Any budding radio show hosts out there?

[Mikey]

As for the technical side, then I am not sure whether we need to have a separate PC set up and with a SSD configured by Data. If so then I have a spare laptop, though it would need to be reinstalled and configured, but that would be a small thing.

Yeah, at least 1 of you needs to be the 'technical host' (the uploader / streamer) of the show. Unlike BTR, our setup is not 100% centralized, which has some up- and downsides, but one of the tangible upsides is the better quality.

The PC does need some CPU power - the more concurrent callers or co-hosts you have, the more. But it's hard to give some required specs. I guess we'll have to try and look at the CPU load for your particular situation. Shouldn't be a laptop that's older than 5 years.

 

[Aeneas]

As for the technical side, then I am not sure whether we need to have a separate PC set up and with a SSD configured by Data. If so then I have a spare laptop, though it would need to be reinstalled and configured, but that would be a small thing.

Yeah, at least 1 of you needs to be the 'technical host' (the uploader / streamer) of the show. Unlike BTR, our setup is not 100% centralized, which has some up- and downsides, but one of the tangible upsides is the better quality.

The PC does need some CPU power - the more concurrent callers or co-hosts you have, the more. But it's hard to give some required specs. I guess we'll have to try and look at the CPU load for your particular situation. Shouldn't be a laptop that's older than 5 years.

Thanks for your input. I spoke to Thorbiorn and one thought is that we might not require one of us to be a technical host (my guess) by doing a distributed show, where we basically record a skype session between the two of us offline and upload it to the SOTT radio show server. Now, the question is whether that is a possibility at least in the beginning?

In talking to Thorbiorn, we thought that for us, a plan of action would be to make short shows, a bit a la South Front of perhaps max 10 minutes, but preferably only just 5 minutes. It has several advantages we thought some of which are:

• It makes it more doable
• it is more likely to be listended to as attention span/time for most people is just 3 minutes (according to references from teaching)
• It is more digestible for readers, easier to digest a piece of cake than a whole cake
• Good segments that otherwise would appear after the, let us say 30 minute mark, are more likely to be heard
• Listeners who are new can easily encounter a buffer (to digest) after which they hear nothing of the rest of the show
  

The above pointers are written with a tiny (initially :P ) Nordic/Danish audience in mind. In this case we could make quite a few segments like once a week on average and perhaps have a scrolling bar on the Danish Sott page for quick access. They could be most useful as links in articles on Danish sott.

 

[Anthony]

The Croatian SOTT team is interested in presenting a radio show. So far two of us are interested (Saša and mysef) and hopefully more can join later on. We also did a rehearsal during our hr.sott google hangouts meeting yesterday. The general plan is to talk about events that marked the week. So, if senior editors agree that it's a good idea to have a Croatian show, is the next step to have a test show?

 

[Deleted member 9511]

Just thought I throw this out there to see if it resonates with anyone. With our new in house radio show set up, we have a lot of scope to air radio shows at pretty much any time of the day (or night!). So I'm wondering if there is anyone out there, perhaps a few members who hang out together and who think they might like to try their hand at presenting a radio show. We could do a pre-record test show and see how it goes. Topic(s) can be anything related to the info covered on the forum/Sott.

By way of motivation, back in 2013 the Cs made it pretty clear why gathering information/knowledge is so important.

Information arranged by a truth becomes consciousness. That is why truth and objectivity are so important. Without it, consciousness and individuality fractures and disintegrates.

And what better way to really absorb knowledge than by researching something and then talking about it!

That's all I'll say for now to see if anyone is interested.

Yesterday, I felt inspired to do a program covering certain fundamentals of consciousness that keep urging further inquiry. I know a Himalayan yogi, whose teachings I follow through recordings of Q&A discourses given at retreat and on live telecast. I have always wanted to be the interviewer. I speak to him occasionally and intend to propose a project where the consciousness fundamentals I am considering could be explained from a yogic perspective, but couched in contemporary language and simple parables. The idea is not necessarily to produce more and more recorded dialogues, but to engage in a process of discovery with this yogi as a guide, much in the same way the Cs have been a guide. I find this yogi's teachings to strangely complement the Cs - on the surface not at all but with some care the similarities and synchronicities are hard to ignore. I have no desire for this project other than to do it out of a love for the topic and this particular yogi. I have no expectations as to the journey or the destination of such a project. It had no occurred to me in what way, but I also felt a strong intuition that SoTT would somehow be involved in this project. Today, I came to the PC to think about it and maybe write something to this yogi about my ideas.

