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Radio Automation

Seems if I recall, older versions of Zara supported audio plug-in modules, which could be useful.
That may be the reason why someone would go to an older version.
With Breakaway on the machine thats running Zara, why would I need "plug in" modules?
 
I'll put a plug in here for StationPlaylist as well.

Good program, excellent tech support, used by many stations around the world and doesn't cost you both arms and a leg.

The GUI isn't the fanciest but it does the job and is easy to operate. 95% of my clients use it.

www.stationplaylist.com
 
Obviously, as the author of the StationPlaylist Review for Radio World I think it's a great system. If I had the budget I would go to Nexgen/Player 101 (or whatever they're calling it this week).

I needed a budget system to teach high school students about radio and StationPlaylist worked out well for this. I found SAM Broadcaster too "rinky dink" to be either taken seriously or to give students an idea of workflow. Others were just out of my budget.

StationPlaylist and Player101 are favs for the budgets they support. I suppose if you have money t burn you could look at everything from Enco and the rest. I also heard that WireReady/ControlReady are less costly than the big boys but I haven't had any face time with those.
 
Several of the budget automation systems have been tried by our local LPFM stations. We have 5 of them. Of those stations, three are using Station Playlist. One uses TuneTracker and one uses Campcaster. Several other low-end systems have been tried and rejected, mostly due to lack of features.

After watching all three surviving systems for a couple of years, I have concluded that Playlist is, by far, the more stable and reliable of the bunch. Campcaster runs under Linux and seems to have been selected by the station based on a philosophical dislike of Windows. They seem to be off the air a couple of times per month. Tunetracker runs under an obsolete OS called Zeta (formerly called BeOS). The OS is a severe limitation and the station ended up buying a Windows PC to handle tasks that couldn't be done with Tunetracker. Tunetracker itself was reliable except that once or twice a year something seemed to go wrong and the whole PC would have to go back to them to get fixed. This, along with the other limitations, frustrated the station and I recently noticed that the Tunetracker PC was retired after only 3 years on the air.

Station Playlist is operational 99.999% of the time on the other three stations. The reliability is excellent, as good as any of the high end systems. The feature set is also very good, doing far more than most competitors in the sub-$500 range. It does 97% of the stuff that it needs to do. Three minor limitations keep it from being perfect:
1. lack of a proper traffic scheduler. Supposedly, there is third party stuff that will interface.
2. lack of "on demand" controls for external switching. We use the control outputs to operate an external audio switcher. This works fine by schedule but there's no way to manually execute a switch.
3. Although it's possible to schedule events at specific times, it seems impossible to schedule a series of events with non-specific times, to follow each other. For instance, play a program, followed by a station ID, followed by music, might schedule a song before the ID. It's minor, but when an ID is supposed to follow a program, it should.

There are a couple of other limitations as well, but Playlist is a lot of bang for the $$$.


I've seen some folks talk well of Zara recently. Has anyone compared Zara to Playlist and others? If so, which was selected and why?
 
Another thumbs up for StationPlaylist. No issues at all. Wish the VT was more advanced, but it still works excellent as it is. I have found nothing close to it in the price range. In this case you get more than you pay for.

Plus two new features have been added. Remote VT, and online requests for your website.
 
It would be nice if SPL released a "Station Playlist Plus" that had a few more features, a better GUI, and multiple players. I'll bet there would be interest in such a release.
 
Kmagrill said:
Three minor limitations keep it from being perfect:
1. lack of a proper traffic scheduler. Supposedly, there is third party stuff that will interface.
2. lack of "on demand" controls for external switching. We use the control outputs to operate an external audio switcher. This works fine by schedule but there's no way to manually execute a switch.
3. Although it's possible to schedule events at specific times, it seems impossible to schedule a series of events with non-specific times, to follow each other. For instance, play a program, followed by a station ID, followed by music, might schedule a song before the ID. It's minor, but when an ID is supposed to follow a program, it should.
Click to expand...

Traffic Light was a traffic scheduling system that supports StationPlaylist and I believe there are a few others as well. External switching can be accomplished if you have a native (on-board) parallel port although I think there are one or two aftermarket products that are compatible with SPL switching.

The third one I don't understand. I've scheduled a multitude of non-time-specfic events to play consecutively and they worked fine. I think I don't fully understand the context of what you're explaining as the desired result.

The other thing that's nice is the StationPlaylist Yahoo group. Many times I've been able to field questions to the group and not have to wait for Ross or one of his staff to get back with me.

