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Automation Systems

A

AlPennyworth

Guest
Hello All,
I am knew to this board so I wanted to say hello and ask a fairly strange question. It has been a very long day so please forgive my grammar and spelling. I have used NexGen from prophet systems for a number of years and I have found this to be the best and most reliable automation system on the market. I haven't used Scott Studios, OMT, or dMarc simply because NexGen can do everything I want and more from an automation system. I have several acquaintences that have purchased PSi101 (for LPFM and internet stations) and they would use nothing else except NexGen (for budget concerns, they had to go with PSi101). There are a few people under my employ that would like to try competitor products. I have contacted each company but their sales staffs are intrusive and pushy, asking me to provide every piece of information possible without even discussing the chances for a trial version of their software. I wanted to ask a couple of questions:

1) Compared to NexGen, what are people's thoughts on other automation systems? I know this is a broad question that is open to interpretation. With the release of NexGen 2006, what can other automation systems do that NexGen cannot?
2) Does anyone have a trial version of Scott Studios, OMT, dMarc, or other automation system software they would be willing to share? After my attempts with Scott Studios and OMT, I am more than hesitant to continue trying to contact other automation system providers. This might be crossing legal boundaries and if so, I truly apologize, that was not my intention. I would like to test some other automation software without the hassles of the sales staff.
 
The best system? Probably the one you are most familiar with. I've played from Shafer (902) through SMC, ENCO, dMarc, and a couple others. All of them work. All of them have their idiosyncracies. You'll likely do best with the one you know how to work, and beat the learning curve on a new one.
Pushy sales people? Simple... don't buy from them, and drop a letter to the principal or sales manager outlining why. I would be prepared to tell them formatics and equipment... basically what's expected of their system when asking for a demo.
 
If any automation system is to work well it *must* co-exist with your work flow...or vica versa (usually it's a little of both). I would not buy an automation system from any company who did not seek info about how you do what you do. To me that indicates they are just interested in making a sale and don't really care if it *works* for you or not.

Having said that, if the sales people are being jerks, well, that is a problem.

For what it's worth demo modes are in both Enco and Audio Vault - it runs between 30 minutes and a few days (I forget who does which) so you can kick the tires. You can download enco from their website but it's fairly complex to set up.

Good luck,
Joe
 
i run Nexgen 2 and will soon download nexgen 2006.if i were to even think about switching or got another station, i would have to give dave scotts's new Captain Digital a try.you can check it out at www.captaindigital.com.
don;t worry, Dave knows the program..don;t know about demo downloads.you have to realize these folks are in business to do business.most of them are not into tire kickers or strokes ,as they say in the car business..but so far nexgen 2 has been the best i've ever used and have awesome tech support should you need it..
 
NexGen is good, but quite expensive compared to its competitors nowadays.

Since a few months, we are using Deltatrax. It is very affordable and yet has everything we need to have. And - most important - it is very stable. Takes a little time to find your way in the software, but its definately worth a try. There's a free version that you can download to play around with Deltatrax.

Have a look here:
www.deltatrax.com

Good luck!
 
OMT has a downloadable demo that you can push all the buttons with and explore.

We are using Version 2.5 and it is stable and really easy to train folks on.

We don't need a lot of customer support, so I can't speak to a situation where you'd need intense support. On our install, the OMT tech was available by phone on the weekend and we were up and running pretty quick.

We've had problems with the RDS program. We can't tell whether its the software or our Burk RDS Master that is causing the problem, though both firms are exploring it.

I give a thumbs up to MediaTouch and its a pretty good value.
 
Prophet may be expensive, but it'll kick the rear end of any other system when it comes to scalability, upgradability, support and other vital items.
 
Sgeirk said:
Prophet may be expensive, but it'll kick the rear end of any other system when it comes to scalability, upgradability, support and other vital items.
Click to expand...

NexGen may not be as expensive as you think. When we replaced our aging DCS DOS system, We solicited bids from Prophet and BE. (most of my company uses Audio Vault) NexGen turned out to be 30% less than Audio Vault.

One note on scalability, Prophet has one of the largest radio automation setups out there with Sirius running on NexGen. But when buying for your own site, buy the central server option if you intend to run more than 3 computers on a setup. Trust me, been there, done that, ended up buying the server.
 
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