Questions about routing audio to and from a computer

Hey everybody, I just wanted to introduce my audio guy. He is the wicked cool dude who is helping me out with the audio chain to the transmitter. Last night we whooked up the laptop, to the mixer, to the sonic maximizer then the mdx2600 then hooked up the speakers to hear how it would sound and the sound was great! We hooked up the mic to the mixer and it was sounding great to! Howver, what we couldnt figure out right away was how to get the mic singal to the laptop so that when we broadcast to the live365 server via RadioBoss it would include the mic and the music together. I know when somebody tells us we are going to slap our foreheads, but for now it remains a mystery ! Anyhoo, here is a shout out to Carl and Mir and all you other brainy mugs who are helping me along the way as well as video of my first lesson! The idea is that we will record in segments all the lessons he gives then post him here first then later on our station site. Our intention is to demystify the process of starting a part 15 by recording everything we do along the process. I dont think most of the peeps in this site will get alot out it, but I think for sure if we do it right , will make things easier for nooblets like me to get started:) I hope yall enjoy the videos 🙂

Thanks again fellas 🙂

Groo The Wanderer

A Shout out to Part15.us -

The Adventures of a Nooby Broadcaster - 

Audio routing can get very complicated.

I think the computor jargon for part of what you want is called "loop back."

Several important details passed me by and I'll need to build a list of questions to ask.

I started to map out what's been described so far, but have not built an understanding of everything desired in this setup.

Don't say anything yet, give me a day to scramble around.

I now understand what you are trying to do.

You want to have ONE control position, operated by ONE guy (you).

But you want to be able to send DIFFERENT programming to your transmitter at certain times, with OTHER programming to LIVE365 Stream.

But some of the time you want to send THE SAME programming to transmitter and Stream.

Some of the programming will playback from audiofiles or other recorded sources, and some of the programming will be LIVE from microphone.

You want the microphone to be able to speak to ONE or THE OTHER or BOTH.

I think you should have two mixers and two microphones. An AM transmitter mixer and a computer-input LIVE STREAM mixer.

ADDED COMMENT --

The Behringer U Control is a USB device which will assign your computer's audio output to the USB Audio device, disabling any regular audio outputs coming from your computer.

I'm not sure that I caught everything you're attempting to do.

But if you're doing external audio processing, I'd recommend a 2nd computer as well - it's only function would be to take the output(s) from the processing and stream it.  Outputing from one computer, and then sending input back to the same computer can lead to all sorts of problems.

When I was doing external processing, I had my radio automation computer, and a server computer.  I actually had my website on that server, and hosted the streaming server as well on it.

In terms of software, it ran Windows 2000 Advanced Server.  Initially I used Microsoft Media Server, but it didn't support mp3 streaming well, so I added IceCast for that.  That configuration easily supported 120+ simultaneous listeners and was really only limited by the amount of bandwidth I had (5Mbits per second upload, I was streaming at 40KBps per second).

Carl said: "The Behringer U Control is a USB device which will assign your computer's audio output to the USB Audio device, disabling any regular audio outputs coming from your computer."

This is untrue.  You can have multiple audio outputs from a computer; USB + internal, USB + USB + USB + PCI + PCI-X, does not matter. You would need the app to be aware of the multiple audio DSPs, but most are.  Zara and Mixxx are for sure...

Hey guys,

            Well, here is the problem. I think that in my noobness I worded it poorly. We will be using the automation software Radio Boss. One of the MANY cool things about it, is that it supports streaming to a remote server such as shoutcast to Live365 locally. Meaning you need no extra,"additional" software to stream to a server. So, it will broadcast through the rack then to the transmitter and to the net simultaneously within the same program etc etc. So, One feed goes directly from the app to the net, the other feed goes to the mixer, where my mic is plugged in , then through the rack to the transmitter. What I need to sus out is how to get the signal from the mic thats plugged into the mixer, back into the feed that goes to the net from radio boss. Now, I could use a usb condenser mic on the pc that is playing the music via Radio Boss, and it might sound okay or good enough till I can figure out how to do it better. But obviouslly this wouldnt be the best choice as I couldnt independently eq the music from radio boss and the usb mic input. I dont know guys, I can figure it out. The closest example I could find is in a video I will post below. It seems as if he is pointing to his compressor limitor mdx 2600 where one feed goes from there to the inovonics 222, then to the transmitter and the other goes to his Live365 feed. Then what, the signal comming out of the 2nd channel on the mdx goes to another computer to a live365 server. How does that work, doesnt any feed going to a server like that have to have song id's? I am tellin ya, its giving me a freaking headache, but I know you brainy mugs will help me through it lol. Thanks once again in advance yall 🙂

