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Howdy … just thought I’d boast about another successful live broadcast this evening.
Howdy … just thought I’d boast about another successful live broadcast this evening.
From 8:00pm to 10:00pm, FHTR broadcast a live play from the Gubelman Room CR on the internet and AM radio in town. Reports were that the signal was clear in town, I’ll have to check the logs to see how many listened on the internet.
When I went to open the flattened window with my remote connection, it was disconnected. Trying again from scratch, it showed the main studio computer had been offline for over an hour. It didn’t affect the broadcast because I had switched to the netbook when I started, and was also able to remotely start a playlist running on the STL computer on my boat.
When I got back to the studio, I found the modem was dead, GarageBand had quit and the digital interface from the board had also lost its connection to the computer … but the computer was on and running just fine, the iTunes Classics playlist was still running.
I ended up having to pull out the USB 4G modem twice, reconnecting the interface by shutting it off and restarting it, and closing and re-opening GarageBand. Then I tried reconnecting with the modem and everything finally came back up.
I’m not sure what happened yet, but it’s the second time in the past week.
Any ideas?? TIA …
Total posts : 45366That is fabulous that you broadcast a live play. Was it a town theater group? What was the play? How did you mic it?
My first guess about the technical complications would be that it has something to do with running the live program, but since the same problems happened also last week, was there anything different going on at that time?
Can you post an mp3 of the play?
Total posts : 45366I doubt the content being aired that particular evening is the culprit to the equipment issues. Or was the play THAT bad?!!! 😉
You mentioned about equipment sitting in a boat. Well know that is interesting. Have you checked and verified you don’t have stray voltages developing on the ground leads going to and from said equipment on that boat sitting at the dock on water…which there could be stray voltage potentials being created??
Something is causing the issue..perhaps within the gear itself..intermittent component or two making things shut down.
Water, be it salt or pure, or an environment heavy in humidity, plays havoc on solder connections and foil patterns and component leads. Ever see vehicles from the east and west coast and how quite often they are plagued with rust spots along the fenders and lower portions of the doors??
Well that rust will develop on component leads and eat up the solder connections.
Looks like you have a large troubleshooting project ahead.
Or could be just some weird thing going on. It will be interesting what you find!
RFB
Total posts : 45366The AM transmitter and STL are on the boat. I’ve been through the system a number of times. The STL computer and TX on the boat are fine, still transmitting last night … all through the show (remote from the netbook’s broadcaster to SHOUTcast) … the studio computer was still on, but wasn’t broadcasting.
In fact, when I couldn’t get to the studio computer remotely, I saw that it was offline, which was a modem issue. It’s physically OK, it just lost its internet connection, and I’m trying to figure out why. Seems to happen when the remote control software has a glitch, but in this case, the audio interface in the studio had lost its FW connection to the computer as well, meaning the mixer wasn’t connected either, which is not the same as losing the modem connection … unless …
The only thing I can come up with is that the studio momentarily lost power, which would explain both things losing connections, for some reason … although the big Monster HTS 3300 Power Center should have covered a small powerline glitch without a problem.
The computer was still on running iTunes, though. I suppose it might have dropped the USB modem, which might not recover without re-starting, and also the FW connection to the digital interface.
That’s where I’m at at the moment.
Shutting down the studio system and restarting fixed it all. On Sunday nights I generally do computer housekeeping, update software, etc. Safari tends to build up a crapload of cookies, and it may have been unusually high this week, plus I hadn’t had a chance to go through email, which keeps coming at me from everywhere. I’m going to have to quit some newsletters and group email lists … which reminds me …
Total posts : 45366Yes, San Juan Community Theatre: http://www.sjctheatre.org/
Wit’s End Players is the name of the group, all local talent. This is a somewhat Bohemian community, lots of artists, musicians, dancers, and actors. They didi this same thing a number of years ago.
I was in the side control room for the Gubelman Room (which is different than the main Whittier Stage) with a stereo lead from the outboard recording mixer. Took us about 1/2 hour with crew and players coming in at odd times (last performance of the show) to set levels. After that, it took a couple of tweaks on the fly, but it all worked out well.
I will talk with them, but I’m pretty sure I can get a copy of the recording. I didn’t want to OD my little netbook with recording during this one, since they were recording anyway.
I have GOT to replace the netbook with a Mac Air or better. Ten, yes 10, times easier to operate. The WInamp/SHOUTcast works OK to broadcast, but under Windows 7, it has no reliable access to effects, whereas Nicecast on the Mac has access to virtually all of my onboard effects. I can use all the onboard effects and controls to tweak the signal, get it perfect, with relatively little effort … just an engineering thing, i.e., knowing what to use, where, and how … something I’ve been doing a long time with audio.
Total posts : 45366With the setup depending on a number of net connections either through LAN or WAN or WI-FI, any number of glitches, power or signal loss on the wireless stuff could have been the culprit.
Perhaps…just perhaps interference from some unknown source, but one would think such interference would be taking place on a more regular basis or at least in some sort of recognizable pattern and time instances of happening.
RFB
Total posts : 45366Speaking of Shoutcast, they have been going through a very awkward “server migration,” as they call it by their own postings, coupled with the enhancing of their system for “SC Server 2,” more feature filled than the legacy server that has been in use from the start. For awhile I kept getting “nak” disconnects every few minutes, then that improved and my server was being acknowledged by the “yp listing,” yet my station could not be found on the listing. Then that finally got fixed, and most of the time is smooth sailing, except that every once in awhile a “nak” error throws me out of the listings and eventually gets re-connected.
Maybe something like that happened during your Shoutcast feed.
Total posts : 45366Thanks for the suggestions … however, it doesn’t explain why the digital audio interface, Presonus FireStudio, lost it’s FW connection … never seen that happen before.
Of itself, that connection has nothing to do with the internet, EXCEPT when I remotely refresh the Hijacker, which is the broadcast software’s switch to the live mixer as audio source. From a remote, I use it mainly to switch the audio source from the running playlist to the board which has NOAA Weather from the weather radio input source.
Total posts : 45366I note that you mentioned the modem has a USB interface?
If that’s the case, then that could be your culprit. I’ve found that anything USB can be problematic, particularly on a computer that is running continuously over a relatively long period of time. I’ve gotten into the habit of rebooting every day, if possible (a hard reboot, switching all devices off, particularly USB, and then restarting the USB devices once the computer has rebooted).
Power issues are the more likely cause, particularly if these issues have just started, but I’d just be aware of potential USB considerations as well.
Total posts : 45366“I note that you mentioned the modem has a USB interface? If that’s the case, then that could be your culprit. “
Well, as mentioned before, I do all the updates I know of, sweep the computer, get rid of junk files, repair permissions, etc., shut down everything, including the STL computer aboard the boat every Sunday night at Midnight, then reboot the works one at a time. This has worked well over the past 1.5 years or so.
I tend to think it has something to do with the lag in the remote screen software. Sometimes I think something hasn’t happened when I click, because it hasn’t shown up yet, so I click again. If the action is taking place and catches another click between cycles, I can see where that might foul something.
If the audio software, fed from the board to the interface goofs up because of it, it loses its connection to the interface, which, in turn, might cause the interface to lose its connection with the computer and since the switching takes place over the internet, perhaps the modem’s checksum routines get fouled and it shuts itself down.
That’s a fairly complex chain of events, but it might explain it. If so, I just need more patience doing remote screen work from the weak little netbook, wait to be sure something I did actually took place before going on.
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