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Since you can get an EVDO wireless card for your computer for about $60 per month, it makes me think that this may be the easy, cheap and decent sounding way to do remotes, by streaming from your laptop computer. You can get a Samson USB mic for about $50, which actually works fairly well. Of course, you could just plug in an analog mic or external mixer. The missing link (and it must exist) is the streaming software. It seems like you could use something like Shoutcast to do the job. Before I spend a lot of time researching this, has someone else already "been there - done that?" Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.
I'm just looking for a simple solution for someone who has a very small budget.
Since you can get an EVDO wireless card for your computer for about $60 per month, it makes me think that this may be the easy, cheap and decent sounding way to do remotes, by streaming from your laptop computer. You can get a Samson USB mic for about $50, which actually works fairly well. Of course, you could just plug in an analog mic or external mixer. The missing link (and it must exist) is the streaming software. It seems like you could use something like Shoutcast to do the job. Before I spend a lot of time researching this, has someone else already "been there - done that?" Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.
I'm just looking for a simple solution for someone who has a very small budget.
You could use shoutcast or even windows media encoder; both of which are free. The biggest worry with doing "live" remotes this way is latency and possible buffering stalls and issues, depending on your connection - which can vary from site to site, or even hour to hour at the same location.
Take a look at the products from TieLine. They have developed a stand alone system just for this purpose. The remote gear appears to be smaller than a laptop, and you don't have to mess with a lot of technical issues to get it working.
You could also have a look at Audio TX, witch is a low latency ip based isdn codec. It supports two way communication (handy for live reports), various bitrates en codecs. But to get it working good you have to set up a VPN to the studio first.
And is this a "remote" or a production of the live broadcast of a high school sporting event?
WME works well. Tieline has an okay product, comrex as alwys is the best but why spend 4k when a cheap laptop is $400.
Audition (or Cool Edit) on the laptop. Samson Mic, $50 and sounds incredible, built in software plugs into the usb port.
Record the interview in Audition, gotomypc it to the station on air computer placing it in a break in the satellite system or in the music list on an automated system.
Supplement with pre-recorded liners about talent being at the new massage parlor at 5 e main st.
"Live" remotes are a thing of the past with bean counters and employee expenses.
And what is a "live" remote???
"Live" remote talent is a live remote. The business doesn't care how it works as long as a live body is there and their business gets on the radio.
Do you really want to place talent on the air after every break to run off your listeners anyway?
Is there a point in taking all the equipment to a remote site when you have all the music (previously scheduled) on a hard drive at the station.
In this day there is no point in degrading your music by encoding and decoding from a remote site. Simple is best. Bring the speakers and a receiver with your laptop. Leave everything else at the station.
We already record stuff in a laptop and email it back to the station and use remote control software to insert it into automation immediately. It works quite well and gives us the ability to do a quick edit before sending it, which can result in a more professional sound on the air. That part is easy.
What I'm thinking about is live sports events. We do a lot of them during the school season. It would be hard to email those back to the station. Currently we use POTS for these things. With some EQ and compression, they usually sound passable, but especially on away games, it is difficult to get a dedicated phone line. You are pretty well stuck with whatever the school can provide. We're noticing an increased use of VOIP phone systems in schools. These can have sample rates that conflict with other codecs used in the station, resulting in some very ugly sounding remotes, even worse than a cell phone.
That's why I'm interested in trying alternate means. I guess I'll have an adventure setting up Shoutcast and see what happens, but first, I'll try some of the other suggestions. It would be nice to have a pair of the Tie Line or Comrex boxes, but right now they are beyond our limited budget.
Back in the mid 80's, a jock for a CHR station did some live remotes from a new McDonald's located just down the street from me. Not sure what equipment was used, but the music and spots were handled by a jock back at the studio.
Then there was that day in May we did live remotes from a station related event. Unfortunately we had to use a POTS system for that, because Cingular discontinued their circut switched data system which rendured our TieLine GSM codec useless.
That's why I'm interested in trying alternate means. I guess I'll have an adventure setting up Shoutcast and see what happens, but first, I'll try some of the other suggestions. It would be nice to have a pair of the Tie Line or Comrex boxes, but right now they are beyond our limited budget.
That's why I asked about the type of remote. Are You using go to my pc or another to send the breaks back now? How does it work?
For live events like concerts stations havebeen using WME which if you eliminate the video encoding and reduce the bitrate has low latency. For a ballgame this is great at a lower bitrate and MUCH better than any codec over POTS.
We have a hotline set we still use. This weekend we have a crew at Icthus the CCM music festival. We used the comrex for one show where they did many interviews and wanted to be "live" for 2 hours on two days of the festival.
We wanted to use WME but didn't have a DSL option.
Everything else was to be and is sent back via email because they are interviews.
DJB has a sports program that integrates his streaming.
Whatever you end up with let us know. All of our area high schools have gone to the IP phones. The years of showingup and using a spare line somewhere are going or gone.
We have core high schools that have dedicated lines. Three schools do not allow a station to install lines! Don't want the hassle. Afraid the phone company will mess something up. Ma Bell or ATT or thier name this week doesn't want the liability of installing a long line within a school unless you have service now and it is active or was active. At ourcore schools this is the case.
