Older Radio Station Upgrade

[Sphelps]

I am looking you upgrade my radio station to use Shoutcast or an Icecast service and use auto DJ to help me run the system(unless anyone can convince me otherwise)
But if I get a hosting service to run the system how can I add an Emergency Broadcast system over the radio if there is an emergency. Because I have my radio on the airways to so it has to have this.

If anyone has some tips for me please let me know.

Thanks

 

[Support]

Hi Sphelps,

Thanks for your post and interest in our hosting services.

Please could you explain some more about your current set up and what you mean exactly by an emergency broadcast system?

 

[Sphelps]

We have a radio station that uses an FM band and we also want to stream the music over the internet.
The only issue is, the fcc has to have the Emergency Broadcast system hooked to the system.
I am wondering if we can just use auto DJ to run the station and when there is an Emergency Broadcast the system will pick it up and play that instead of music.

Does the Auto DJ have a mount point that if the system hears a sound from that mount point it will play it, or will the music not play if the mount point is connected all the time.

 

[Support]

Thanks for clarifying.

Yes both Shoutcast and Icecast servers let you override the AutoDJ stream with a live source connecting on a mount point.

Unfortunately though this cannot be triggered by a sound, the live broadcast would need to be manually connected to the server. Then once this disconnects the stream automatically falls back to the AutoDJ.

 

[boxfrank]

The easiest way to do it, is this one:

Feed your internet-radio-stream GENERALLY using a terrestrial FM-radio-receiver and an audio cable to your computer line-in.

Both radios (terrestrial & internet) have THE SAME program now!

If Emergency-Broadcast-System uses your terrestrial FM-frequency, it uses your internet-stream too!

 

[General Lighting]

At the two community radio stations in my area (Suffolk, England) I help out with we do exactly what boxfrank suggests (they have the conventional studio setup, and automation on a local server (sourcefabric Airtime / Libretime (forked 100% free version) for Ipswich and Rivendell at Felixstowe) that plays into the studio mixer.

We do not have EBS here in Britain, but public announcements are added into the playout along with jingles and adverts (recently there have been many from the NHS about Covid-19 precautions and how to get tested). And we have to be very careful all the correct content goes out at the correct time and there are no big gaps of dead air, to keep Ofcom (our Communications Ministry, equivalent to the FCC) happy!

You can also use a separate, unpublished stream as an "uplink" to allow DJ's to stream from home (Airtime/Libretime can handle the changeover for this). This arrangement has been very useful during the last year with the studio partly locked down and many presenters broadcasting from home as were able to.

Although the Suffolk stations now run their own streaming/uplink servers, for some months they were both being streamed via internet-Radio.com (bear in mind though they didn't use the auto-DJ of the Centovacast, that was all done via the servers in the studio)