Radio Blog - by Tony W. Katavich, Senior Radio Technician - Mulcher Broadcasting

Tuesday 9 March 2010 - ....and more, much more than this, I did it myyyyyy waaaaaaay..." It's a great line from a classic performer. But what was his name again...? If you have you music labeled correctly them this question will never be an issue. The best format for this is something like: Frank Sinatra - My Way, not Artist - Track 06 which is what we see all too often with some installations - you can imagine the confusion. Radio automation software relies on your song name and artist names to be correctly typed. While this can take some time, the station will sound a great deal better for it and DJs will be able to properly announce who the song was by.

Sunday 7 March 2010 - One of our customers just recently started on air. This was a big moment for them as they had been dreaming of this day for a long time. What made it really amazing to them was how fast it all came together in the end. For so long they had been going about it the wrong way and all they had achieved was a decision about some software (which they ended up reversing anyway)! Once we put them straight about the process and what they actually need to do before thinking about - let alone buying any equipment, they were able to focus on the real goal, which was getting on air. The day it all happened they called us and were so excited, they had their frequency and license, the equipment had arrived and all they needed to do was plug it in and they were away.

Friday 5 March 2010 - A customer phoned up the other day and said they were getting strange noises on air, an odd ringing sound. After quickly troubleshooting this, I realized the customer had reactivated the sound scheme on their studio computer. What was happening, is that every time they received an email to their studio email address, the email program would generate a ringing sound, which went down the same audio cable that the music did, and wound up being broadcast on air. We were able to quickly get this fixed. It is important to realize that any programs you run on your studio machine, which generate sound, will be broadcast on air. For this reason, we suggest you check the sound scheme settings on your studio computer, and ensure all sounds are turned off (except of course for your radio automation software)