Today, I see this thread. Very interesting. It had not occurred to me to do a radio show, though I am an experienced announcer and public speaker. So many strange series of events lead me to probe these types of statements:

Information arranged by a truth becomes consciousness. That is why truth and objectivity are so important. Without it, consciousness and individuality fractures and disintegrates.

That is a really challenging statement. It seems to say that consciousness is a product of information and truth (I think it is not a sum because the Cs used the word "arranged" which invokes images of an array: X-by-Y). Interesting how that might be as I would consider our experience of consciousness to be a priori, but I'm not so sure about truth and information sharing that quality. So it is odd that such a statement would appear in this thread, and maybe that statement is a puzzle given the Cs penchant for puzzling things. Frankly, this particular Cs statement seems almost perfectly backwards yet at the same time completely reasonable. It's like a metaphysical palindrome.

My associate with this particular yogi is such that I will trust events to unfold on their own. And so, I surrender to the possibilities.

 

[Mikey]

The Croatian SOTT team is interested in presenting a radio show. So far two of us are interested (Saša and mysef) and hopefully more can join later on. We also did a rehearsal during our hr.sott google hangouts meeting yesterday. The general plan is to talk about events that marked the week. So, if senior editors agree that it's a good idea to have a Croatian show, is the next step to have a test show?

Hi Anthony, it's possible. Have a look at my posts here and here earlier this thread. One of you needs to run a dedicated computer to stream the show to our servers. If that's okay with you, we can go ahead.

Additionally, if you plan to sit around the same table, you'll also need audio mixing hardware.

 

[Joe]

Yesterday, I felt inspired to do a program covering certain fundamentals of consciousness that keep urging further inquiry. I know a Himalayan yogi, whose teachings I follow through recordings of Q&A discourses given at retreat and on live telecast. I have always wanted to be the interviewer. I speak to him occasionally and intend to propose a project where the consciousness fundamentals I am considering could be explained from a yogic perspective, but couched in contemporary language and simple parables. The idea is not necessarily to produce more and more recorded dialogues, but to engage in a process of discovery with this yogi as a guide, much in the same way the Cs have been a guide. I find this yogi's teachings to strangely complement the Cs - on the surface not at all but with some care the similarities and synchronicities are hard to ignore. I have no desire for this project other than to do it out of a love for the topic and this particular yogi. I have no expectations as to the journey or the destination of such a project. It had no occurred to me in what way, but I also felt a strong intuition that SoTT would somehow be involved in this project. Today, I came to the PC to think about it and maybe write something to this yogi about my ideas.

Today, I see this thread. Very interesting. It had not occurred to me to do a radio show, though I am an experienced announcer and public speaker.

Maybe you could give us an outline of what you would discuss in, say, 30 mins or an hour?

 

[Human]

The Croatian SOTT team is interested in presenting a radio show. So far two of us are interested (Saša and mysef) and hopefully more can join later on. We also did a rehearsal during our hr.sott google hangouts meeting yesterday. The general plan is to talk about events that marked the week. So, if senior editors agree that it's a good idea to have a Croatian show, is the next step to have a test show?

Hi Anthony, it's possible. Have a look at my posts here and here earlier this thread. One of you needs to run a dedicated computer to stream the show to our servers. If that's okay with you, we can go ahead.

Additionally, if you plan to sit around the same table, you'll also need audio mixing hardware.

Thanks Data for your reply.

When you say "dedicated machine", what does that exactly mean? Used only for stream upload and nothing else in general, or used for streaming at the time of the show and for whatever in meantime, or ... ?
There are several machines in our household, of different specs, so depending on requirements of this "dedicated machine" and its meaning, we need to see if there is a machine like that here or we'd need to purchase something specifically for this purpose.

