While there has been no official word from the CBAA for a while (the manager of the community radio digital radio project), I’ve been hearing some mentions of digital radio from some of the metro-wide stations around here. In particular, Hope 103.2 has started saying that their new digital-only station, Inspire Digital, is expected to be launched on Sydney DAB+ radio in the next two months or so.

From what I’ve heard, the equipment is almost ready at the metro-wide stations, and now it’s just a matter of getting the connection happening between the studios and the transmission site.

(Incidentally, from today you can start listening to a ‘pilot’ of Inspire Digital via their website. I’ll tell you now: this particular station is sounding like its going to be really, really great!)

I’m particularly hoping that Community Radio will take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of more transmission capacity as a chance to be more innovative, and broadcast new and innovative content. If community stations put all they’ve got into this and do something interesting and appealing to audiences, it could really drive the sales of digital radio receivers, helping the entire Digital Radio project in Australia.

Community radio is in a very unique position to launch new services with minimal costs. There’s no management overheads, sales requirements, or shareholders to satisfy. It’s dirt cheap. Really, the hardest part is coming up with something that will be appealing, and then putting in the effort to see it happen.

If community radio dosen’t take this opportunity, then I’m afraid that commercial operators will. Last week, Austereo announced their newest digital-only station: “U2O Radio“. What’s the concept? “A Radio Station hosted by U for U”.

That’s right, ordinary people submitting programming, and then getting it played on air. It sounds a whole heap like the principal behind community radio, right? But wait, there’s more! U2O radio is an initiative of….. The Australian Government!

Austereo has the advantage over community radio here, because they have much more visibility through their national network. It’s also much more appealing to young people because they have the chance to be noticed by some of the big names in Australia’s media. The splash page of U2O radio says:

Who knows, you could be Australia’s next Hamish & Andy!

Getting your big break on radio has never been easier.

This is exciting and interesting times for Community Radio in Australia. Let’s hope that we take this as a chance to grow, expand and strengthen.

Why am I leaving? It all comes down to time, and a desire to focus on something different. After spending so long working at this one organisation, having everyone relying on my to keep things running, I feel that I need to do something else with the precious time I have. A change of scenery, so to speak.

With the somewhat sad (but yet exciting!) final day approaching, I have been pondering: What could I have done better? If I was to do it again, what would I do differently? Do I have any regrets?

One of things I would have done differently is to be more of a team player. The way things panned out was that I did the majority of the work, and then others around me try and catch up. I very rarely delegated tasks to others, even when they were capable to do them. At first, this didn’t pose many problems, but as the station grew and people changed, it became more and more of an issue.

I could always manage to find a way to get the technology working properly, and doing what I wanted, but as a manager of other people, I fell short. Through the recent circumstances, I’ve been made aware of this. If I was to do it all again, this I would be more conscious about, and I would defiantly act differently.

Another thing I would do differently is to have a clearer plan of where we are heading. Often, due to the chaos of the moment, we were stuck in the mindset of “okay, we need to fix this NOW”, not able to see ahead and plan anything for the future. The problem with this, especially when dealing with technology, is that you often end up duplicating yourself. There needs to be a plan as to what changes should be done in the next year, etc. in order not to replace things multiple times, or reconfigure something only to have it superseded by some other magical device.

Finally, I would make sure I say “I don’t know” more often. I got into this terrible habit of thinking I knew the answer to everything, and when I didn’t, I would lie until I could work out what the answer was. Sometimes this wasn’t such a big a deal; other times it was.

Even after listing these things I would change, I don’t think I have any regrets. What I did was always what I thought was the best action for the moment. I was thrown into the “deep end” at age 14, and now that I’m approaching 17, I’m much wiser. Still a long way to got, I admit, but this has probably been one of the best things I’ve been a part of. The learning is ongoing.