Like most said, for the money involved it's a great system. If you've got the bucks to shell out for something more heavy duty, so be it - but I like the idea I can take a non state of the art P4 laptop and run an entire backup system on it for months without a hitch. I did that when I was webcasting and I was displaced by lack of data lines for the webstation. The laptop with automation, an Optimod 6200 DAB and an e-Machine's streamer sat in a closet with a DSL modem for almost 7 months and I rarely touched it - and never had to reboot any of it!
 
Bill DeFelice said:
Traffic Light was a traffic scheduling system that supports StationPlaylist and I believe there are a few others as well. External switching can be accomplished if you have a native (on-board) parallel port although I think there are one or two aftermarket products that are compatible with SPL switching.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried this, but I think you can get it to output strings over a serial port using the break notes. If so, that would enable control of a Broadcast Tools type switcher.
 
ChiefOperator said:
It would be nice if SPL released a "Station Playlist Plus" that had a few more features, a better GUI, and multiple players. I'll bet there would be interest in such a release.
Click to expand...
Major upgrade is reportedly a couple or 3 months away. Not a lot of hype as to what all it will entail, but it's supposed to be far more than an incremental upgrade.
 
I use Zara Radio, I'd say its pretty great! It does Have Voice Tracking, though I've never used it.

I've run it non-stop for months on end without problem.
I'd say its rock solid.
 
Bill DeFelice said:
.... External switching can be accomplished if you have a native (on-board) parallel port although I think there are one or two aftermarket products that are compatible with SPL switching.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what we do. Works fine on the scheduler, but there's no way to assign those functions to a button so that the switcher can be manually operated. I've asked Ross about it, before.

Bill DeFelice said:
The third one I don't understand. I've scheduled a multitude of non-time-specfic events to play consecutively and they worked fine. I think I don't fully understand the context of what you're explaining as the desired result.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't want to hijack this thread into a SPL forum. Basically, we play a legal ID as a timed break note, followed by a program, also as a timed break note. The shows run 25 to 28 minutes and are followed by a local announcement, then music. Since we don't want to clip the end of the shows, we can't use a timed breaknote for the announcement, so it's scheduled as a regular break. Thus, the scheduler frequently (though not always) plays a song, or songs, followed by the announcements.
 
Kmagrill said:
I've seen some folks talk well of Zara recently. Has anyone compared Zara to Playlist and others? If so, which was selected and why?
Click to expand...
I run a commercial station (FM Class A) that is running Zara Studio, the pay version of Zara. It has been great. It is super stable, and I've been able to make it do things it isn't supposed to do. The best news is it is very user friendly.

I downloaded the demo version of Station Playlist, and it just didn't relate to me. Maybe that is a "Right Brain" vs. "Left Brain" issue. The bottom line is whatever works for you is an ideal automation system. Zara Studio is one of the many choices, and not a bad one.
 
Kmagrill said:
Yes, that's what we do. Works fine on the scheduler, but there's no way to assign those functions to a button so that the switcher can be manually operated. I've asked Ross about it, before.
Click to expand...
If you are using a Broadcast Tools Audio Switcher; they offer a free program called Netswitch, which is a simple interface for manual switching. I agree that having function buttions within StationPlaylist would be the ideal way to do it; however, Netswitch will do basically the same thing until Ross adds the functionality. Come to think of it, if you own a different brand of switcher, you still might want to try using Netswitch with it.

I too, put my vote in for StationPlaylist. I spent a number of years as a support tech at one of the large system manufacturers and based on those experiences, I have to say that in it's class, SPL is one of the best systems I've worked with. I'm also amazed by the quality of the support. I've run it on my internet station for almost 2 years now. Since the station has a fast paced Top-40 presentation, I've asked a lot from it and it's delivered. Downtime has been minimal and typically due to aging computer hardware. I've also weighed in with Ross on the VoiceTracking functionality and he's led me to believe that improvements are on their radar. As far as using it on full power, commercial operations, especially stations running music on hard drive, it definitely can be a viable system.
 
It's funny how people keep "discovering" StationPlaylist :) I used it to run an FM broadcast station for three years and it did not miss a beat in all of that time. I've often commented about how underrated it is as a piece of genuine broadcast software as opposed to the "hobbyist" tag it seems to get all of the time, but for the price it is unbeaten.
 
Casting my vote for Zara and also for Direttore, two very fine and FREE pieces of software.
 
Ultanium said:
Casting my vote for Zara and also for Direttore, two very fine and FREE pieces of software.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried Direttore, but I run a commercial station with Zara Studio (the paid version). I've been able to make it do a lot of things it isn't supposed to do. I'm more than happy.

I also mess around with the free version for non critical applications, like our remote broadcast trailer, and even my church's sound system. There isn't much to not like.
 
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