Radio Monitor – our free, realtime SHOUTcast statistics software!

30 Jan 2008 | No Comments | posted by James M | in Industry Insider

Wavestreaming’s brand new fabulous little tool has come out from our development office recently, we have launched ‘SHOUTcast Radio Monitor’ which is a free, powerful desktop application which is designed to monitor SHOUTcast listener counts in super responsive realtime.

Wavestreaming SHOUTcast Statistics (Radio monitor)

SHOUTcast Radio Monitor


Not only can it monitor a server, but you can add a group of up to as many servers as you like via its online control panel – allowing you to keep a close eye on all of your SHOUTcast radio streams.

Its free to download to anyone – even non wavestreaming customers and you can get hold of a copy from our website; just follow the instructions, by following the link below…
http://www.wavestreaming.com/products/radiomonitor/

Realtime now playing Song Titles & iTunes Links!

19 Jan 2008 | 1 Comment | posted by James M | in Industry Insider

Our development wizards have been busy yet again working their magic with your currently playing song titles. As you may or may not know, SHOUTcast has a ‘now playing’ field which will usually display the current on-air song.

To access this, we have for years provided a simple snippet of javascript to paste onto your website, however, this has always needed to have the page refresh before it will update. We have now created a system so it updates automatically, without the need for the page to refresh.

The best bit – the code you guys actually paste onto your website is still exactly the same (see example below) – we understand that lots of code can confuse you! thats why we have always had a simple ‘cut & paste’ ethos when it comes to stuff for your websites.

Following feedback, we have added a download link for iTunes to this as well. So if a listener likes a song you are playing on the radio – not only can they find out what it is, but then they can go to download it instantly from iTunes.

Live Demo:

Code Example:

  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://api.wavepanel.net/P6B5U2OPYWZ0VG1Y/status/song/"></script>

Good quality radio broadcasting needs a decent condenser microphone!

7 Jan 2008 | No Comments | posted by James M | in Industry Insider

If you’re serious about setting up a radio / voiceover studio – or indeed doing any kind of audio voice recording, get a good quality condenser microphone and you will be well on your way to producing really top notch results.

A condenser microphone is a familiar site in radio/recording studios and in lay mans terms, you’ll notice that they are a lot bigger and usually hung from an arm, as opposed to microphones you’ve probably seen people singing/presenting on stage using.

If you want to know more about the technical side of things (although its not entirely relevant to what i’m saying), check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condenser_microphone#Condenser.2C_capacitor_or_electrostatic_microphones

You can spend anywhere between £50 and £5000 (or more!) on a condenser mic. If you are running a home studio, i’d say something around the £80 -£150 mark would be ideal.

Behringer do some good condenser microphones, which are on a ‘low end professional’ budget (Eg. you can pick up a decent Behringer mic for around £100 – some on a similar level are £300 – 400).

Check out some of the condenser mics on:
http://www.behringer.com/02_products/group_index.cfm?mid=2&ID=500&lang=eng#LARGE%20DIAPHRAGM%20CONDENSER%20MICROPHONES

Other very well known makes you might want to look at include…

Audio-Technia: http://www.audio-technica.com/
Neumann: http://www.neumannusa.com/
Rode: http://www.rodemic.com/
AKG: http://www.akg.com/
Samson: http://www.samsontech.com/