Question, when you were running AM 660, and AM 1550 from your location to the same transmitter site did you have the same problems ? How is 660 connected to the transmitter right now? Are they having problems? Glad to have you back on the air!
Both stations use TCP/IP audio streaming to get the audio from the studio to the transmitter. WZUM uses a mono 128K bps MP3 stream. We use a product called Barix to do the encoding at the studio and one to decode the audio stream at the transmitter building. WAMO uses a different brand encoder and decoder but the concept is the same. The studio can be anywhere in the world since it uses the Internet to get to the transmitter.
The T1 line provides a 1.5M bps TCP/IP connection to the transmitter building. This gives us Internet access at the transmitter building. Both stations stream over the Internet to get to the transmitter building. WZUM and the old 660 when it was at our building streamed using Internet protocols but never left our private network. Our other company, aspStation, is an Internet provider. The MP3 encoders are connected to aspStation's network so the data packets stayed on our network. When WAMO moved to their current studio location, they installed an Internet connection and send their audio stream over the Internet to the AM transmitter and to their FM transmitter.
We have used MP3 streaming over the Internet to connect a remote broadcast location back to the studio. The audio is incredible and the cost is nothing since most places have an Internet connection these days. The old days of using an expensive radio link are over.
At WZUM, we take the output of the console and feed it into a stereo audio processor. This mainly keeps the level the same for the stream listeners. This audio is fed to a 128K stereo MP3 Darkice/Icecast FreeBSD UNIX streaming computer. If you listen on a computer or smart phone, this is the stream you are listening to. The same audio is also mixed to mono and feeds a standalone encoder for the transmitter. The transmitter feed has a faster bitrate so it should sound better. I'm listening to the stereo stream right now at home and it sounds really good. It isn't over processed.
We have built a new Icecast streaming server. We have a church using it. We might move our WZUM stream to the new system. It has a better reporting system so we can tell where the connections are coming from. Right now, I can only tell how many people are connected. I have to dig around to find their location.
The Internet is a big help. I can record the weather breaks at home, send them to the automation system, and when they play you can't tell I'm not at the studio. I also have full access to the automation system. I can make changes from home. I have been on vacation at Disney and once from the Outer Banks and needed to make system changes. It was slower than I like but everything worked out.