The schools we visit from time to time ahve no regular broadcasts and this is the no phone dmz.
We use celljack at these locations. Works okay but again sounds like what it is.
If someone else is doing something amazing with audio let us all know.
I can’t speak for every public school district, but many of them in this area have digital PBX phone lines. To use the Comrex Vector / Matrix system on those, you must have a line on the system that has been converted to a standard POTS line. Failure to do that can fry the Comrex gear.
This type of phone system is what we have in the Mesquite Schools, and although Comrex said you should not use their equipment on any type of PBX phone system, we were able to do so for 3 or 4 years. That all changed when a software upgrade to the PBX system was installed. Now the Comrex gear has major problems staying connected. An outside line installed on the studio end, partially solves the problem. But the remote end must also be on a true POTS line, or else connection problems may still occur.
We had a true POTS line service at both ends, when we did two broadcasts from Round Rock, Texas for the class 4A baseball state semi final and state championship games. The semi-final was on Friday, June 8th, and we were able to maintain a solid 4 hour connection with the Comrex gear. The state championship game was on the following Saturday evening, and although our sports guys were in the exact same booth using the exact same POTS line, we had major connection issues through most of the broadcast. I don’t think anyone really knows why this happened.
As far as audio quality goes, the Comrex Vector / Matrix system is extremely good! If you are able to maintain a connection rate of around 33,000 baud, you can get up to 15 kHz frequency response audio. But even 21,600 and 19,600 baud rates are still very acceptable.
There is virtually no delay with this setup (Comrex states the delay is under 100 ms), and we have done many live sportscasts with it over the years. We send mix-minus audio from the studio, so our sports guys can hear the programming from the studio during breaks; I can also give them cues for such things as a pause for legal station ID, while they are on the air.
As far as the TieLine GSM gear goes, it had a few drawbacks, but still provided somewhat decent quality audio that was still better than a POTS analog b-cast. The unfortunate circumstance is Cingular and T-Mobile discontinuing Circuit Switched Data on their cell phone services. CSD was the technology TieLine and Comrex both built wireless cell Codecs from, and now that CSD has gone bye-bye, none of those Codecs will work.
Unfortunately we’ve had to return to analog POTS broadcasts this past year, due to the unforeseen circumstances. I understand we will be exploring the VOIP type system this summer.
We use "Go To My PC." So far, I like it. It seems to be worth the monthly charge, simply because "It Works." Other things we've tried like Remote Desktop, PC Anywhere and VNC have given us problems. VNC is great in your own private network, but if you give it a public IP address, you will regret it. YMMV.
We used to be able to get an ISDN line at the station, but that has been discontinued thanks to "The New AT&T." Now our only alternatives are POTS or the Public Internet. That's why I'm interested in streaming directly from a computer. We currently stream our audio through a second party server. The latency is about 3 minutes which would be unacceptable for this purpose. I'd hate to pay for a service to do this, when I'm sure I can do it myself. That's why I asked if somebody else has already figured out how to do this.
We use "Go To My PC." So far, I like it. It seems to be worth the monthly charge, simply because "It Works." Other things we've tried like Remote Desktop, PC Anywhere and VNC have given us problems. VNC is great in your own private network, but if you give it a public IP address, you will regret it. YMMV.
We used to be able to get an ISDN line at the station, but that has been discontinued thanks to "The New AT&T." Now our only alternatives are POTS or the Public Internet. That's why I'm interested in streaming directly from a computer. We currently stream our audio through a second party server. The latency is about 3 minutes which would be unacceptable for this purpose. I'd hate to pay for a service to do this, when I'm sure I can do it myself. That's why I asked if somebody else has already figured out how to do this.
We use exclusively Tieline. We have a pair of G-1's and a new pair of G-3's. The G-3's do Audio over IP. They work great.
We're playing with using them with a Sprint EVDO card and a Kyocera EVDO router.
It too works great. With the Tieline and KR-1 both running on 12 volts, We're golden in a car seat with a Cig lighter splitter and a few cables. No 110V or Phone needed.
Occasionally the KR-1 is a little cranky, and it's Wifi doesn't work, but it's not bad.
Of course you're pushing $7k worth of stuff. We already HAD the G-3's and and the Sprint card. We sprung for the KR-1 just for the occasional fill in. You really need a static IP at the station.
We use exclusively Tieline. We have a pair of G-1's and a new pair of G-3's. The G-3's do Audio over IP. They work great.
We're playing with using them with a Sprint EVDO card and a Kyocera EVDO router.
It too works great. With the Tieline and KR-1 both running on 12 volts, We're golden in a car seat with a Cig lighter splitter and a few cables. No 110V or Phone needed.
Occasionally the KR-1 is a little cranky, and it's Wifi doesn't work, but it's not bad.
Of course you're pushing $7k worth of stuff. We already HAD the G-3's and and the Sprint card. We sprung for the KR-1 just for the occasional fill in. You really need a static IP at the station.
