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Does anyone have any experience or suggestions about the following situation:
I may be needing to use the Internet to send a continuous steam of FM quality stereo audio (music) from a remote studio located 150 miles from the transmitter site. This would have to be stable enough to handle approximately 12 hours of programming a day, seven days a week. Possible? Best equipment to handle this?
BTW, the station will have a fully-staffed main studio in the community of license during business hours.
You could try getting a dry pair from the phone company, but over this distance, it would be expensive. It would be very hard to monitor the FM station from 150 miles away over the air, but if it's 100000 watts and there's no interference, a good yagi mounted over 100 feet up would pull it in. A microwave link would be near impossible. An Internet feed could work, but knowing how reliable most broadband providers are, it could go out a few times a day.
But the problem here is that even if you use something like the Barix, you can't use it to monitor the off air signal while talking live. The delay time would throw you off. 150 miles is quite a distance for a live broadcast situation.
For a 150 mile transit, using the same ISPs on both ends, I'd recommend a minimum of a one second buffer. With different ISPs on each end, I'd use a minimum of a two second buffer.
Yeah try running the past the jock who demands to hear the off air signal while he's talking. Realistically that's the best way to do it anyway, so the jock can hear the balance of his voice with the music, as it is processed by the audio chain. Then there's the potential issue of timing for breaks / network feeds and so on.
And if you use an ISP for this purpose, the delay is going to be much greater than 1 to 2 seconds over 150 miles. This is because the stream has to hop over numerous ports, in most cases. The delay can be as great as half a minute and more!
"I may be needing to use the Internet to send ..."
Why the Internet?
dx7 said:
Does anyone have any experience or suggestions about the following situation:
I may be needing to use the Internet to send a continuous steam of FM quality stereo audio (music) from a remote studio located 150 miles from the transmitter site. This would have to be stable enough to handle approximately 12 hours of programming a day, seven days a week. Possible? Best equipment to handle this?
BTW, the station will have a fully-staffed main studio in the community of license during business hours.
Does anyone have any experience or suggestions about the following situation:
I may be needing to use the Internet to send a continuous steam of FM quality stereo audio (music) from a remote studio located 150 miles from the transmitter site. This would have to be stable enough to handle approximately 12 hours of programming a day, seven days a week. Possible? Best equipment to handle this?
BTW, the station will have a fully-staffed main studio in the community of license during business hours.
Seems like you have alot of suggestions, Barix is definitely the cheapest way to way. I've also used windows media encoder with a computer to do "live" broadcast from clubs. You have lots of options.
I can say that I'm using a Barix pair to get audio from Los Angeles back to a small (10mW) transmitter in eastern Kentucky. The feed has been running since February with no problems. The only time it has gone down has been a problem out on their end. I'm also using a Barix pair in Louisville for an STL with no problems (until someone at the studio tinkers with the router, but that problem has been fixed).
You could use a Barix pair for main audio, another pair for off air monitoring back to the station and something like a Tieline Patriot POTS codec for an emergency backup. The jock that demands off air monitoring can foot the bill for the ISDN line. Otherwise he can adjust to the setup.
It is. The guys at Bellsouth tell me it's getting harder and more expensive to maintain. That along with the improvements of POTS CODECS, the influence of the internet, cheaper satellite segment space are all killing ISDN slowly. For me it used to be a knee-jerk reaction to order an ISDN Line for a quality remote. Now, I look at other outlets before ISDN. Bellsouth is raising the install and other fees to get people off of the technology.
Not as good as fixed microwave. Sat is your needed choice.
In the old days my mentor would say, "If you have to resort to doing it the wrong way it isn't the right way." Radio has changed.
Now the option has been do ot this way or it can't be done for cost reasons.
We have tried several options all resting on IP. 150 miles almost exactly.
With a computer device the first 9 months were hell. "You're off the air" was much too common.
With the barix boxes we received calls that our cd's were skipping inititally. After changing the settings still no difference. All related to connectivity issues. replacing the dsl box (sbc ) at the receive site fixed 99% of our issues.
Having multiple send points has also helped as there are redundant feeds. Streaming Client has helped also (thanks Barix). We have a WM9 encoder with a redundant feed on Shoutatme mp3 and plan to place a third unit at our transmitter site (probably using the barix protocol) where we have wasted bw.
We had no internet at our transmitter site 8 years ago and $10,000 was the option for ONE END of a partial T1. The ONLY option. Now we have two DSL, one cable, and several pizza box providers. The yokel rural electric (Rush Shelby Electric) is interested in providing bpl. IF THEY PROVIDE IT THE WAY THEY PROVIDE ELECTRIC WE HAVE NO INTEREST. We moved the proposed studio site to support microwave to the main site.
Another toy we're looking at that has mixed reviews is the Netgear dual gigabit router with two WAN sources.
Given the quality of our electric feed now you can't really point to the demise of radio by people using IP for connectivity.
During a small storm a few weeks ago we were off the air at station A for nearly 9 hours while Station B stayed on with no loss because it had reliable electric service.
And the lady in the iron lung for the last 60 years died in Indiana because thye didn't hook her electric back up. Which do we need more and has become less reliable?
Not as good as fixed microwave. Sat is your needed choice.
In the old days my mentor would say, "If you have to resort to doing it the wrong way it isn't the right way." Radio has changed.
Now the option has been do ot this way or it can't be done for cost reasons.
<snip>
We had no internet at our transmitter site 8 years ago and $10,000 was the option for ONE END of a partial T1. The ONLY option. Now we have two DSL, one cable, and several pizza box providers. The yokel rural electric (Rush Shelby Electric) is interested in providing bpl. IF THEY PROVIDE IT THE WAY THEY PROVIDE ELECTRIC WE HAVE NO INTEREST. We moved the proposed studio site to support microwave to the main site.
Another toy we're looking at that has mixed reviews is the Netgear dual gigabit router with two WAN sources.
Given the quality of our electric feed now you can't really point to the demise of radio by people using IP for connectivity.
During a small storm a few weeks ago we were off the air at station A for nearly 9 hours while Station B stayed on with no loss because it had reliable electric service.
And the lady in the iron lung for the last 60 years died in Indiana because thye didn't hook her electric back up. Which do we need more and has become less reliable?
Sounds like the demise of radio is already at hand if you don't have any backup.
Let me guess, you have no back up telephone hybrid, processor, STL, or TX?
You are totally dependent on the power company and your equipment vendors to deal with any problem that should have been dealt with redundancy. This is exactly why I started posting here, as someone that has worked for manufacturers. If, for some reason, we can't get you a loaner the same day then we are the bad guy and not providing good support.
Yes, if this is the way your run your station by all means the cheapest DSL line and codecs should be adequate for your needs.
On the other hand, if you are a professional you may want to look at all of the above and if necessary find employment with someone that gets it.
RC
PS - If you find a gig with a station that get's it, DSL and IP are a great way to have *backup* at low cost.
During a small storm a few weeks ago we were off the air at station A for nearly 9 hours while Station B stayed on with no loss because it had reliable electric service.
I think it's time to consider a back up generator. Home Depot has 15kW propane generators for less than 4 grand. I have installed two of them. At one site the transmitter is set to reduce power when they are on the generator, but 50% power is better than 0% and we still cover the market.
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