Even though I care and listen often, stuff still happens .. and it happened today 10 minutes after I stepped out for a break. The incoming internet feed from a show we carry 9 to 12 died and left us with dead air for a few minutes till a listener alerted me and i rushed home to from where i was to drop in a few songs then hustled faster than a fat boy should over to the station to fix it permanently
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When stations go off the rails.. dead air, double audio, the wrong thing playing....
- Thread starter SomeRadioGuy
- Start date
Even though I care and listen often, stuff still happens .. and it happened today 10 minutes after I stepped out for a break. The incoming internet feed from a show we carry 9 to 12 died and left us with dead air for a few minutes till a listener alerted me and i rushed home to from where i was to drop in a few songs then hustled faster than a fat boy should over to the station to fix it permanently
I was replying to the comment about computer errors: " ... is that the error is repeated over and over at the same time in the process."
I've heard unfixed errors last for days or weeks and apparently no one notices or cares.
Obviously you care and your listeners do too.
Do you have to manually set where the next element is triggered for every song in the library with Zeta or any of the big systems? The most professional thing I've worked with is Station Playlist, where you may be able to set certain songs, but I never experimented with that because SPL segues pretty tight most of the time. What I don't understand is that my local iHeart cluster sounds fine during the week, but on weekends, they occasionally have audio stepping on other audio. In one case, it makes some sense as the program in question doesn't run during the week, but in another case I heard last week, the station was tracked, I assume using the same process used during the week, but the next element fired before the track was finished playing. What would cause this?
Yes.. its either at the end of the song if no seg marker is set or when the pre determined seg marker is hit
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
What Paul said is generally correct for pretty much all automation playback software; if an audio file ends the system will always start the next scheduled event. But there are indeed ways to not have to depend on that function to start the segue; obviously it's not very desirable for a song with a long fade to end completely before the next event.
How that occurs is dependent on the software, however. MusicMaster creates a master table containing the segue point for every music file and its server software uses that. Similar processes are used for AudioVault-based playback systems. Some others use an industry standard called "cart chunk" in which inaudible cue tags are embedded into the WAV file to tell the automation what to do (under that system, for example, I would go into the file with Audition and add cue tag "4" at the precise point I wanted the segue to occur). Simian, to use another example, has a similar process except that it wants a "sec tone" -- yes, it's named after the old cart-based technology -- embedded in the file (again, there is a process in Audition that allows that to be added).
Zetta actually works best with GSelector, because they are both RCS programs. I confess that I do not know the specific process it uses as I have never worked with that automation software.
How that occurs is dependent on the software, however. MusicMaster creates a master table containing the segue point for every music file and its server software uses that. Similar processes are used for AudioVault-based playback systems. Some others use an industry standard called "cart chunk" in which inaudible cue tags are embedded into the WAV file to tell the automation what to do (under that system, for example, I would go into the file with Audition and add cue tag "4" at the precise point I wanted the segue to occur). Simian, to use another example, has a similar process except that it wants a "sec tone" -- yes, it's named after the old cart-based technology -- embedded in the file (again, there is a process in Audition that allows that to be added).
Zetta actually works best with GSelector, because they are both RCS programs. I confess that I do not know the specific process it uses as I have never worked with that automation software.
intersting side note, were goign from Imediatouch to zetta here soon.. we kept natural music... g se;lector was an additional cost and wed get nowhere near approaching to using it at its full capacity.. wed never use alot of its features
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Funny you should say that, Paul. The station I program in Albuquerque uses Simian, which uses Natural Music as its default scheduler. Except that doesn't have anywhere near the flexibility and robustness that I need, so I am using MusicMaster for scheduling and exporting the log in Simian format.
But I certainly understand why KSKO is so different.
Hope nobody monkeys with the log!
Before IMT, wed had Audio Vault.... to my knowledge weve never had Simian.
It works for exactly what we need... to fill a slot with music. in automated music hours, which aresomewhat rare.. we just kinda need.. something that that fits the "format of the hour"
when local djs are on, we greatly manipulate what the computer has put there.
plus, i know NM, i didnt need to learn another system
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I didn't know anything about Simian before I started this "programming journey" which will begin its foruth year in one week, but I have read the manual, I have hands-on remote experience with it, and was able to help tech support at MusicMaster create a log export template which Simian recognizes as being from Natural Music.
Amusingly enough, once I formatted the music scheduling file to emulate a 1970s Schafer 903 automation system, everything has worked without any hiccups. Go figure.
