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I have spent part of today at a site which uses all of the above
programs.<br>
A change of mains power service should be more reliable.<br>
Recent conversations here prompted this review.<br>
<br>
We have 2 machines running Darkice & Icecast2 each connected to
a fibre service.<br>
Darkice is set to provide a high grade aac+ stream for 3 broadcast
sites, a rebroadcast / logger [256b] mp3 local recording, and a
skinny [56b] mp3 'website' stream. You can shape the mp3 audio with
lowpass an highpass options. <br>
We have experimented with various formats and have gone with what
the majority of players will handle.<br>
Everything runs at 48000 which is the native sampling rate of the on
board sound cards. One less resampling process saves time and
processor capacity. <br>
That's 2 Fibre cables in to the site, and 2 ISP's.<br>
One or other can fail, and they do, There was once a short period
when both were out. <br>
We feed 3 broadcast sites and one IP relay site, which runs
Icecast2. The relay site is a paid service provider and allows 200
connections.<br>
The relay site 'pulls' the audio from the fixed IP at the studio. It
is configured and maintained by the service provider.<br>
This in turn feeds several relay services, some of them 'free', and
a website player. I have no idea what the external links use, but
everything works.<br>
There are more links than we know about as some just seem to add us
to a list. We have a 'popular' programme! I note some of the relay
sites resample our audio. <br>
The original installation was ADSL and the uplink could not manage 4
clients because ADSL uplinks are really low grade. <br>
In fact we think the ISP's were controlling the bandwidth more than
they would admit.<br>
We used one upload to an IP relay site. Now we have fibre the relay
transmitters connect direct. <br>
<br>
Each darkice machine has a logger which is a script running as an
hourly cron job. We use a high sample rate because a number of the
live programmes get rebroadcast. The playout machine is limited to
wav and mp3.<br>
<br>
We use BUTT in a laptop connected to a mobile phone as a hotspot
for OB's [Remotes] and the G3 uplink is generally good. We are
fortunate that the cellular coverage here is mostly very good and
very few users occupy the uplink. We have used local ADSL and Fibre.
If we have an event where there will be a huge number of people live
streaming from their smartphones, which tends to overload the
network we make sure we have a non cellular circuit.<br>
<br>
BUTT feeds one of the studio Icecast2 servers and comes up in the
studio on a second computer running Chrome. Audio plays direct into
the desk from the #2 computer soundcard.<br>
<br>
BUTT is simple, works in windows, and its easy to adjust the bit
rate to suit the link. It works better with a bit of headroom. Keep
the levels down! Avoid processing. Sample as high as possible. <br>
<br>
The big advantage of this setup is the cost. The darkice/icecast2
machines are old ex lease junk computers we get for next to nothing.
Once configured they run with no screen keyboard or mouse. The HP
ones have better power supplies. OS and software is free. They
reboot and run <br>
<br>
BUTT runs on Windows which the frontline are comfortable with.
Everyone has a laptop. <br>
<br>
It does not matter what IP BUTT has, it sends to the fixed IP at the
studio on port [ 8000 ] with a mount like /liveBroadcast.mp3 <br>
<br>
We get around crossovers by arranging presentation to accomodate the
audio delay. <br>
<br>
Darkice handles multiple encoding with ease.<br>
Icecast2 does the transportation<br>
BUTT is the simple remote origination solution.<br>
<br>
<br>
regards<br>
<br>
Robert<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<b>Raupo Radio</b> <br>
64 Warner Park Avenue <br>
<br>
Laingholm <br>
<br>
Auckland 0604<br>
<br>
09 8176358<br>
<br>
0221693124<br>
<br>
06 650 6087<br>
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