RadioScum (Thread 2.0) - Faraday needs to suck more

[hohum]

First page!

Reserved for future hilarity.

[hohum]

What link do I use for the Chrome extension?

This one.

That installs the extension. I'm asking what I plug in to it to make it play this.

Oooh... ya I haven't figured that out either...

http://listen.radioscum.fm:8004/live.mp3.m3u should work.

[hohum]

I could probably help if you had a mac.

[hohum]

Have worked on both community and commercial stations here in the UK and am currently involved in a fairly big local project combining care in the community services with a local radio station attached. As soon as I've got the correct gear to hook up and run a show properly, I'd be interested in hosting a show.

You don't need much. A decent quality microphone and some broadcasting software will do the trick.

[hohum]

how many listeners does the station tend to attract?

Thinking about opening up your talents to our ones of listeners?

[hohum]

A cursory google search revealed this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bELCzLTrzI

http://www.google.com/search?q=skype+wi ... =firefox-a

Google <3

[hohum]

I wrote up a guide at one point for someone, but I don't know if I gave it to anyone or if it's been lost.

You wrote it up at my request and I've still got it

http://www.corbe.net/sam.txt

[hohum]

I'm eventually going to stick this on radioscum.fm but for those of you who are tired of having to fiddle with Media Players to tune in please direct your attention to http://umo.ms/flowplayer/example/

[hohum]

Hey guys!

If anyone is interested in a free alternative to SAM Broadcaster (which is quite a professional solution but fucking expensive software) then read this post. With this set up you can pull in and rebroadcast Skype calls and just about anything else on your computer which supports audio playback and recording.

Background

I've pretty much been a life long mac user until recently when my macbook pro fell 10 stories to the ground and ultimately to its untimely demise. The logistics of getting anything into this country easily coupled with the fact that I just don't have money to replace it right now has forced me into a situation where I'm using whatever hardware and software happens to be available to me. At the moment what's available is a Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 -- not really a bad laptop hardware wise; however, it runs Windows.

I'd like very much to be able to fill my time slot by not having to steal software to get it working properly so I set off on the task. What I've accomplished actually works very well.

The Tools of the Trade

1) First and foremost this won't work unless you have a sound card which supports the Stereo Mixer device driver as an Input device. This is roughly the equivalent of SoundFlower for Mac OS X. Chances are excellent that if you have fairly recent hardware you also have a Realtek HD card but I'm sure other modern sound cards are supported as well. Just don't ask me which ones.

2) Butt (and I'm not even kidding). It's a very simple little application which connects to any support recording device (in our case the Stereo Mixer) and rebroadcasts that into an Icecast or a Shoutcast stream. http://butt.sourceforge.net/

3) A head set. Almost mandatory. You need to be able to monitor what your listeners can hear.

4) A decent microphone. There are studio quality Mics you can get these days for <100 bucks. I recommend the Samson CO1U for the low end and the RODE NT1-A for something which is a bit more studio-quality. With USB mics you will always hear a slight hissing noise which is feedback from the current on the line. This is normal. You can't really do much about it unless you're willing to spend the money on an all analog setup (Analog mixers, analog mics, etc).

Enable Stereo Mixer

The first thing you need to do is enable the Stereo Mixer driver for your sound card.

1) Right click on the White speaker icon in your system tray
2) Go to Recording Devices
3) Right click anywhere in the white device listing area and pull down to "Show Disabled Devices"

At this point "Stereo Mix" should appear as one of your recording devices

4) Right click on Stereo Mix and pull down to Enable

The stereo mixer on its default settings introduces a fair amount of delay which will be distracting to you as you speak into a Microphone. To help eliminate this problem take the following steps:

5) Right click on Stereo Mix and pull down to Properties
6) Go to the Enhancements tab
7) Check off "Disable all sound effects"
8) Check off "Immediate Mode"
9) Click OK

Your Mic needs to talk to Stereo Mix now (and trust me you WANT to be able to listen to yourself talking)

1) Right click on the White speaker icon in your system tray
2) Go to Recording Devices
3) Right click on the Mic (or Mics) you intend to broadcast with
4) Pull down to Properties
5) Go to the Listen tab
6) Check off "Listen to this device"

Once again the default configuration may introduce gnarly delay issues. To fix this

7) Go to the Enhancements tab
8) Check off Immediate Mode
9) Check off Disable all sound effects

Usage Tips for the Mic

The record levels on the Mic are pretty low by default. This is a good thing. If you've ever seen people doing live broadcasts they are right up on their Mics. The rational is that in a studio setting you want to eliminate as much ambient noise as possible. People WILL hear things in the background such as birds chirping or A/C running -- especially if you've gone out and spent money on a decent Mic. It will pick up every little pin drop.

You want to torture your listeners as little as possible at the sacrifice of your own comfort levels. Don't be afraid to get up on your Mic but FFS leave the record levels as low as possible!

You may have to play with the volume levels of your applications in order to get the right balance between speech and music.

