Hello everyone! At last! At long, long, last! We finally have a suite of programmes which are fully accessible, and which can make it possible for a serious broadcaster requiring accessibility to use their Mac as a broadcast system. When I first looked at this software way back in 2010, all I got was the usual “Unknown, Unknown, Unknown” when roaming through the various dialogues and windows. Now, however, the entire application has undergone a rewrite, and accessibility is 100%. You can do all of the things I’d expect of a broadcasting system, including using a dedicated player as a cart machine.
It would have been nice, and I shall be talking to the developer about this in the next few days, if we could have had a way to easily import pre-selected carts into the dedicated player so that frequently used ones can be accessed without having to re-queue each time. But given the power of this app, that really is a minor issue. There is a superb audio ducking system in this app, the best I’ve ever seen on any software solution on any platform. The nearest comparison I can draw here is with my Behringer Audio DJ mixer, and that device absolutely rocks! The ducking depth can be adjusted, but the default is really well chosen. What I like about this app, amongst other things, is the ability to configure multiple preference sets, so that you can use them for different situations without having to bother about changing things all the time. If you don’t like the default keyboard shortcuts, you can change them to what suits you best. When used alongside something like “iVolume” or even the iTunes Sound Check, the output really does have a good dynamic edge to it. Not quite as good as OTS AV on Windows, but very very close to it. Certainly, it is better than things like Station Playlist, etc. Another nice feature is the ability to see how long you need to speak for in order to fit your tracks into a typical 6-minute rotation. The playlist can dynamically adapt, when used in conjunction with the Advance Schedular which the application uses to create very highly customisable playlists. You can run a 24/7 automated station with this thing, and it stays in sync, other apps fall down on this point, but this one is very very accurate. If your musical genre is not one where you need to do many voiceovers, you can just use the thing by pressing a couple of keys to turn of automation and to disable ducking. If ducking is disabled, you don’t get the reduction in your music level and, therefore, you don’t need to talk over the intros or outtros of your tracks. You can even publish your station’s activity, live, via either the web, or via most of the social networks; Twitter, Facebook, etc. You don’t even have to fiddle around in order to set that up. Do it once, and you’re good to go. I still need to give this a real run out, but I am confident that, finally, at long long last, my quest to find a broadcast system for OS X is over. Now it should just be a case of learning all the ins and outs of the software, and then going on air live. Oh yes, and I forgot to mention. There is built-in support for streaming codecs such as NiceCast, Shoutcast, and Live365. So you can publish, stream, and produce stunning audio. Oh, I forgot, you can also adjust your tracks’ overall pitch by about 5% each way so that you get a mega-smooth transition with the track that went before it and the track that comes after. If you do that properly, the listener won’t notice. They actually do that on commercial radio, I’m not sure whether many people know that, but they do. Anyway, I’ll be giving this a run out later in the week so I’ll try and pre-record a demo broadcast so that you can hear for yourself just how nice and smooth this thing sounds. It supports multiple output and input devices, so that you can, for instance, use one for VoiceOver and your Mac’s internal sounds, and another dedicated to Radiologic. It also supports MIDI-controlled mixing, including jog wheel FX and whatever else your controller is capable of doing. Sorry this overview has been a little like a ramble, but I just wrote it on-the-fly, without taking the time to structure my thoughts. But I’m excited about this as a broadcaster because finally, without paying really top prices, we have something that will mix it with the best of them. I have personally tried software on Windows which costs literally thousands of Dollars, and it doesn’t sound as good as this thing does. For example, Myriad, which is the software that 99% of professionals use in their studios, Myriad doesn’t come across as smooth as this and even for the small networks that thing costs almost $1500 US for just a year’s hire. Wow, finally, we rock the boat! Bring on RadioLogik, and it’s worth dropping the developer a line as I plan too, in order to start a dialogue with him. There are just one or two little areas where I think he could clean it up a little. But nothing major, he’s developed this with online broadcasting in mind, and it shows! Have a listen to this if you want proof. There are some tutorials available on line in video, but they demonstrate just how good the audio is. <http://www.radiologik.com> and there are links to the download site from there. yes, it does cost a couple of hundred Dollars. But that’s as nothing compared to what they cost under Windows. Even Station Playlist Creator, Sam Broadcaster and OTS AV will set you back more than that. Gordon <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at the list's public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we always strive to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. 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