End of an Era
Radio has been in my life a very long time now. It’s almost 20 years since I broadcast to the web with a friend, a cheap microphone and a chat channel egging us on....
Tagged: audio
Compression, Loudness and Coverage – A Trade Off
It was always touted as the thing you wanted to be – the loudest on the dial. It was even said on occasion that it could help improve your coverage in rough patches. This...
Default Passwords Strike Again – This Time On Air
Breaking into broadcast transmissions isn’t anything new. We can go back to 1977 and the interruption of Southern Television, replacing the audio feed with some “interesting” content. Doing similar nowadays, where digital studio to...
Generating FM MPX on a Raspberry Pi 3
It’s been possible to turn your Raspberry Pi into a little FM transmitter for quite a while now. Download the right software, attach a wire to the GPIO pin in and you’re broadcasting a...
SIP-ing Through the Firewall
Here’s an odd puzzle for you. Fire up a SIP soft-phone and connect it to an external provider. Dial a number and you can make a call successfully. Doesn’t sound particularly unusual. Now fire...
Getting the Right Sound
You’ve just gone out and bought a shiny new audio processor for your radio station. It may have every feature under the sun, but you’ll still need the same techniques and knowledge used on...
OpenSIPs in the DMZ
You’ve got your brand new broadcast IP codec. A pair of them really, one inside the network and the other outside. How do you make them talk to each other? Admittedly, it could be...
IP for Serial Controlled Audio Switches
It’s not often you talk about systems from the DOS era, especially now that we’re in 2015. However, the DCS playout system used to be shipped with a serial controlled audio router. The router...
SIP Audio Codecs – Are They the Future?
In the past, if you wanted broadcast quality audio on an OB, you had to book and ISDN months in advance at a fairly non-negligible cost. Even more costly was broadcasts really remote locations...
Logging Output with LiquidSoap
In ye olden days, logging of station output used to occasionally involve a stack of VCRs, long play tapes and presenters tasked with swapping out tapes. Nowadays, everything is done on a computer. It...