GrooTheWander

If Im reading the question right, a second soundcard in the same machine, dedicated only to receiving audio back from the mixer and directed to the application handling the streaming might work.

A simple block diagram of what you are trying to do - posted to Flickr or other image-sharing site - would be most helpful. Engineers and techie guys can't talk for more than 3 minutes without stopping to draw a picture.

Hey Annandale, I think I have found the solution with RadioBoss. I posted my last post on this thread in the Radio Boss forums and this is what they said.

As I understood, RadioBOSS plays the playlist and it goes to the mixer; mic is also connected to the same mixer and you want to broadcast the final mix to the net. That's possible. You'll need RadioBOSS 4.9 or newer for it.

1. Connect mixer output to one of the sound card inputs
2. Open RadioBOSS, click Settings->Options, select Inputs
3. For Input 2 select the input where you have connected mixer to
4. Open Broadcast section, in the upper right corner select Source: Input 2.

Now, it sounds like that will send both the music and the mic signal from the mixer to the internet as I wanted, but unless my brain is being over loaded ( which it prob is as everybody must remeber, I am a boob,... I mean noob) and I am just not seeing it, but it still doesnt solve the problem of being able to independently eq the music and the mic from the mixer to the rack then to the transmitter.

In this video, you can see where he is pointing the two channel behringer mdx2600 with one channel going to the inovonics 222 and the other going to his live 365 server, which seems liek a better way to do it, but how does he get the 2nd channel to stream to live 365? Throughg the Barrix streamer?

Groo

With the help of a awesome Audio Engineer, Radio Boss's wicked awesome routing abilites and a nice extrernal usb audio interface ( http://artproaudio.com/art_products/signal_processing/usb_audio_devices/product/usb_dual_pre_ps/ ) We were able to solve the problem without having to get seperate pc. Its not the bestest video but here is how it was done son! http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&ns=1&video_id=9Sz2bCNCPBw

GrooTheWanderer

That link isin't working for me - but this does: 

Thanks Mir, it was late and I was excited lol 🙂

and oh, btw? RADIO BOSS FOR THE WIN !

GrooTheWanderer

I especially liked the "Shout out to Carl for running the Part 15 site!"

Maybe that should be left alone, I like stardom, but part15.us is the good work of others, I am only a stopper by.

The video was a good tour of all that's been accomplished with the beautiful equipment.

Hope to see a video of the station on the air!

Well that was a thanks to you regardless as you are one the first people to respond to my nooby questions, so thanks again bud 🙂

Groo

Hey guys,

            I was just wondering, are most internet streams from am stations in mono or stereo? He says it right in the video that one side of the mdx 2600 goes to inovonics then to the transmitter, and the other side is going to his live 365 feed.Now the behringer mdx 2600 has only 2 channels. So the signal he is sending to the Live365 server has to be in mono. I then called my audio guy, and when I asked him what it would take to transmit the net feed in stereo, he looked it up and told me that I would need a 4 channel, which would only be 20 to 30 more bucks. Then, at that point, from the 4 channel mdx ,we would rout that to usb interface,  then radio boss, then to the broadcast tab, then off it goes to the live 365 server. The way we are doing now works, but is kinda ass backwards, as the mixer aux channels from both the mic( channel 1) and the two stereo ( channels 2&3 ) have to be routed through the aux sends , then to the usb pre, then to the laptop/radio boss/broadcast tab etc. I guess I just assumed that most radio net streams are in stereo when in fact I have no idea. What do you guys think?

Groo