BE A DJ ON ACB RADIO INTERACTIVE 

 

Thanks for your interest in hosting a show on ACB Radio Interactive. You're considering joining a great team that has produced many hours of quality broadcasting, and we're glad you are thinking of joining us.

 

This page offers comprehensive background information and technical documentation on using the technology required to host a live show on ACB Radio Interactive. We want to stress that we are eager to get people involved with this project and have a great time broadcasting to a world wide audience. But we also need to say that doing this requires computer competence and an ability to follow clear instructions. Other documentation in Winamp's basic use is available, and if you will be using Winamp as your broadcast tool, you need to be thoroughly familiar with Winamp's Playlist Editor.

 

Many of our broadcasters are also using the commercial Otsjuke software, which offers wonderful functionality including easy playlist searching and dynamic compression. Winamp can do almost as well with the right plug-ins, and Winamp is free. It's really your choice and both work well.

 

while we realise you'll want to get straight into this, there is no hurry. Read this material right through, then read it a second time, this time actually performing the recommended steps.

 

This Documentation is contained on one page in case you wish to save it for easy reference. Here are some links to the key headings in the Tutorial in case you wish to skip directly to specific sections.

 

What is ACB Radio Interactive?

Are there Guidelines for Programming and Conduct on ACB Radio Interactive?

What Equipment do I Need?

Getting Ready to Test through Live365

Configuring the Shoutcast Plug-in 

Selecting the Bandwidth for your Stream

 Connecting to your Server

 Broadcasting Content

 Making Announcements

Using the Shoutcast Advanced Controls

Can I use Otsjuke to Broadcast with ACB Radio interactive?

Taking Requests

So How do I Ask for a Slot on ACB Radio Interactive?

 

 

 

What is ACB Radio Interactive?

 

ACB Radio Interactive is part of the ACB Radio family of streams. It gives blind and vision impaired people a chance to host their own live music radio show from the comfort of their own home or office using freely available software. Djs broadcast to a global audience, who can tune in with RealPlayer, Winamp, and many other freely available MP3 players for numerous platforms.

 

At this time, ACB Radio Interactive does not broadcast 24 hours a day. But when it's on, it's always live. 

 

People are invited to interact with ACB Radio interactive djs by e-mailing them at request@acbradio.org. The on-air DJ clears this mailbox during their broadcast, and can play requests or dedications. Some broadcasters also interact with their audience using MSN Messenger, which is popular with our listeners.

 

Technology available exclusively to ACB Radio allows us to serve a broad band stream and a modem stream at the same time. This is all achieved at ACB Radio's server facilities, so a broadcaster only needs to feed one stream to us. Modem users are still very welcome to broadcast with us.

 

There is no restriction on the type of music played on ACB Radio Interactive. The music will vary depending on the DJ currently on the air. And the  very few restrictions we impose, described in a little more detail below, reflect politeness and common sense given our very diverse international audience.

 

People who wish to be DJs on ACB Radio Interactive must make a regular commitment of one hour or more a week. Repeated failure to keep this commitment without due notice and a good reason will result in a rescinding of the invitation to broadcast, since it reflects on the rest of the team if people don't turn up to do their show.

 

Are there Guidelines for Programming and Conduct on ACB Radio Interactive?

 

Yes. These are clearly set out when you are offered a slot, but here is a summary. Nothing here is at all onerous. ACB Radio Interactive is a music station. You may choose to specialise in a certain type of music, such as jazz, classical, rock etc, or if you have a large MP3 collection, you may want to offer a mixed bag, and let listeners influence the music by having them e-mail requests to you.

Here are the few simple rules you must follow.

1. Regular voice breaks. The success of ACB Radio Interactive is the communication between DJs and listeners, and the close relationship arising from that style of radio. This is not a station for setting your Winamp going and playing MP3 after MP3.

2. No Profanity in voice breaks, and discretion is advised when playing music with blatant profanity. Our audience varies widely and includes eager and impressionable students in schools for the blind. We want to foster an environment where people of all ages and backgrounds can feel safe listening to ACB Radio.

3. Punctuality. Having been assigned a slot on ACB Radio Interactive, you are expected to start and finish that slot when the schedule says you will. If you do not, you let the listeners down.

4. Due Notice of Absence. From time to time, there will be occasions when you are not able to do your slot. In order for others to cover for you, we need as much notice of your absence as possible.

 

What Equipment do I need?

 

You'll need the latest version of Winamp, always available from the download section of the ACB Radio site. While most people use Winamp for listening, it can also act as your Internet radio transmitter to get you on the air. It will allow you to broadcast wave, MP3 and even live content over the Internet.