We may end up going the Tie Line route, but for a very small station it's a fairly large investment. It just seems like there must a simpler, cheaper way. We already have an USB EVDO card from Alltel, which works amazingly well. We have several laptops, and even a Samson USB mic. We've never had a single complaint about the quality of our sportscasts via POTS. That's probably because the guys who do them are very good at their craft. Even so, I'm always looking for ways to make things better.
Using Simplecast, I can stream from a computer at the station (in Texas) to our web hosting company (which is in Florida) so people can listen on line. The hosting company distributes the stream from there to whoever wants to access it. It seems like, using a similar program, I ought to be able to stream from a laptop to a computer back at the station. I can give the receiving computer a Public IP address if that's what it takes. Unfortunately, I know just enough about streaming and networking to be dangerous.
Incidentally Robert, the three minutes delay I mentioned is the approximate time our web stream (that the public can access) lags behind the actual broadcast. That time varies a lot, depending on Internet traffic. I've seen it run as little as 30 seconds and as much as three minutes. Right now, it is about 1:30 behind as I type this and listen to our stream on the computer I'm using. It's no big deal for people listening on the Internet, but we could never use it for any remote purposes. Kinda makes you wonder where it is all that time, doesn't it? Can you say "Dead Air? Lots of dead air..."
As for streaming from a laptop, wouldn't the AudioTX and AudioPOTS software work? I believe the TX program streams over IP. The POTS, of course, over regular phone lines.
Is anyone using these programs? This may be a solution for those willing to pay for a good system without paying the higher price of a TieLine or Comrex system. I believe the AudioPOTS gives full-duplex audio to about 7kHz--for about $900.
I used AudioTX over mobile (UMTS/3G) Internet connection and it works well. It's much more professional and broadcast-friendly than solutions with streaming or VoIP. You can set the latency to very low, if you have a reliable connection. The best thing is that if the connection breaks, the software will reconnect in almost milliseconds so that the drop in audio is like a regular glitch - it doesn't feel like you lost connection, cause you practically didn't loose any audio. Even if it happened in the middle of the word, it will be intelligible. For broadcast, I like things that are fast and that you can rely on.
It supports only MPEG Layer II, Layer III and PCM (which means you can use it as uncompressed STL as well). No AAC I'm afraid or voice-optimized codecs. Another drawback - it costs almost $1000.
I think you can download a demo from their website and try it...
"We use "Go To My PC." So far, I like it. It seems to be worth the monthly charge, simply because "It Works." Other things we've tried like Remote Desktop, PC Anywhere and VNC have given us problems. VNC is great in your own private network, but if you give it a public IP address, you will regret it. YMMV."
Change the IP addy to something obscure to keep the idiots out of your VNC...
Back on the subject of H.S. football... I've been doing H.S. football for about a decade and a half. I've seen other broadcasters bring vectors, hotlines, tielines with GSM, blah blah blah to games I'm at with our crew. They all work to SOME degree, at some locations, some of the time. Sometimes all is great for them and then *POOF!* they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to get back on the air with the type of technology they brought. What I have used and continue to use is a UHF Marti. I bring two and have access to more than one frequency and tower with the station I do broadcasts for. People ask me why I don't switch to newer technologies. The truth is the Marti is more reliable, cleaner, and requires less scrambling around to consistantly get from point A to B. I don't have to worry about phone line issues or costs. I don't have to worry about some goofy cell company dumping me in the middle of a broadcast or cancelling my style of service rendering my box worthless. I'm on licensed equipment, so the only people I get to share the band with is other radio stations not every cell user in the area. Frequency coordination keeps all that straight. I'd much rather be in control my own stuff where I.can fix the problem. I can get to nearly everything that can go wierd on a Marti system. Try that with land-line at a school pressbox sometime or their internet connection, or worse.. GSM. IF I'm out of range of the Marti signal, which in my case is once every other year, I'm forced to use a Tieline and POTS. Luckily at that location we've got a dedicated POTS available. Many schools don't.
I'll be attempting a live music broadcast using EVDO and a laptop very soon so we'll see how that goes...
Best codec for quality is AAC+ and might even be what some of those newer POTS boxes use now, the only problem I'll run into is bandwidth. While EVDO boasts 1mbps (I've tested 800k download with a 90% signal) the upload is pretty bad, around 80kbps. I don't have full details about the event yet, and might be able to mooch internet from someone nearby (point to point Wifi with directional antennas?).
One of the biggest things I do is High School Football and I agree. When you are in range a UHF Marti works pretty well. My rig is pretty solid. I was able to buy an out of service Wolf Coach TV truck a few years ago. It came equipped with a 45' Will-Burt mast. A pair of Samco stacked Yagis on top the mast makes for good range.
Because our games make so much money we always try to have a main and hot backup feed. For home games and road games within range the Marti is the main and a cell phone is the backup. Road games we have a POTS line installed and use a Comrex Matrix with the cell phone as a backup.
I have been following this thread as we are looking at the Tieline EVDO setup. I have a pair of Tielines coming in to demo in July for another client. Can't wait to see how they work...
Testing123
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