Radio and Broadcasting
For a long time now, I have wanted to run an Internet radio station. Since I have been back in Entropia Universe, I have been hanging out on Club Neverdie a lot. They have a live music stream that goes into the virtual world.
Recently, they opened their stream for rental. This interested me, so I am going to rent the stream during an event I will be hosting on Club Neverdie. I found out they use SAM Broadcaster and Windows Media Services for their stream. I’ve been a user SAM Broadcaster for a bit, but it was always one of those things that got pushed aside for other projects. I decided to take another look and set up some stuff with my servers.
First off, I set up one of my servers in my Data-center as a streaming audio server. For this, I used the Icecast2 server for Linux. Fairly straight forward set-up. I installed Centos 5, then did an install of Icecast and edited the config files to the settings I liked.
I then installed SAM Broadcaster on one of my laptops and plugged in one of my portable HD’s with a copy of my MP3 collection and had SAM catalog it. This too was fairly straightforward. After the install and cataloging of my mp3′s, I set up a stream to my Icecast2 server and I was broadcasting on the Internet. Good stuff.
This config is all fine and dandy for most people that just want to broadcast occaisionally. For people that require constant or continuous 24/7 streams, I saw a slight flaw, your internet connection would be constantly used in sending the broadcast out to the server. So, I came up with a plan. Read on…
One of my servers in my Data-center is a Windows Server 2003 machine. I saw on the SAM Site that it will run on this platform. I decided to install SAM on my server and see if I can just run the broadcast in AutoDJ mode there. One of the other things I wanted to try was the auto-request from a website functions. I figured that this would run better off a dedicated server as well.
So, I started by converting my MP3′s down so it would not take up so much space. (I stream out at 64 Kbit so I figured MP3′s at 64Kb CBR would be a good setting) All went smooth, I sent these up to my server. (BTW, All of my MP3′s I own the CD’s to and have ripped them all myself) I did the SAM install and the configs. I then set up my stream and all is well. (yes, I purchased a seperate licsence for the SAM Broadcaster on the server)
The next part was getting the PHP auto-request working. This was fairly straightforward, SAM includes a template site for PHP auto-requests, I modified it for my needs and uploaded it. This also went very smooth. Just the code modifications were a slight pain. You can see the results at http://radio.zatsu.com/.
Thinking ahead, there were a few other things that I wanted to do. One of the downsides of the broadcaster being in a remote location is that you do not have direct access to broadcast voice from a microphone onto the stream. The second issue I had, was if I had a DJ that wanted to broadcast a show, that I’d have to turn the stream off then let the broadcaster send their stream.
I resolved the first issue with the microphone fairly easily and in the process, I made it so we can host talk show style or multiple commentators over the stream with no issues. I did this with TeamSpeak. For years now, I have run a TeamSpeak server. I set up a moderated channel in my TeamSpeak server for Z Radio and then installed the TeamSpeak client on the Windows 2003 Server machine that was running SAM broadcaster. I then purchased and installed a neat little program called Virtual Audio Cable (it simulates sound cards or an audio patch panel) I set up the patches so I can feed the output from the TeamSpeak client to the SAM broadcaster’s mic in. This took about 5 minutes. After a little configuration, it worked beatifully. I still need to tweak the sound levels, but it works, no feedback, and I can have multiple voices over the stream.
The second issue was also pretty simple. The Icecast2 server allows for stream fallback and resume. What this allows you to do is to set a stream that the server will fall-back to when the main stream is not available. It will then automatically pop the listener back to the main stream when that stream becomes available again. So, I set up the continuous broadcast from the Windows Server on the fall-back stream and it plays all the time. If I need to do a live remote show or one of my DJ’s needs the stream, they just push to the main stream and the Icecast2 server will move the listeners to the main stream. When the DJ is done and they disconnet, the Icecast2 server will drop them back to the continuous fall-back stream. Good stuff eh?
Welp, this post is getting pretty long, I just wanted to touch on what I have been working on of late. If you are interested in this stuff click on the following links:
Z Radio (My private radio station): http://radio.zatsu.com/
Direct Stream Link: http://radio.zatsu.net:8000/liveSAM Broadcaster: http://www.spacialaudio.com/products/sambroadcaster/?ref=A1935&redirect=SAM_Broadcaster
Virtual Audio Cable: http://nrcde.ru/music/software/eng/vac.htmlIcecast2: http://www.icecast.org/
If you are interested in me setting something like this up for you, please create a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.
Thanks