What would be the minimum internet connection speed required to run all that smoothly, considering that we can basically do both, connect separately or sit together at the same table (which was our initial plan), but all would go out through only one router?

As for the audio mixing hardware in case of "one table", there is a pretty good mic here, so we could maybe try that (was working OK during Hangouts meetings), but if it turns out inadequate we'll equip ourselves with something appropriate (karaoke set comes to mind :) ).

 

[Mikey]

When you say "dedicated machine", what does that exactly mean? Used only for stream upload and nothing else in general, or used for streaming at the time of the show and for whatever in meantime, or ... ?

You could try your best unused (old, but not too old) laptop or desktop PC before buying something new. We'll see if it is enough by just trying it. It will run:

- an audio routing and mixing infrastructure
- Firefox, which will receive calls from callers and co-hosts, and mix their audio together (this requires some CPU power depeding on the number of callers)
- a remote-controlled stream encoder and uploader

You can send us an empty SSD hard drive (60 GB is enough) on which we will pre-install the software (Debian Linux with some custom software). We will send it back to you, then you install it into the PC and then you are basically ready to do shows. Alternatively, if you feel comfortable in using the command line, you also could install everything yourself. There is a user manual available that has all the installation steps.

Tell me which option you prefer.

What would be the minimum internet connection speed required to run all that smoothly, considering that we can basically do both, connect separately or sit together at the same table (which was our initial plan), but all would go out through only one router?

6 kbytes/second upload and download for each remote participant (callers, or co-hosts), plus 6kbytes/second upload for the final radio stream. You could try http://beta.speedtest.net for testing your internet speed during various times of the day.

As for the audio mixing hardware in case of "one table", there is a pretty good mic here, so we could maybe try that (was working OK during Hangouts meetings), but if it turns out inadequate we'll equip ourselves with something appropriate (karaoke set comes to mind :) ).

If you already have a mixer which can output microphone audio via USB, we can try that. Otherwise, you should get the one I've been sharing earlier this thread.

 

[Human]

When you say "dedicated machine", what does that exactly mean? Used only for stream upload and nothing else in general, or used for streaming at the time of the show and for whatever in meantime, or ... ?

You could try your best unused (old, but not too old) laptop or desktop PC before buying something new. We'll see if it is enough by just trying it. It will run:

- an audio routing and mixing infrastructure
- Firefox, which will receive calls from callers and co-hosts, and mix their audio together (this requires some CPU power depeding on the number of callers)
- a remote-controlled stream encoder and uploader

You can send us an empty SSD hard drive (60 GB is enough) on which we will pre-install the software (Debian Linux with some custom software). We will send it back to you, then you install it into the PC and then you are basically ready to do shows. Alternatively, if you feel comfortable in using the command line, you also could install everything yourself. There is a user manual available that has all the installation steps.

Tell me which option you prefer.

There is an old(ish) HP notebook which ATM has dual boot (Win 7 & Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) but can be reinstalled to whatever needed (Debian 8, if I understood right). I'm pretty confident with Terminal/Konsole usage so just point me to the manual and I'll set the things up to test it.

What would be the minimum internet connection speed required to run all that smoothly, considering that we can basically do both, connect separately or sit together at the same table (which was our initial plan), but all would go out through only one router?

6 kbytes/second upload and download for each remote participant (callers, or co-hosts), plus 6kbytes/second upload for the final radio stream. You could try http://beta.speedtest.net for testing your internet speed during various times of the day.

Thanks, we'll test that.

As for the audio mixing hardware in case of "one table", there is a pretty good mic here, so we could maybe try that (was working OK during Hangouts meetings), but if it turns out inadequate we'll equip ourselves with something appropriate (karaoke set comes to mind :) ).

If you already have a mixer which can output microphone audio via USB, we can try that. Otherwise, you should get the one I've been sharing earlier this thread.

No, we don't have a USB audio setup, so we'll check it according to this post and this one.


