Re: [linux-audio-user] IUPUI Student Radio Station should be based on Linux - Linux-audio-user

12 Mar 2005

Hi,

I am Systems Manager for a student radio station in the UK called SURGE 
- although it doesn't really answer your questions, I hope my little 
history is of use/interest to you. We are quite a low-budget station, 
so most things we done on the cheap.

Before I came to the station, there were no Linux boxen at all, but I 
have been trying to go all Linux :-)

Originally there was:
  - A studio PC (win 2k) running WaveCart
     http://www.bsiusa.com/software/wavecart/wavecart.htm
  - An office PC (win 2k) for MS Office and production -  CoolEdit

I created an Automation System (which we call TotalRequest), which is 
based on a mixture of perl scripts, mysql and mpg123. It has the master 
copy of our Music Library - which is rsynced on to the Studio PC which 
WaveCart uses. It can accept requests automatically via the website, 
phone and SMS text messages.

Then we managed to get decent Internet access to the station over a 
fibre optic link, and added a machine to do website (apache2), mail 
server (qmail) and NFS filestore.

Next came a server to record station output. We are required to keep a 
copy of the past 1000 hours/42 days by the uk government. I run 
darkice/icecast on the server, along with a simple perl HTTP client to 
record an hours audio at a time to disc. The server is completely 
independent from our streaming server, in case of failure.

Finally is our streaming server, which also runs darkice/icecast. 
Pretty standard setup, with encoding to high and low quality MP3 and 
Ogg.

For historical reasons, all the music is stored in the format that 
WaveCart likes - which is MPEG Audio inside a Broadcast Wave file. The 
metadata is stored in the wave file too (including segue and intro 
times), which is extracted and loaded into MySQL.

Most of the scripts that the station runs on are custom written 
scripts, much of which are very SURGE specific and hard for other 
stations to use. It would be less effort to write them again, than try 
and make them usable by other people.

However I have an upcoming project to develop a JACK/OSC based studio 
playout system to replace WaveCart. We plan to make it very 
client/server based, so the you can have multiple front ends 
controlling a backend that plays the audio out.

nick.

...
  ----- Forwarded message from ben racher
&lt;bracher(a)iupui.edu&gt; -----

  Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:03:07 -0500
 From: ben racher &lt;bracher(a)iupui.edu&gt;
 Subject: [linux-audio-user] IUPUI Student Radio Station should be 
 based on
 	Linux
 To: linux-audio-user(a)music.columbia.edu, 
 linux-audio-dev(a)music.columbia.edu,
    Michael Schultheiss &lt;schultmc(a)cinlug.org&gt;rg>, Matt Beal 
 &lt;mbeal(a)biosound.com&gt;
 Cc:

 Hello,

 I'm starting a student radio station at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana
 and I want our entire audio infrastructure to be based on Linux. I've
 got a rough sense of all the apps we need and what apps to setup on
 which computers, but I thought I'd run the blueprints by you guys to 
 see
 if you could give me any feedback.

 Streaming/Web Server: Runs apache and icecast or the icecast mod for 
 Apache.

 Automation Computer: Runs some sort of playback program, I've been
 keeping my eyes on LiveSupport http://www.campware.org/ to schedule 
 and
 automate the station when DJs aren't present.

 Audio Archive: File Server for our digital library, probably all FLAC
 files, maybe Ogg, but I think we want FLAC in case we want to burn 
 CDs.

 And this is the part that I need help on...

 Production Computer... so I've been tooling around with JACK and 
 Ardour
 and MusE (not to be confused with MuSE) and other JACK apps and its 
 all
 really cool and exciting. I never got the sound input to even really
 work in linux until a couple weeks ago. Yay for the 2.6.8+ kernels. So
 here are my thoughts on setting up a workstation, and I don't even 
 know
 if this is possible, but that's why I'm mailing you guys. One 
 department
 has kindly donated a brand new Dell Poweredge Dual Xeon 2.4 ghz 
 somethin
 or other. The rest of our computers are from the university junkyard 
 of
 midgrade PowerPC G4s and Pentium 3s. So the Poweredge is our gem
 computer out of all the other crappy computers. Is there any way for 
 me
 to set up the speedy new poweredge as some kind of audio production
 renderfarm, and get the PPCs and the Pentium 3s to connect to it as
 production terminals? Cause, although multi-tracking on the G4s and
 Pentium 3s is possible, doing extensive work with FX plugins is 
 probably
 out of the question.

 See what I'm getting at? Also, the Poweredge also has about a 500gb 
 raid
 system with it, which would be nice to use for storing our audio on 
 and
 maybe even using as our digital archive as well, but that might be
 pushing it if we are doing audio production work on it as well? I'd
 imagine this might be the case, but I don't see why ftping flac files 
 on
 a local network would be too much of a burden on the raid drive or 
 dual
 processors. Another reason why it would be nice to be able to connect 
 to
 a poweredge remotely to do audio work, is that it the poweredge makes
 about as much noise as a 747. So... its not exactly an audio 
 production
 friendly unit.

 So these are my thoughts. Am I crazy... or is there some magical way 
 to
 make this happen?

 - Ben Racher
 bracher(a)iupui.edu 
 ----- End forwarded message ----- 