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Low Cost Automation

X

xmtrland

I have a nonprofit group using Sam Broadcaster. The problem is that the music library varies wildly from genre to genre, and no one want to learn the pal scripting, also 25% of what they play is 60 min programs.
So I'm looking at something that is a little more traditional with a sperate scheduler (or schedulers for music and traffic) and a player.

With StationPlaylist as the low end contender, BSI a click or two up, NextGen and Audio Vault on the higher end. Is there anything else in the lower end under $2000. I'm actually looking at StationPlaylist because it could be used to replace a 6 disk sc changer that's going to die soon.

How easily can StationPlaylist handle a format change form rock (9am-12pm) to Jazz(12pm-3pm) to pop(3pm - 6pm). The issue with sam is that each genre was rotated and weighted differently and sam out of the box can't handle this without major pal scripting.
 
We have used Station Playlist since 2004. It is a great program. Has remote voice tracking, music scheduler. Everything a small to medium market station would ever need.

It is very simple to schedule different rotations. categories, clocks, etc, and it can be set up to switch programming feeds or record them.
 
No major complaints here with Station Playlist. It's very robust and tends to keep working and working, though there are certain things that can actually crash it. My only issues are that the music scheduler sometimes repeats tracks too soon (before the rest of the songs in the catagory have played), despite setting very loose rules for artist and title seps. I also wish it had an integrated spot scheduler, but there are inexpensive external schedulers that can interface with it.

Other sub-$2,000 programs to consider are Zara Radio (freeware)/Studio (Paid) and EZautomation (aka Spartamation). I've not worked with Zara Studio, but Zara Radio's actually fairly powerful for a freeware product. Although it lacks a proper music scheduler, you can still create a catagorized general playlist that mimics a scheduler pretty well with the down side being it's impractical to have different rotations on different days or times. I use it frequently as a backup tool for those times when a main automation might be down or an STL quits. Zara is not as user friendly as Station Playlist, but once you figure it out, it works pretty well.
 
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Gee, I've always thought that Zara was much more user friendly than Station Playlist. Maybe it is a right brain - left brain sort of thing. In any case, the paid version of Zara can do just about everything. I run two commercial stations on it, and have very few complaints. The big feature is its ability to "nest" rotations. In other-words, it can do rotations within rotations within rotations. I'm not sure how far you can "nest" them, but three levels seems to work for me. This gives you a huge ability to keep things interesting. You can schedule as many playlists as you like (they can be rotations or just simple playlists - you can even make them resume where they left off if you like) so dayparting is very easy to do. You can make any file (or playlist) expire on a given date, which makes it easy to do things like special Christmas programming. Its "Sequence" feature allows a string of files to play in order. This is great for local news, allowing you to update any individual part of the sequence any time you want without having to redo the whole thing. Another handy feature is its "Auditor" program which makes it easy to prepare affidavits for your sponsors with exact air times in the report. I'm know there are more versatile programs out there. but for small stations, this is the best less than $200 solution you can find. The free version is ideal for most LPFM's. It is hard to argue with the price or the reliability.
 
Chuck said:
... You can make any file (or playlist) expire on a given date, which makes it easy to do things like special Christmas programming.
Click to expand...

This feature is a distinct advantage over SPL. I hate doing special programming in SPL because you have to maually set it up and then manually remove it when it's expired. It would be very convenient to have special programming schedules that can expire themselves. Even better would be special programming that can be scheduled to start and end yearly.
 
Kmagrill said:
This feature is a distinct advantage over SPL. I hate doing special programming in SPL because you have to maually set it up and then manually remove it when it's expired. It would be very convenient to have special programming schedules that can expire themselves. Even better would be special programming that can be scheduled to start and end yearly.
Click to expand...

SPL Creator v5 can now do that. I use it all the time, namely I often have specials for a Sunday so I set the Special Sunday schedule to expire after that day and the next time I create the schedule it goes back to default for the following sunday..
 
Another vote for Zara Studio - paid version is less than $300. I run an AM music station with it and it is everything Chuck says it is. Very reliable, has all necessary capabilities, and is very inexpensive. It runs best on Windows XP but can be run with newer Windows versions with some tweaking.
 
The latest version of Zara Studio seems to work OK on Windows 7. I'm listening to it right now. All bets are off on Windows 8 though. I haven't tried it, but I know a lot of other stuff doesn't play nice with it. Personally, I'm hoarding Windows XP and Windows 7 computers.
:)
You can frequently pick up a decent XP box at a thrift store for $20-25 and a decent Win 7 is pretty easy to find for $100.
 
I Never had Station Playlist crash. Works on all operating systems, and works with all major billing traffic systems. Yes the latest version allows you to expire files.
 
xmtrland said:
How easily can StationPlaylist handle a format change form rock (9am-12pm) to Jazz(12pm-3pm) to pop(3pm - 6pm). The issue with sam is that each genre was rotated and weighted differently and sam out of the box can't handle this without major pal scripting.
Click to expand...
SPL is a great solution - Creator can be a bit of a faff as you either need to rely on moving audio files around to populate the Music Categories or use Windows "shortcuts". The alternative is to manage a list of your Categories separately (perhaps using Excel or another library program) and then paste the filenames in.

If you rarely move tracks "down" through Categories and simply add new tracks, then having C:\Country , C:\Jazz , C:\SoftRock for each music type will work fine. I use my own application, MyLibrary, to load a master set of folders and add/remove Genres/Styles and other properties - I can then filter Female songs that Fade from 1974, hit CTRL-C and then paste those filenames into Creator.