 

You need the Shoutcast DSP plug-in for Winamp. This is the link between your radio studio and your transmitter as it were. ACB Radio Interactive recommends the earlier version that we have on our site, because the newer one does not allow you to archive your broadcasts. This plug-in comes as a self extracting executable file. Be sure to read the readme.txt file it contains, and make sure the file that ends in a .DLL extension is placed in your Winamp plug-ins directory. The default for this is c:\program files\winamp\plugins.

 

You will need an MP3 codec that encodes what you broadcast into the MP3 format. Programmes like Bladeenc, the Xing Encoder, or indeed the majority of commonly used encoders do not install their codecs into the Windows Audio Compression Manager to be made available to other applications, so they will not work. A free codec that will do the job nicely is available from Microsoft as the Windows Media Tools. Once downloaded, simply run this .exe file to install it. You will probably have to restart your machine when the installation is complete.

 

ACB Radio Interactive djs interact with their audience, so you will need to have the facility to make live announcements. This means you must have a microphone connected to your sound card. If you have a hardware synthesiser, you may like to use the advanced features of the Shoutcast DSP Plug-in. If you only have a software synthesiser such as Eloquence or Dectalk Access 32, or you want to keep things simple, you will want to download the Line Recording Plug-in for Winamp.  This is a dll file which should be placed in your Winamp plug-ins folder, normally c:\program files\winamp\plugins.

 

To use this plug-in, you need to put the command

linerec://

in your playlist each time you wish to speak. You do this by using the control+l, open location dialogue. Note that with this method, you are unable to talk while music is playing. Otsjuke works better for those who only have software speech and one sound card, and we will come to this later in this document.

 

We recommend that people download some audio compression software to give their broadcast that professional, punchy sound. One such programme that is known to be compatible with Shoutcast is Audiostocker.

 

Getting Ready to Test

 

Before broadcasting on ACB Radio Interactive, you will be expected to be able to assure us that you have successfully broadcast live using the Shoutcast technology. The best way to do this is to obtain a server from Live365.com.  Simply visit the site, sign up as a member, and wait for them to e-mail you a confirmation message. Then complete the netcast application. In the form, you will need to select the radio button that tells Live365 that you want to broadcast live. The instant you've completed the form, you can go to the Broadcast tools, choose the button called "other tools" and there you will find the IP address and port number of your very own Shoutcast server. Save this web page or somehow make a note of this information. Along with the password you choose, it is absolutely essential that you have this information at hand.

 

Note that Live365 now charges a fee for new personal broadcasters. If this is a genuine problem, please contact us, and we may be able to help provide limited resources for you to test.

 

Configuring the Shoutcast Plug-in

 

Now that you are ready to broadcast, you need to tell Winamp about where the server is that it must broadcast to, provide password details, and a bit of information about what you intend to broadcast.

 

Run Winamp, and press control+P to bring up the Winamp preferences. You are presented with a treeview. Use the arrow keys until you hear "plug-ins". If this branch of the tree is closed, press the right-arrow key to open it, then arrow down to DSP/effect. Tab over to a list of plug-ins, and arrow down the list until you find the Nullsoft Shoutcast Plug-in. If you have downloaded Audiostocker, and you want to have compression on your stream, you will instead need to select Audiostocker/Shoutcast Muxer plug-in. At this stage, you can close the preferences window in Winamp by tabbing to the close button.

 

To bring up the Shoutcast plug-in window, you will need to access your system tray. In newer versions of JAWS for Windows, this is done by pressing insert+F11. In Windoweyes, the hotkey is insert+S. You should find the Shoutcast DSP Plug-in in the list. You will need to choose the function to left click on this icon.

 

You should now be able to use alt+tab to give focus to the Shoutcast DSP plug-in window. There are two buttons called "edit", which you can tab to. Press the space bar when you get to the first edit button, and you will be placed in a dialogue box to configure the plug-in.

 

You must provide the correct server address, port number, and password. Use your password for the Live365 account, as well as the server address and port number they gave you. 

 

If you want your server to be listed in the Live365 Directory, then make sure that the "list on Shoutcast.com" checkbox is checked. You may want to leave it unchecked if you are doing some initial private testing. People can still access your broadcast if the "list on Shoutcast.com" checkbox is unchecked, but they will need to be given the information about where to find your server through some other means than the Live365 Directory.

 

Now it's time to describe your station. We will provide guidelines on what to put here when you are confirmed as a DJ on ACB Radio Interactive. In the mean time, you've got to make your own description for this test server attractive and enticing, because there are a lot of Live365 servers out there, and listeners will be looking for a reason to give yours a try. 