("Monkeying around", indeed. I am getting really tired of those bad jokes.)
If I didnt have 50 other fish to fry and it was important to critical to change, i could, would and can learn. in an effort to save money and keep it simple, we stayed with NM.
Back when i worked at a station that used simian, an engineer and i at anothe station would have a monday pow wow of "what did simian do wrong this last week?" and it did some nutty things
There were times a space bar shouldnt have fired off the next element, like when it was currently playing somethign and you right clicked to do a quick insert by typing a file name
But it did.
One time, i woke up to a repeating a couple syllable loop of the last few notes of a song and the sign out line of the weather forecast that were 15 minutes apart.... just looping over and over for whatever strange reason
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Admittedly, I have to be very careful not to accidentally hit my keyboard when I am remote accessing the computers in ABQ running Simian. It considers the space bar, Enter, and Alt to be "hot keys" that can cause it to behave as you said. I wouldn't call that misbehavior, though, just something that one needs to be aware of and avoid.
That sounds like a glitch in the playback system, not Simian itself ... although we have had a few system freezes when too many things are happening simultaneously on the PC itself. But I can count the number of those over the course of a year and only need the fingers on one hand.
We have a silence sensor system in place that monitors the output of the sound card and triggers if there is dead air for more than 30 seconds. It sends an e-mail to both me and the station engineer via a service that converts the e-mail to a text message. It doesn't go off very often, but it is the kind of functionality that we think is essential to an operation which runs hands off 24/7.
Most systems have a voicetracking system that works remotely as well as physically on site at the studio. .and those that dont have a remote VT software you can sometimes manipulate remtoe access software and the software on site to work remotely... opr record trackins in adobe, set seg markers and upload to drop box. my buddy andrew jaye does it from California for several stations including the station im in in WY and qutie a few others
I'm not...
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
They can be, or they can be individually mastered as separate "carts" and scheduled accordingly.
As Paul said, pretty much all automation systems include the ability to record voicetracks locally for direct insertion into the log.
With Zetta, you only have to set the cue points once for each element, whether it be song or production.
There is a feature that allows you to edit the segues in the log so that you can run things "tighter". For example, the night time jock can edit his voice tracked show and tighten up every element so that it sounds like he's running a "tight board". This overrides the original "cue point" one time only. The next time the song or element plays it returns to the original cue point.
As for your example, the weekend programming you heard may not be a consistent length as it should be from show to show. If a new show under the same number is loaded in, it inherits the old cue points. If one week the show is 24:00 and the second week it is 23:57, the cue points could be messed up IF they are not reset. More than likely, nobody is at the helm on the weekend to notice. Things like "American Top 40" are transmitted segment by segment, and I believe the cue points can't be messed with. It could just be a matter of settings that are being ignored or not used.
This is the number one cause of elements stepping on each other or being cut short during automated programming. Cue points get inherited improperly or are used when they should not be used at all. If it's not set properly on a weather report and the report airs 12x per day there is nothing to stop it unless someone intervenes in the system.
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K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
You are totally correct in explaining the above.
I will use AT40 as an example to amplify your point:
The last hour of last weekend's show had four segments. The timings were 14:56, 12:33, 13:29 and 11:12. This weekend's last hour times are 9:26, 13:20, 16:16 and 13:14. The way we manage that at my client station is to run that show in sequence, with the local commercials and station imaging already entered in sequence. That means the entire four hour show runs non-stop without the automation being able to exit to anything else or omitting anything in that four hours.
Coming back to the original intent of this thread: It is still my opinion that any glitches such as described can -- and should -- be prevented by better pre-production and automation log editing. Any station, regardless of size, that fails deserves to lose whatever part of the audience that decides not to tolerate it.
Even better is when there's a sponsor attached. I recall a couple of times when a 50kw heritage news/talk station (I won't name call letters) would run an "up to the minute" sponsored forecast.
It was "up to the minute" in the overnight hours, too... even when it was still sunny and 85. Oops. That was the daytime forecast still running overnight...
Stuff like that erodes listener's trust. If there's a liner proclaiming "up to the minute," there'd better be a warm body reading that weather forecast. If it's automated from hours earlier, that's just plain dishonest. Just call it a weather forecast.
You dont need that.... the late tom churchills digital weatherman and weatherology/weathereye can have an up to the minute forecast with a current temp attached.. .every hour, even overnights.. and its automated. and with a little work sounds damn near live