The Manual needs a re-write,but it does what it says and does it very well. I also had the dual songs problem until I realized the silence detector was set too short for some songs with a soft opening. It has fulfilled my every need for live or automated and uptime is on the order of 200 days without a hitch. I love the sweepers and rotation lists,scheduler gets weather and news,sattelite works great as well.When I do make a goof in programming,it moves on and keeps chugging away.I do a weekly maintenance on the computer,clearing files,scans and a re-boot. One of the local BIG TYME radio DJ's had a listen and was very impressed! Regards,Lee
I'm playing around with Zara as well. Do you guys know how to do tight segues between songs? I figured out the crossfades, but what about "slam-segueing" 2 tunes, the first having a cold ending? I need a really tight sound.
1610AM Copperhead Radio,
Lucama NC
Getting a tight sound will require editing the music files to tighten up the beginning and ending to remove silence and slop. You also might want to normalize all the files to an RMS of -12db. You need to make sure that your audio editor actually modifies the file to -12db RMS, and not just put a flag in the header to play it back at -12 db. The Audio Science cards that we use do not make use of the header flag, so we need to make sure that the files are actually changed.
I agree! You must sanitize all those audio files,tedious work for sure! I have done the first 1100 of my 7900 files and it sounds great! Tight slam mix that is perfect every time. I hate overlaps... I used mp3DirectCut to edit the mp3's and Cool Edit Pro for the wave files. Practice until perfect,back up your files before you modify them!
And have fun!
Regards,Lee
I'm having this problem that came up recently. Each time I hit the play buttom. Zara just whizzes right down the entire playlist from top to bottom with playing a single song. What's wrong here? We need some expert help.
It could be a number of things, but basically Zara isn't able to play the song. It could be in the wrong audio format (something that Zara doesn't support, it could be that the path to the song is incorrect (if you're using playlists or rotation files, the drive may have changed, a particular problem if you're using portable drives as Windows can change the drive letter), etc.
This problem happened here recently after a system change. It was caused by a change in the path name to the target files. Apparently, Zara will open the Playlist OK but when it doesn't find the files it just tries the next file without reporting any errors.
The fix is either to restore the file paths to what they were when the Playlist was created or to rebuild the Playlist with the current paths.
It could be something else but here it was a change in the name of the root directory of the data disc where the sound files were stored.
Neil
This can also happen if the tracks are wma file's that have been ripped with window's media player with the copy protiction on when they were ripped. ZaraRadio will not play them.
A number of problems can be at issue here; protected file, file name with a non-"American" character (tilde, accent marks, etc), and the one I've found to be the biggest bug of all: using the automation computer as something other than its intended purpose.
Surfing the web and playing out the program log on the same machine is an invitation to disaster. So many sites drop cookies, advertising worms and more onto one's machine, and with everything competing for CPU cycles the result can be exactly what you are experiencing.
In my own case, my automation runs under Linux. But not everyone is comfortable with that. Give the jocks a cheap laptop in the studio to browse the web; keep the playout computer as a dedicated audio management device ONLY.