What type of automation software do you use on your Part 15 station? I know that some folk use applications like WinAmp and iTunes to act as a basic player. For operators who want more advanced functionality, the sky's the limit if you're prepared to pay. However, for us hobbyists, who tend to have fairly strict budgets, there are some free options -
1) Rivendell is open source radio automation software for Linux. I have not used it but, at the forum I used to frequent, there was a broadcast professional who loves it. I understand that it has a lot of
functionality that should satisfy many experienced broadcast types. You can find it at
http://www.rivendellaudio.org/2) Zara Radio is a Windows-based radio automation software. This is the one I use. I'm not sure if the paid version is still available, but the free one is. The free one has not been updated
in quite a few years, but I am running it on an early version of Windows 10 with no issues at all. My automation laptop used to be connected to the internet. It received regular Windows
updates, but this was creating problems. The need to reboot the computer was a big one, and not desirable on a machine that I wanted to run continuously, 24/7. Then, there was an update
that was causing Zara to become choppy and unreliable. I disconnected the laptop from the internet, and rolled the OS back to an earlier version. That was something like 2 years ago, and it
has been running continuously, completely smoothly, with no issues.
Zara has some great features. It can automatically announce the time, which I set mine to do at the top of the hour, along with the top of the hour station announcement and ID. It provides for
some great ways to automate your programming. Sound bites, promos, PSA, commercials, or any other programming elements, can be placed into a folder. Then, at set times, Zara will look in
that folder and play one file in it. It can select them randomly, or play them in strict rotation. Also, if you have a number of audio files that need to always play in the same sequence, you can
create a sequence file, with the file extension .seq, and schedule that to play in Zara. For instance, every Sunday at 5pm, my station airs an episode of a big band show called "Fred Hall's Swing
Thing". There is a pre-produced show opener, then the episode itself, then a pre-produced show closer, which promotes the time the next episode will air. These 3 programming elements are
saved as a sequence file. One of the elements in that sequence file is another type of file - a rotation file, with the file extension .rot. This is for the specific episode of the show. It's an old
show, for which new episodes stopped being created long ago. I have all available episodes (1,002 of them) in a folder. Zara plays the episodes in strict rotation - one every week. With 1,002
episodes, it will be many years before they start repeating.
The above are just some examples of how well suited Zara is to radio broadcasters. It's a lot of useful functionality for free. The free version is available at
http://www.zarastudio.es/download.phpHow do you schedule your songs and other audio files for broadcast? Simple solutions are fine. I've spent way too much time on this over the last few years, and do appreciate that it's not as much of a pre-occupation for others. All answers are valid. I'm keen to know what you do.
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