At Cumberland Community Radio, a sub-metro community radio station in Sydney, we had exactly that problem. We had become very reliant on our connection to the internet, and when it didn’t work, I found out pretty quickly and frequently. It just wasn’t acceptable to have your news feed, internet streams and VoIP fall over so frequently.

We needed a fix, and fast!

A second ADSL connection was sourced with a different provider, but to manage these two connections we needed some fancy piece of hardware. Something smart enough to work out what both connections were doing, fix any issues, and route the traffic in the right direction. We needed a router/firewall with dual-WAN ports.

I initially expected to spend quite a large sum of money on a piece of hardware like this. But thankfully I didn’t have to. The model we picked was a DrayTek Vigor 2910. This little box cost less than AU$280, from OzCableGuy. These guys were able to get the box to us in less than a week, and that was paying with Bank Transfer, too.

Setup was fairly simple. In fact, if you know the jargon of LANs, WANs, and all that jazz, it’s easy. If you don’t, then I suggest you learn that aspect of things before you buy this box. There’s defiantly an expectation that you aren’t a beginner when trying to set up this piece of hardware.

Configuration is via web interface, which can be a little buggy at times. There isn’t much validation of input, so it will sometimes accept invalid input you mistakenly gave it, and you then are left wondering why something isn’t happening as expected. It’s little things like that which tripped me up the most.

The first thing I did was get the two WAN links happening. For this to work, you need to turn each of your two modems into ‘dumb’ modems. This means that the box which interfaces your phone line with the network dosen’t handle any sort of router functionality. In fact, it shouldn’t even handle any PPPoE authentication. The term used to describe this is ‘bridge mode’.

The two cheap consumer modems I had were a little trickier than expected to get into bridge mode, but a quick look at the manual sorted that out. It’s always that one checkbox you miss that trips you up, right?

Once you’re modem is in bridge mode, the DrayTek Vigor2910 handles all of the PPPoE authentication. The beauty of this arrangement is that if your modem disconnects, the DrayTek picks up on it really quickly, and it’s reconnected before you know it. This would be one of the best parts we’ve experienced so far.

Setting up firewall rules and port forwarding was no-nonsense, and done in a similar fashion to ordinary modem/router devices, but with extra functionality. There is also load balancing policy, so you can choose certain services to go through certain WAN ports if that is desired. There are also features available such as URL-filtering, VPNs, and all that good stuff. I haven’t set all of that up yet on this particular box, but if there is a need in the future, we know it’s there, ready to go!

Overall, the DrayTek2910 has been a solid performer, and I would defiantly recommend it in the future for similar situations.

The trouble is, what happens when something breaks? How do you fix it if you’ve never touched it before? For example, I’ve never had to clean out the faders in our broadcast console before. I don’t know the best method to do it, and even now that I know the best method thanks to other experts in the industry, I still haven’t used their advice because I haven’t done it before and am a bit nervous about pulling faders apart.

So, what is the best way to learn about equipment before it breaks and now it is critical that it gets fixed? I’ve learnt that it is best to dive in and fiddle with things whenever there is a chance. Whatever equipment there is around you, just grab a screwdriver and pull the lit off it.

For example, a few weeks ago, I pulled our low powered backup FM transmitter out of the rack, opened the lid, and had a look around. I now know that to program the frequency of it, you need to switch the dip switches and use binary. I didn’t know that before I opened it up! I also got to see how all the different components of the transmitter connect together.

Another technique to learn about equipment is by reading the manual. And the manual for other pieces of equipment similar to it. Or even manuals for bits of equipment you don’t own.

I learn heaps about compressor/limiters by downloading some old manuals off a manufacturers website, and reading through all of the instructions and application examples contained within it’s pages. I now know a bit about how Axia Audio over IP networks operate thanks to the extensive manuals they provide on their website. I don’t regret spending time doing things like this.

It’s a combination of pulling stuff apart and reading through manuals which has helped me learn what I know, but I need to keep doing this to keep learning more and more. I’m only young, and I have my whole career ahead of me, so now is defiantly no time to stop learning!

