Total posts : 45366
The short answer is NO, one computer may be enough, with caveats. Here are my solutions:
1) You have an account with a broadcast outfit like SHOUTcast, in which case …
2) If you have a PC with an external CD player or other external audio source, you can us the free broadcaster BUTT (Broadcast Using This Tool) from: http://butt.sourceforge.net/
…otherwise
3) You can use the Winamp player and the SHOUTcast Winamp player plugin: http://www.shoutcast.com/download.
…. that allows you to play music/sound from your computer’s onboard files. Together with my headset/mic combo, that’s what I do when we have a power outage when I’m using my little ACER netbook, same one I use for remote broadcasting (I use Clearwire USB modem to get on the ‘net, works on 4G and 3G from almost anywhere).
At the moment, and, yes, another USB modem connection (but that doesn’t really matter in the studio) I’m using an iMac with Nicecast and my SHOUTcast connection, because of multiple listener bandwidth …. Nicecast offers a direct connection, but bandwidth is restricted to maybe 6 listeners, depending on resolution.
If my antenna was right outside (it isn’t … you know I have my TX on my boat in the marina), that’s all I’d need.
If it weren’t for the internet STL I wouldn’t need another computer. Nicecast has a an application crossfader. It means I can crossfade between Garageband (which I use in static mode from my mixer and Presonus interface) and iTunes. Right now, it’s playing my All Locals playlist from iTunes, but in a few minutes (3:30pm PST), I’ll go live on the mic for ferry update and announcements. But it could just as easily be a live performance in my studio, or whatever.
Nicecast has some AppleScript capability, which I can write into SuperCard. I’ve been using one to customize the live widget on my website, to show special broadcasts, like live events or external sources. For example, I select “NOAA Puget Sound Weather Scanner” in the list, which posts that to the onscreen widget when I turn the station over to weather overnight, instead of showing iTunes song data. When I want to revert back to iTunes cue, I click the “DE-activate”
I also keep the front page HTML code and a very fast little FTP’er (also written in SuperCard) to update my front page.
I can also do all that remotely. I’ll tell about that some other time, though.
OOPS! I’m late! Gotta go!!