For a bit more scheduling power, NaturalMusic5 offers StationPlaylist as an automation output and is quite reasonably priced for buy-out.
 
NaturalMusic5 has an OtsAV DJ interface now. OtsAV DJ is about the same price as SAM.

R
 
If you want the capability to sound like a professional radio station, instead of station that sounds like it is run in a basement, go with Stationplaylist. All of the other systems here listed are very limited, or do not offer all the functions that are needed to run a professional station. I can do everything needed with SP that systems cost 2K do.

You don't any interfaces or tweaking. They will not release any updates until it is fully tested by users (I am one of the testers).

If you want to just play songs, do basic or no schedules, not use a traffic system or logging , and no voice tracking. The by all means go with the free systems.
 
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Groove1670 said:
If you want the capability to sound like a professional radio station, instead of station that sounds like it is run in a basement, go with Stationplaylist. All of the other systems here listed are very limited, or do not offer all the functions that are needed to run a professional station. I can do everything needed with SP that systems cost 2K do.
Click to expand...

EXCUSE ME SIR, but as a long-time OtsAV DJ user, I am offended by your remark. I have used OtsAV for my Internet station since May of 2009, and I would gladly use it ona terra station if I could. Did you even know that OtsAV was the original automation software that launched the original JACK-FM format?

R
 
Groove1670 said:
....If you want to just play songs, do basic or no schedules, not use a traffic system or logging , and no voice tracking. The by all means go with the free systems.
Click to expand...

Although I also use SPL as the primary playout system on at least four small stations, I have looked at several others and I have to disagree in part. I like SPL the best of the sub-$1,000 programs, but as far as I know, Zara (and most of the others) can do logging, voice tracking, live assist and all of these systems, including SPL, require 3rd party traffic scheduling for anything more complicated than variations of ROS. In fact, with the exception of playlist creation, even the freeware Zara Radio does those things. On paper, most of these systems compete pretty effectively. It's the subtle differences that you might not even think to ask which determine the satisfaction you experience with your choice. For me, SPL has paid a lot of attention to the details and that's what gives the experience a more polished feel. For example, some playout systems won't play anything except mp3 or .wav files. SPL can play them all (mp3, wav, mp2, Ogg, wma and more) and it can cross fade from one type to another without a hitch. Arguably, your music should be all uncompressed .wav files, but one station inherited a library from a crashed Scott Studios system in 320kbs mp2 format, so it was nice to be able to play those files. Another example is that SPL's playout engine is a separate module from the main user interface. If the playout engine crashes, the interface re-starts the engine, so you're not going to be off the air unless the whole PC locks up. Those kinds of little differences are worth a lot, IMHO.

The performance and reliability of SPL are hard to beat for the money, but you should look at the features and limitations of all systems and then make your own informed decision. There are some very close competitors. In the end, it may come down to your personal feeling about using the programs. Get the demos of these programs and spend about two days playing with each of them. It takes about a day or two to really get a feel for an automation system and then you need another day to hear how it's going to work. Really, take the time. You won't regret it in the end.
 
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I have enjoyed the discussion here and appreciate the information from all. The biggest difference I see is that programs like SAM and Zara are for more of a one person operation, more easy to manage, integrated streamer and such.
I have a staff and the station changes personality at times. Lots of 60 min pre produced stuff. So SPL looks more traditional when dealing with that environment.
But I do appreciate how SAM and Zara operate, just does not work as well when several people are involved in our situation. I'm liking what I hear about SPL.
 
As I said, you can use a simple playout system like OTS AV (looks like a DJ mixing program, and lacks many pro broadcast features), or you can go with Stationplaylist, Nexgen, Wideorbit etc. For a simple no frills playback, any of the free or low cost systems including OTS AV will work.

With SP and other high end systems your announcers can voicetrack their show from anywhere, and if you plan to send billing and affidavits to clients, you will need a third party traffic & billing system. Some of the budget systems are not capable of this.

It is better to have these feature available even if you don't use them now.
 
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The switch to SP is on the way, now I have a bigger issue, actually it's small, as it mp3 128 which is a standard I used when the group first started because it fit the need at the time. But needs updating since were starting off with a new system/rebuild, it should not be a big deal to rip the music because they have most of the CD's. So I'm pretty sure we can rebuild the library. Should the music all be wave uncompressed. And then there are some of the live to tape stuff they do, can that be compressed at all? What can be compressed and mp3, acc?
 
Nothing for broadcast via a live stream or over the air should ever be anything but a linear .wav file. Space is too cheap and there are no excuses for compression now.

Anyone that ever decides to stream your station will listen a lot longer if the only compression is your streaming codec.

Please, rip everything as a linear, 44.1, 16 bit, .wav
 
I agree with Chris. All original high quality sources should be 44.1, 16 bit, .wav This is the standard. Don't compress your source material. The effects of putting compressed material through a digital limiter & or processor can be diaster. I learned that the hard way back in 1995.

We had a Smartcaster system that recorded compressed material (back then you couldn't rip, and we couldn't afford a music library) So I recorded 500 tracks or so. Sounded fine, until we went on the air. When the material went thru the processor and air chain. It sounded terrible. Had to rerecord all 500 tracks. :(

Actually we had to adjust the settings on the Smartcaster, and try again.

Make sure you keep up with your yearly support on SP (It is cheap) Most of the software designers and user are on the support board most of the time, and will be glad to answer questions, fast, and you will get the software updates.

A new update was issued today, and it is great. Has features I requested added, and from other users. The developer will almost add any changes you need in a future update, if enough people ask for it on the user board. :)
 
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