Both Community and Commercial radio have clauses in their relevant codes of practice to explain that programs broadcast must meet certain standards of decency.

1.5 (a) All program content must meet contemporary standards of decency, having regard to the likely characteristics of the audience of the licensee’s service.

[ Commercial Radio Australia - Codes of Practice & Guidelines ]

3.2 We will attempt to avoid censorship where possible. However, in our programming decisions we will consider our community interest, context, degree of explicitness, the possibility of alarming the listener, the potential for distress or shock, prevailing Indigenous laws or community standards and the social importance of the broadcast.

[ Community Radio Broadcasting Codes of Practice ]

But what is deemed acceptable? Let’s take swearing as an example. What words would you anticipate you couldn’t say on air? I would think that almost all swearing would be a no-go, except for the lightest swear words. When I tuned into a commercial station last week, heaps of songs in their countdown program contained meny words which I wouldn’t thing were suitable to broadcast in the early evening. I’m sure this isn’t the first time their music contained these words – it must have been happening for a while.

But yet I don’t hear a public outcry about it.

Nor did I hear a huge amount of whinging about the woeful contents of Kyle and Jackie-O’s brekky show, until that fateful morning containing a lie detector. Media Watch must have been the only media outlet I saw complaining about their stunts. So, does that mean most people don’t have a problem with it? Or just don’t care?

All of this must mean that people think swearing is acceptable for broadcast. Yet, whenever we have an incident of someone saying a naughty word on air on 2CCR, a flood of complains ensues. Something’s up? What’s so different?

The answer, it seems, is: “audience”. The audience your station has determines what you can get away with. If you have an audience consisting primarily of those in their twenties, you can get away with heaps. But, if your audience is filled with families or slightly older people, you can’t get away with anywhere near as much.

This still doesn’t answer my question about community standards, but I don’t think it ever will be answered, unless we turn into a communist state.

In radio, one size never fits all. What is suitable for one station isn’t suitable for the other. Just because you hear swearing and questionable content on one station doesn’t mean you can get away with it on another station. There’s no role models in radio – everyone has to be unique.

However, there are a couple of resources I’ve found around the place which may be of some help. Here’s a few:

Radio Magazine – radiomagonline.com

This free online magazine focuses on radio technology, with a particular focus on the USA markets. It has reviews and tips about every bit of radio equipment imaginable, stories on studio builds, and also an “Engineer’s Handbook”. I’ve always found this site to be very informative and enjoyable to read.

The Broadcaster’s Desktop Resource – thebdr.net

Although all of the articles are in PDF format and require me to download them, The Broadcaster’s Desktop Resource publishes easy to understand articles on a variety of different topics relevant to radio techies.

This Week in Radio Tech (TWiRT) – thisweekinradiotech.com

I was pointed towards this podcast only yesterday. As I write there’s only one episode available, but apparently it will become a weekly thing. That’s good, because the first episode was excellent! It’s hosted by Kirk Harnack, who works for Telos/Omnia/Axia, and even though I’ve only spoken to him through a couple of emails and then heard him on this podcast, he is a very knowledgeable guy. Also co-hosting the show are Tom Ray are Chris Tobin.

It is said you learn something new every day, and today most of my learning came from this podcast. One of the things of interest to me was the EAS system, which is a way of broadcasting emergency messages simultaneously through a group of stations in a geographic zone. I wasn’t aware such a system existed in the USA, but now that I do know, I’m wondering why we don’t have a similar system out here.

