After talking about the Orban Optimod PCn solution back in October 2015, I sufficiently influenced myself into getting it in December 2015 along with the StreamS Hi-Fi Encoders (both HLS and Icecast). I purchased and setup an HP PC with quad core i7 to host it. The difference in broadcast quality has been amazing.
Both of my stations have incredible audio now. With HLS I've been able to build my own custom web players with beautiful high-res album art and ID tags that work in all modern web browsers without plugs-in, Flash, Java, or any other nasty stuff.
As good as the results were with my old setup, this new setup has taken it to a new level. The Optimod PCn processing is brilliant at making everything sound good, both contemporary recordings often made with excessive brickwall limiting and classic hits recordings with much wider dynamic range. It includes an amazing upmix converter for 5.1 Surround Sound streaming allowing me to add 192k 5.1 Surround Sound HLS streams for each station. On surround sound systems it's an exciting and immersive listening experience.
The StreamS Hi-Fi Encoders sound awesome both on the legacy Icecast and the modern HLS streams. For the stereo HLS streams and the web players, I have the system streaming both 64k HE-AACv1 and 32k HE-AACv2 streams with the web players automatically switching between the synchronized dual bit-rates based on available bandwidth. This makes for a very robust setup for mobile listening.
With some excellent help from some very smart friends, I built the web players for my stations with a combination of Viblast and VideoJS. The result is the Holy Grail for Internet Radio: web players that "just work" on all modern browsers. I'm using Amazon AWS S3 for the HLS streams and it works great. As far as I know it's infinitely scalable so I don't have to worry about having more listeners than the system can handle. To date that's never been a problem as audience size is very small!
I did have to do some quick custom work on my end to make it work with my existing macOS setup. I made custom AppleScripts that send track info. from Radiologik DJ to the StreamS encoders over UDP with XML format. I built a custom album art system into the AppleScripts for the web players. Rogue Amoeba's excellent AirFoil software is used to network the audio from macOS to the PC using Apple Lossless Codec. I use the same Apple Lossless Codec for encoding music on the stations. When music is playing off those source files there is only one stage of lossy coding at the very end of the audio chain as the broadcast streams are encoded!
There's always something new to do with Internet Radio which is why I'm still having fun with it and I hope others are doing likewise. 2016 started out as a very tough year with many friends in the US having to shut down due to skyrocketing rates from Sound Extortion. It was also sad to see the demise of Live365 which for me was the start years ago of my foray into Internet Radio.
Anyone who wants to check out my stations' HLS streams is welcome to do so. Feedback is appreciated!
Cheers,
Philip
Hi B,
I find audio processing to be a very fun part of the whole Internet Radio experience. It's a chance to be a junior broadcast engineer!
My current processing setup is built using plug-ins from a series called T-Racks by IK Multimedia. Their software is intended for recording studio use and for mastering hit records but I think it adapts well for Internet broadcasting. I think getting a great on-air sound requires a lot of patience and experimentation and in many cases that process never ends! There's always room for more refinement and improvement.
I don't currently run any separate mic processing but I have done that in the past and enjoyed the results. I have presenters from various parts of the planet doing live shows. Some of them may be running their own mic processing but otherwise I ask them to send unprocessed audio for their source feeds so the broadcast maintains consistent audio quality with other shows and when the automation takes over.
The best software solution I'm aware of is called Orban Optimod-PCn. That software will enable streaming with quality that will meet or beat the best major market stations on the planet. I would have to run a Windows box to host that (right now my stations are all Mac) but it would be worth it to take things to the next level. Until if and when I do that I'll continue to try to get the most out of what I have now which is what I'd recommend to anyone to do.
Radio audio processing is a lot of fun (at least it is for me) and some even consider it an art form. It's a great way to get your station to stand out from the crowd!
Cheers,
Philip
