We’re in the process of a studio rebuild and it’s taking much longer than expected. The studio only affects the live show, all programming is still running so keep on listening! 
I’m hoping to be back on-air next Friday night, however with the Olympics running I’ll let the regular listeners chime in. Olympics or live show?
Again – Regular Programming is not affected by the studio rebuild. We’re still on-air just not with the live show.
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Just as a follow up:
I need to apparently clarify what’s going on, this only involves the live show.
Four comments have been made and only one of them is worth posting up. It’s actually kind of disappointing to have the larger portion of comments be negative.
I understand that some of you only tune in to the live show and I appreciate each listener greatly, but I ask that you be patient while we do these changes.
The basic rebuild of the station follows:
- Switch all involved computers to Linux (Ubuntu 8.04 specifically).
- Rewrite sound drivers to take advantage of all available inputs. This is necessary to avoid having to buy a $3000 Audio Science sound card.
- Modify current open source Radio Automation software to fully take advantage of modifications made in step 2.
- Return to live show for testing.
- Fix any bugs found in step 4.
- Repeat steps 4 & 5 until bug free.
At present I have roughly 49 hours involved in the coding alone and I’m barely half way through step 3.
I’ll post more sometime over the weekend. Right now my personal excitement balloon for this project has been severely deflated by a couple comments and I’m personally wondering why I’m even doing this. SaGR is a hobby, it’s not a business.
I’m no sports fan. I won’t be watching the Olympics. At least not until chicks wrestling in mud becomes an Olympic sport.
Heya Rick,
Honesty is the best policy, right…?
The longer you wait, the less likely your listeners are to return. Out of the last 10 scheduled show dates, you guys have done what… 2 shows…? And of the 8 missed shows, only what… 1… was pre-announced? It’s a disappointment to your listeners when they are told “there will be a show” and when they show up expecting a show instead find a farm report or old time radio.
I’d say get back on the air as soon as possible at the risk of having audience leave and never return. And I’d also make sure your friends who plug your show don’t make fools of themselves when they plug your show based on information you provide, subsequently knew was wrong, and didn’t make an effort to relay to the people giving the plugs.
I’m just saying…
Mike
Rick, let the negative stuff slide off your back.
I’ll always support what you do. If it’s not right in your mind then you do what has to be done to get it right. I don’t catch the live show very much so it’s no big deal for me.
Will the new software be what makes the whole station work once it’s done? I don’t know how you make it all work in the first place so sorry if it’s a stupid question. All I care about is that you keep it all running in the long run!
Keep on trucking bro!
Will
Thanks Will & Coaster for the comments.
Will – I know what you’re saying. I’ve been keeping it (the live show) running with “tape and bubble gum” as Dayna would say for a few months now and it’s gotten where it’s affected the whole show quality. It finally got to where I couldn’t take it any more so I had to do something.
Some other things I didn’t mention as far as the plans is integration of Skype API and the Speex protocol into the system to simplify our ability to take calls during the show.
Listener interaction has always been something that’s important to me and pretty much for the last month the direct comments have been negative so this showed me the need to redo the system.
To answer your question, once it’s running reliably yes it will power the entire station including the daily programming. Until such a time that I’m comfortable with it’s stability it’ll only run the live show.
A lot of internet stations are happy with kludged tools or $2000 automation systems, I can’t afford the latter and the first just serves to piss me off so I’d rather do it right from the get go.
The first year and a half of the live show were great and the software we used ran bug free. The last 4 months have been fraught with bugs in the automation software, audio processing plugins and sound card drivers. This is why I’m porting it all to Linux, bugs are rapidly fixed, “stuff” just works, and it’s free for everyone to use.
Thanks for your support and kind words. SaGR would’ve been gone a long time ago if it hadn’t been for your donations in the past Will!
Which reminds me to again thank Coaster and Steve for their donations in the last couple months. It’s been out of my pocket for the last 3 months so the financial offset is greatly appreciated!
This morning I tested remote control of the studio and it worked perfect!
You can do it via a web browser (queue music, schedule shows and etc) or via a Linux client that offers more control including voice via Speex. In theory with the Linux client you can do full remotes and include remote audio. Remote shows, interviews and etc. come to mind.
So now all I have to do is get audio working properly. I started looking more into JACKd last night and it seems to answer a lot of the issues and offers more flexibility than ALSA.