Setting up da Butt

1) Launch Butt
2) Click the Settings button
3) Under the Main tab, pull the Audio Device menu down to "Stereo Mix"
4) Under the server menu click the Add button
5) Change the Type radio button to Icecast)
6) Fill the address text box in with "listen.radioscum.fm"
7) Fill the Port text box in with 8004
8) Fill the password text box in with the the "Source" stream password as provided to you by jdodge, Prana or BBM in the "Welcome to RadiosScum" PM that you received.
9) Click the ADD button
10) Under the Stream tab set Bitrate to 128K

Windows "helpfully" manages audio levels of running applications.

Turn if off. Please.

1) Right-click on the white speaker icon in your system tray
2) Go to playback devices
3) Click the Communications tab
4) The "When Windows detects Communications activity" radio button should be set to "Do Nothing"

Applications like Skype and Mumble also come configured to lower the ambient volume levels when you're on a phone call or some mouth breather is theorycrafting about LoL on Teamspeak while you're trying to play a game. These applications all have settings to disable volume control.

Configuring your applications to use the Sound Mixer

At this point you won't need to change any settings on most applications in order to pick up its audio for rebroadcast; however, for communications applications such as Skype or TeamSpeak you will want to rebroadcast what's being streamed back out over the application.

Most applications allow you to select the Mic device (or the Input device, or whatever other terminology is associated with "Take audio from this device and treat it as if it were a Mic").

Change the Input device for your application to "Stereo Mix" and you're all set to go.

After Thoughts

I'm surprised at how well this works. I can't see spending 300 bucks on SAM Broadcaster when almost everything you need to conduct a broadcast is built right in to your operating system. The only third party application is BUTT.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply in thread.

[hohum]

Mac is much simpler. All you need for Mac is the program NiceCast, and it pretty much does everything for you.

Not only that, but NiceCast is far less expensive and far more intuitive than SAM will ever be. If you're using a Mac SoundFlower and LineIn (also available from the same place you got NiceCast) will quickly become your best friends.

Unfortunately since I don't currently own one I can't do a write up at the moment.

[hohum]

The problem with VoiceOver is it tends to slowly lose sync over time even when buffering is at its lowest setting causing voice over delays to be noticable. Have you ever tried to run a broadcast for more than 3 hours at a time?

I solved that issue by disabling any sound effects that came with Nicecast and using Soundflower as my input source. LineIn provides but the Mic support and the feedback mechanism to Skype can be configured by using one of the two SoundFlower drivers as your recording device.

[hohum]

Impromptu broadcast, on air now.

[hohum]

Why is our episode called Fuck the French?

Because you got mad over my pronunciation of your name and I'm drunk and it's the first thing that came to mind.

I personally didn't think an explanation was necessary because frankly: fuck the french.

[hohum]

Believe it or not this project is still semi-alive. Working on a replacement website.

[hohum]

no show tonight?

[hohum]

oh wow. I thought it was Friday for some reason

[hohum]

I'm still hearing the (horrible) auto-dj

[hohum]

I miss Doakes!

Edit: I was happy as hell when Rita died.

[hohum]

You just dropped the stream

[hohum]

what's wrong with incest?

[hohum]

keep it in the family etc.

Interesting Fact: Michael C Hall (Dexter) was actually married to Jennifer Carpenter (Debora) at some point.

So it's already happened.

When describing their sex life Jennifer Carpenter was quoted as saying:

I haven't been fucked like that since grade school

[hohum]

Good News: The auto-dj is properly reporting meta data again. Time to work on the stream control. Chiefly the control part.

[hohum]

I'd say the site is back to about 90% of its original functionality (not bad for a weekend's worth of work) but has yet to be stylized. Does anyone care if it's ugly? Anyone want to donate some time to make it purty?

[hohum]

your math skills are weak.

[hohum]

Maybe

[hohum]

Why is reck the first person I think of when I see this video?

[hohum]

Is this project still alive? It's been almost a month since the last post and aside from the occasional listener it doesn't appear as if anything is happening anymore, so I'm contemplating shutting the service down.

[hohum]

I'm still keen on doing a show again once I'm settled in a new place without all kinds of crazy summer shit going on.

I'll keep the service running then.

I may just resort to doing a podcast that isn't forum-specific and see if we can't get a more widespread audience.

If you end up doing this do you mind if I brodcast your episodes as you upload them? I've been thinking about putting together some reruns of old content. Old reck shows, old desert island discs, etc.

[hohum]

Yeah. As long as you have a computer with a fairly modern sound card you should be able to turn on the Stereo Mix driver and use free broadcasting tools to relay your stream to the server.

See this post: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p3507185

the AutoDJ drastically needs fixing

Have you checked it recently? It's running again, and getting more content.