Audio Over IP: Building Pro AoIP Systems with Livewire by Steve Church & Skip Pizzi

Okay, this isn’t really a online resource. Hey, I haven’t even read it yet! But I have been promised a copy from the great folks at Axia, and I can’t wait to get a hold of it and read it cover to cover (several times over, I’m sure!). Not having read it myself, here’s a description from Amazon:

Position yourself at the forefront of audio and broadcast studio technology by learning audio over IP. You will gain knowledge of IP network engineering as it applies to audio applications, and then progress to a full understanding of how equipment built on Ethernet and Internet Protocol are used in today’s audio production and broadcast facilities for the transporting, mixing and processing of pro-quality audio. A chapter on integrating Voice-over IP telephony (VoIP) to pro-audio and broadcast facilities is also included.

Radio While Papers – broadcastpapers.com

I must admit, some of the papers available from Broadcast Papers can be very full on, in terms of writing style and content. They can also be very biased towards particular products, as many of these papers have been written by representatives from particular companies. None the less, there are a few good tips to be picked up and some new things to be learned.

The Product Manuals

There is a lot to be gained from reading the manual for different products. Some manufacturers of pro audio gear put tremendous effort into making their manuals informative and very useful. Better still, many are available on the internet. Some of the manuals I have enjoyed are from Axia, Behringer, Comrex, Sonifex, Tieline.

The best manuals not only explain the actual product, but provide background information which helps you understand why things work a certain way.

There we have it, a few resources we have in regards to radio technology. They’ve all been useful for me, and I hope that by sharing them here, you may find something new. If you know of any other handy resources, please post them in the comments below, or email them through to me.

This week I decided to listen to a commercial radio station for a couple of hours in the evening. Why? I’ve been on holidays, and decided to do something different for a bit. Break out of the routine, and all of that stuff.

Now I remember why I don’t listen to Commercial Radio.

The station I decided to listen to was 2Day FM, and the show which was on at the time was the Hot 30 countdown. I haven’t listened to one of these countdown type shows for a while, but I was under the impression that they typically consisted of music. What did I hear? Anything but music! With so much talking and phone ins happening, they might as well make it a talkback show.

After listening to this show for a couple of hours, I really came to appreciate community radio. Commercial radio is so, well, commercial. It may seem a stupid observation to make, but there are just so many ads! I literally couldn’t tell the difference between ads, show promos, sweepers, talk breaks, competitions and the music.

Everything just blends together into one very very tight package. There’s no room to breathe. From one aspect, this is a credit to the people who produce the show – such tight integration doesn’t happen magically, and i know it takes quite a bit of work to achieve.

However, I believe there should be a line drawn somewhere. When is enough, enough? Sure, there are bills to pay and shareholders to please, but in some ways I believe it would be more beneficial to loosen things up a tad. I was quite confused when trying to distinguish what was an ad or not. I eventually concluded that if it wasn’t a song, then it must be an ad :)

For once, I am greatful that we have community radio which is limited in the amount of sponsorships which can be played. I am grateful that we don’t play the same twelve songs over and over and over and over and over and over and over…

Community radio is a breath of fresh air, but it wasn’t until I ventured back into commercial radio that I realised this.

Will I listen to another commercial station again? Sure. But it won’t be for entertainment. It will be to analyse what they are doing, and to learn as much as I possibly can about on air presentation. Even though I want to be a technician, I still think it’s important to learn about what actually goes to air. After all, that’s all the average listener hears.

Last year, I spent all of the Saturday morning before hand checking registry settings on each computer to make sure they would adjust appropriately come Sunday morning. That isn’t a very efficient way to spend an entire morning, but it had to be done to make sure funny things didn’t happen to our overnight programs and everything played at the correct time.

This year, everything has been made so much easier for me. See, I found this utility called TZEdit. (Downloadable from onlinecomputertips.com)

I can confirm that this utility works on both Windows XP and Windows Server 2008. I can’t say anything about other operating systems, but I suspect that it will work for Vista and Windows 7, too (they have a similar codebase to Server 2008).

This utility allowed me to confirm that each computer had the daylight savings times set correctly for our time zone (starting on the First Sunday of October at 2am).

