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Automation-Live Assist Softare/Hardware

I saw some things here about automation systems.

Raduga, Stationplaylist, Mastercontrol RCS with Selector, Music Master, zararadio software, Megamix and Jazler.

Totall free - you can download it for free WITHOUT ANY MONEY www.zaradio.com - works great but its morly a toy for mini, not even small market radio stations. Very near to that... The cheapest - raduga, works fine- very easy to use, so does StationPlaylist i agree, its nice.

The most money needed is Master control, its one of the bests worldwide, since its including the powerfull Selector for sceduling. But veeeeery expensive. Indeed.

So for a sceduling programm in excellent class , here comes the Musicmaster, you can compine it easy with any player plus its maybe even better then Selector. ( example. the shufle the music randomise think :)), still its not very low cost effective

Then we Have Jazler, yes i agree, the support its very baaaadddddddd even if the programm is great for his cost. ( maybe because the enginner is From Greece, my homeland ;))

And here comes the wired solution, maybe one of the best. Well known in Europe mostly is the RadioMegamix for 15 years know. In the past, it was very familiar with Stationplaylist, Raduga etc. so i wouldnt deare to call it then very profesional.. but... the latest edition...

you need to check it out... these guys have instaled in the latest version a very similar software version like Selector from Rcs, ( i would say 93% so good as Selector) so u get a excellent automation system + a excellent sceduler in one.

Try it out.
 
I have great respect for Digital Jukebox.

It has features that many do not have, will play mpeg 2, 3, wav, and other formats, and uses the internal audio card.

No crashes in a 2 year period of experience.

Muisc Sceduler and audit system included.
 
ChiefEngineer said:
I have great respect for Digital Jukebox.

It has features that many do not have, will play mpeg 2, 3, wav, and other formats, and uses the internal audio card.

No crashes in a 2 year period of experience.

Muisc Sceduler and audit system included.
Click to expand...

You've got to be kidding, right? Being the one who wrote the review of the DOS-based Digital Jukebox for Radio World I know something about both the former DOS and Windows versions. After testing the Windows version and having it trash almost a year's worth of work I ran as fast as I could to get away from that junk. StationPlaylist is a joy compared to that trash. Besides costing half as much as the "regular price" (which seems to change whenever he needs sales) you can actually get support for StationPlaylist! Granted, SPL may not have some of the features of the bigger systems such as Prophet or Master Control it wasn't as kludgey as DJB. Also, I ran StationPlaylist off a laptop with on-board audio for two years without a reboot! I doubt DJB is anywhere near that robust. Personally, I wouldn't trust DJB for any mission critical on-air application.
 
Prophet is good but I'll add a vote for BSI Simian. It's a very stable program. Plus from a jock perspective it has versatility for last second decisions. as does Prophet. I say that after experiences with Smartcaster and Scott Studios, both were like arguing with HAL 9000.

Zara Radio is good for the amount of money you have in it. If you're doing an in-house music loop or Part 15 it's wonderful. In a pinch, Zara could give you the absolute "our on-air computers have all crashed, burned up, flooded, blown away or some other Act of God and we can't find the automation program disk" to get you on the air.
 
I too have had good luck with BSI Simian. For live assist we use Wavecart. Have used both in a Newstalk situation since the late 90's. Never a problem.
 
Yes, we have Wavecart installed on the same machines as Simian, use it for sports and Nascar broadcasts.

Too limited for any kind of extensive on-air work, but works just fine for when all you need is a "cart" machine.
Easy to train part-timers to use, too.
 
Should have mentioned that we also have "Stinger" on a seperate machine in the studio. It's not very expensive and is very usefull teamed with Wavecart in a live situation.
 
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