[hohum]

I'm building a brand new studio. I'm probably going to do a couple of pilot boradcasts at some point in the next 2 weeks or so to test it out and hopefully revive some interest in this project as well. For you gear sluts, I've purchased:

(2) Rode Procaster: http://www.rodemic.com/mics/procaster
(1) Heil PR-40: http://www.heilsound.com/pro/microphones/pr-40
(1) Electrovoice RE-27: http://www.electrovoice.com/product.php?id=92
(4) Rode PSA1 Boom Arms: http://www.rodemic.com/accessories/psa1
(4) Rode PSM1 Shock Mounts: http://www.rodemic.com/accessories/psm1
(1) Behringer SX3242FX 32 channel mixing console: http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/SX3242FX.aspx
(1) Aphex Channel compressor: http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/SX3242FX.aspx
(1) USBpre 2 external sound card: http://www.sounddevices.com/products/usbpre2/

Future purchases will include:
(2) Shure SLX1 Body pack transmitters
(2) Shure SLX4 UHF Receivers
(2) KRK VXT6 powered studio monitors
(1) KRK 12S Sub
(2) Tram TR-50 lavalier mics
(1) Shure SM58

[hohum]

I could probably do a show after New Year if we want to make a concerted effort to get this back up and running again.

I still want to get this project going again.

[hohum]

I need to get a way to use Skype and a music player and a broadcaster all live on Windows and I can do it again.

You've asked this question like 4 times and I've posted the answer like 4 times.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p3507185

I can show you how I do it in person at your meet if you like.

[hohum]

it actually has a DJ control so if you're listening you can tailor it to what you like. If you're listening on pure random play you're going to hear a selection of 750,000 tracks across all genres.

Edit: The dev URL is http://apollo.corbe.net:9001/playlist

[hohum]

there's a bunch of stuff that has gone unindexed even. I'm going to run the index tool and restart the streamer so you may see a brief interruption in your stream.

[hohum]

In your inbox

[hohum]

BTW if I'm missing stuffs you like just let me know and I'll get it in the system

[hohum]

Sorry

[hohum]

I queued up about an hour of disco for you. So sit back, grow out an afro and chillax.

[hohum]

This hasn't worked the past few days.

Fixed.

You should have posted this a few days ago.

It's very beta software right now so I need to know when it stops working

[hohum]

Rebroadcasting Comedy104 for teh lulz

[hohum]

I was too lazy to figure out how to connect to the official scumradio link, but I'm broadcasting a blues party I'm DJing for in about 5 minutes. Nothing fancy, just good music for a couple of hours!

http://djaxle.Caster.fm/

Check it out, hopefully it will work. =P

If you want the access information I'll either PM or IM it to you.

But this project is in serious languish. It needs direction. If anyone is willing to step up to the plate then I'm willing to hand they keys over. I'm happy to keep doing what I'm doing now and maintain the service/add features/etc but I don't really have the drive necessary to actually get people listening.

[hohum]

I posted instructions a while ago on getting set up with USB mics on Windows.

If anyone is interested in hearing about my personal experiences since then, I'll do another write-up. But it's basically going to be a diatribe about why you should invest in XLR mics, a decent mixing board and a 2 channel A to D converter (basically a USB or Firewire powered sound card) if this is going to turn into a serious hobby.

[hohum]

Hey guys.

Since there's renewed interest in this project I got the auto DJ control back up and running. Please log in and start making requests!

http://radioscum.fm

also in my sig.

[hohum]

Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.

[hohum]

it's on random play. Log in and fill the request queue up

[hohum]

... how...

http://www.corbe.net/radio/login

It's linked to the hamsterdam forums. http://www.forum62.net/register

Once you're logged into the radio site click the search link, plug in an artist and/or title

[hohum]

If you're already registered you don't need to register again. Just log into the radio site.

[hohum]

If you forgot your password, try this link: http://www.corbe.net/forum/reminder/

[hohum]

interesting. Stand by

[hohum]

what's your forum usernames?

[hohum]

Fixed.

It should work now.

[hohum]

Now to find out if there's anything I actually like in this database.

I'd use this as an opportunity to pick your brain. If I'm missing shit I'll go fetch it and upload it to the server.

[hohum]

The search function appears to require you to spell out the band/song name in full (sure it didn't used to but I might be going senile) so I may not be seeing the full extent of the library but if you've got a record of the tracks that were uploaded to the library last time around that'd be a good place to start, thought there was a healthy mix of tastes there. I guess a few song contest successes would be a good thing to add in if not? I don't really want to be the guy who goes "please upload this huge list of all the artists I like" especially if I'm going to end up DJing a show anyway (which hopefully I will).

It supports using wildcards. The % sign is the wildcard character.

For example, You could find Mumford & Sons (which is a hard one to locate because nobody thinks to type &) by searching for %Mumford%

When I get some time later on today I'll work on improving the search function so it's more usable.

In the mean time I've uploaded a static dump of the catalog as it stands today. It's at http://www.corbe.net/radio/static/catalog.html

[hohum]

hohum you should get that mass uploader working again so I can take a dump on radioscum. =P

If you really want to waste your time uploading things to the server, I'll work on restoring the upload button.

[hohum]

Hohum, if you could look into adding content from the following two artists, I would love you long time.

Symphony X (albums The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, and Damnation Game especially)
Trans-Siberian Orchestra (albums Night Castle and Beethoven's Last Night especially)

Done.

Let me know if you want anything else.

[hohum]

When I get some time later on today I'll work on improving the search function so it's more usable.

As promised, this is done. Search for artist or title now accepts partial matches.

http://www.corbe.net/radio/search