Now I can sit back and relax, knowing that my computers should drift through daylight savings without a worry. The only thing I need to remember is to not to put anything into the 2am hour, as that will be skipped. Apart from that, it’s all sweet.

Now would be a great time for you to check all of your computers for Daylight Savings compatibility. Don’t leave it until the last minute.

There’s plenty of solutions out there, such as the Elan Program Monitoring systems. But these cost at least $800, and won’t actually notify me when a problem occurs – they just trigger another program source to start playing. What I wanted was a SMS notification when our program source failed, and stayed dead for more than sixty seconds (so small operator mishaps won’t disturb me).

After searching high and low, it turns out that Pirate Radio has a great software solution, and it’s totally free! It’s called Pira CZ Silence Detector, and will listen to the line in source to the computer and perform a defined set of actions whenever the audio stays below a set threshold for a set period of time.

The different types of actions it can perform are great. Here’s the feature list:

The Pira CZ Silence Detector actually can:

• Send alert email message (now supports also SSL authentication!)
• Save actual screenshot (and optionally attach it to email)
• Run application(s), play backup mp3 file(s)
• Reboot/shutdown the system
• Kill application(s)
• Drive port pin
• Send HTTP query (inform about the status on your web site)
• Speak using the Windows SAPI
• and more!

What more could you ask it to do? Any task imaginable could be performed by this powerful but small app – the ability to run applications and switch a COM port pin enable you to do whatever you want with whatever bit of equipment or software you have.

However, the task I really wanted to do was Send an SMS. This isn’t on the list, but sending email alerts is! Using a SMS Gateway, it’s easy to get an email sent via SMS. I use SMS Global, who allow me to send an email to a special email address, and then the contents of that email are transferred to a SMS message – all within seconds!!

It’s all quite magical. I loaded this freeware onto our logger (it already has an incoming audio feed) and did a quick firewall rejig to route the email traffic through to the server. Now I will receive a notification on my mobile whenever we have more than sixty seconds of dead air. Thankfully it hasn’t happened during the early morning, but I’m sure the day will come sooner or later. Probably when I least expect it.

The next task to undertake is to set this application to play some music whenever the program fails, rather than just sending a notification. I’m thinking I need some really quirky song to play, so anyone who works with us will know when something’s gone wrong, just by the music which is playing. Any suggestions? I also need to get some of our extra network gear onto a UPS so my notifications will arrive even during a power outage. If anyone wants to donate a UPS to us, that would be great (it doesn’t have to be huge, a small one will do).

The whole broadcast will be encoded into an Ogg Vorbis stream by EdCast, and then sent over a borrowed 3G connection back to our studios where it will go to air. This is the first time I’ve done this, so I’m excited, to say the least. It’s a four hour broadcast, so this will be a great chance to test everything out.

How do I know it will work? I’ve been trying this for weeks, broadcasting to myself over the 3G modem back to a PC at the station. I’ve been able to broadcast for quite some time, before being interrupted (usually by the smell of dinner). This whole thing is actually pretty good, and I don’t expect any trouble.

The real questions are, “what could go wrong?” and “what can I do to prevent/fix it?”. Here’s a couple of scenarios:

• People at the studios can’t access the feed. This could happen, if they misplace my instructions or something bad happens to the computer in the studio. To cover for this, I’ve got remote access to one of the PCs, so I can do it all by myself, if need be
• The internet at the studios drops out. This does happen every so often, so I’ve ensured that people at the studio have access to the modem, so it can be power-cycled
• No 3G reception; This would be dreadful. However, I’ve tested the site extensively, and there is full signal strength – hopefully this won’t occur.
• Laptop at the site breaks; I’ll be taking my MacBook which can run Windows, just in case

If you’ve got some free time tomorrow morning and live in the Castle Hill area of NSW, please come down and say hello. It would be great to catch up with you. I’ll be there for a 10am broadcast, running until 2pm. Full details are on the 2CCR Website.