 

The next edit box allows you to specify the genres of content you will be broadcasting. This determines under what sections you will be listed in the Live365 Directory. Don't go overboard with too many genres, because if a listener finds you in a category that you don't really cater too, chances are you'll have lost that listener for good. Separate the genres with commas. You can get the full list of genres by looking at the genre list on the Live365 site. Common ones are 70s, 80s, 90s, comedy, country, techno, talk, classical, rap, r&b, dance.

 

You'll also find an edit box that lets you type in a URL for your Shoutcast station's web site. When you have a URL in this field, the description of your Shoutcast station becomes a link in the directory. When a user clicks on this link, a new browser window opens and the user is taken to this URL.

 

Make sure you press the OK button to save the changes.

 

Selecting the Bandwidth for your Stream

 

You now need to consider the bandwidth for your stream, both for your testing and for your programme on ACB Radio Interactive. Because of our exclusive dual stream technology, the only thing that will determine this choice is how fast you can upload to your server. However, the Windows Media Tools will only let you broadcast at a bit rate of 56K, which gives quite nice sounding stereo for broadband users.

 

Whatever bit rate you choose, always make sure that the sampling rate is a multiple of 11025, IE it should always be 11025, 22050 or 44100. If you fail to abide by this crucial rule, your stream will sound dreadful on some sound cards.

 

If you are uploading to a server using a modem, you will need to be sure that you can maintain a constant throughput to handle the stream type you select. A good way of determining this is to listen to your Winamp with the advanced controls turned off as you send to the server. If you hear a lot of stopping and starting, it is because Winamp is pausing to let the connection catch up, and you need to lower the bandwidth. 

 

Modem broadcasters will also need to decide whether they want to broadcast in stereo or mono. If you go stereo, the quality won't be as good. For instance, a 16K stereo file is two 8 K mono streams, so it sounds absolutely dreadful. My research indicates that most people prefer a good quality mono feed over a poorer quality stereo one.

 

Now that you've made that momentous decision, tab to the second edit button and press the space bar. Another dialogue pops up. There is no need to change either the name or format categories. Tab to the list of format types and arrow through them until you find the one you want, then press the OK button. Remember, always make sure the sampling rate is a multiple of 11025.

 

Connecting to your Server

 

Now that you've configured everything, it's time to try connecting. Tab to the connect button and press the space bar. By reading your status line, you should be able to read a disconnect button, and, if you are sending data to the server, the number of bytes sent will change regularly. You will want to return to Winamp to play your files. You can safely close the Shoutcast DSP Plug-in window with alt+F4, and return to it at any time by accessing it from the system tray in the manner described earlier.

 

Broadcasting Content

 

Once you have connected to your Shoutcast server, one would assume you want to broadcast something. Simply by playing MP3, Wave or Windows Media files in Winamp, you are broadcasting what you're playing to the Internet. This means that you can put together a playlist of files and let Winamp broadcast them to the world. A word of caution. Although Winamp can now play audio CDs, simply playing them in Winamp doesn't broadcast them in the same way that playing MP3, wave or Windows Media broadcasts those files. See below for information on Shoutcasting from sources such as CDs and microphones.

 

When you are broadcasting in this state, IE without the advanced controls turned on, Winamp is sending a direct feed of the MP3 file to the server, so when you are playing a file your software speech will not be heard over the air.

 

Winanp can broadcast anything that comes through your sound card, much like the Real Producer or Windows Media Encoders. This is how you can make announcements, broadcast CDs, radio stations etc. To stream audio from your sound card, make sure you're connected to your server. Press Control-L to open the Play Location dialog box and type "linerec://". Winamp will then display the message LINE RECORDING, which means that it is now relaying the audio from your sound card.

It will save you a whole lot of grief if you make sure that your sound card is configured correctly before you attempt anything using the linerec plug-in. To do this, try recording from the source you intend to broadcast using a sound editor such as Sound Recorder or something more sophisticated. You may need to set the levels and make selections in the Windows 9x Volume Control. Make sure that the source you want to record and later broadcast from is selected, and that the level is turned up.

Making Announcements

 

MP3 after MP3 soon gets boring for you and your listeners. Inevitably, you'll want to add that personal touch on your station by making announcements. ACB Radio Interactive djs are expected to make regular announcements. There are two methods you can use. One is to select the line recording plug-in whenever you want to talk and then cut back to your playlist, the second is more complex but allows you to talk over the top of songs to give you that really professional sound.

 

As mentioned previously, all you need to do to make a live announcement is to press control+L and type "linerec://". You can add this command to a playlist if you want. That means that after making your announcement, you can just press B to skip to the next track. This will stop broadcasting your microphone and return to the list of MP3 files.