Added: As far as I see, Ubuntu is Debian-like Linux distribution; would the setup work with that or we need "pure" Debian (8.4, latest "jessie" update according to their site)?

 

[Mikey]

There is an old(ish) HP notebook which ATM has dual boot (Win 7 & Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) but can be reinstalled to whatever needed (Debian 8, if I understood right). I'm pretty confident with Terminal/Konsole usage so just point me to the manual and I'll set the things up to test it.

Sounds good, let's try it. I've emailed you the Sott Radio Network Manual.

Added: As far as I see, Ubuntu is Debian-like Linux distribution; would the setup work with that or we need "pure" Debian (8.4, latest "jessie" update according to their site)?

Yeah, Ubuntu clones and builds upon Debian, but I'd prefer if we all would use the same OS. Yes, it should be Debian 8 Jessie.

 

[Deleted member 9511]

Yesterday, I felt inspired to do a program covering certain fundamentals of consciousness that keep urging further inquiry. I know a Himalayan yogi, whose teachings I follow through recordings of Q&A discourses given at retreat and on live telecast. I have always wanted to be the interviewer. I speak to him occasionally and intend to propose a project where the consciousness fundamentals I am considering could be explained from a yogic perspective, but couched in contemporary language and simple parables. The idea is not necessarily to produce more and more recorded dialogues, but to engage in a process of discovery with this yogi as a guide, much in the same way the Cs have been a guide. I find this yogi's teachings to strangely complement the Cs - on the surface not at all but with some care the similarities and synchronicities are hard to ignore. I have no desire for this project other than to do it out of a love for the topic and this particular yogi. I have no expectations as to the journey or the destination of such a project. It had no occurred to me in what way, but I also felt a strong intuition that SoTT would somehow be involved in this project. Today, I came to the PC to think about it and maybe write something to this yogi about my ideas.

Today, I see this thread. Very interesting. It had not occurred to me to do a radio show, though I am an experienced announcer and public speaker.

Maybe you could give us an outline of what you would discuss in, say, 30 mins or an hour?

I will be in contact with this yogi soon, when I will discuss the possibilities with him and gauge his interest. I will reply once we have spoken.

 

[grini]

Mics

We have Sennheiser e840 condenser microphones (XLR). These may not be available any more (haven't looked much though). Any equivalent XLR condenser mics should work, but don't go overboard with the price. Lower priced ones should be enough, especially if you tweak the equalizer.

We also have foam thingies on them to pre-dampen breathing noise a bit. The mics are mounted in shock absorbers (something similar to this) which are mounted on flexible arms (similar to this).

We are now checking condenser microphones on eBay and we would like to know what you think about several of them. Are they good enough to be used for the show?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Audio-Professional-Condenser-Microphone-Mic-Studio-Sound-Recording-w-Shock-Mount-/291714984506

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BM800-Condenser-Microphone-Professional-Cardioid-Cable-Vocal-Audio-Recording-MIC-/231440037179

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-USB-Audio-Cardioid-Condenser-Studio-Sound-Recording-Microphone-Mic-w-Stand-/381577236783

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Pro-Audio-Condenser-Dynamic-Sound-Studio-Recording-Microphone-MIC-W-Shock-Mount-/221850619785


Thanks!

 

[Human]

Mixer

We use this one for our two radio studios: Behringer Xenyx X1204 USB http://www.amazon.de/Behringer-1204FX-Mischpult-USB-Audio-Interface-12-Kanal/dp/B0039PPW60

Product website with data sheet: http://www.music-group.com/Categories/Behringer/Mixers/Analog-Mixers/X1204USB/p/P0A0H

In general, there are some tricky issues with USB audio routing between PC and mixers, which are not always straightfoward to solve. But this mixer is guaranteed to work because it can 1) put USB input on the headphones, and 2) send microphone audio via USB at the same time.

Managed to find exactly this one, second hand but barely used, for a reasonable price. So, this -> checked.

Headphone output

The mixer has only 1 headphone output. If you have several hosts sitting on a table, you'll also need a headphone multipier so that everyone hears the same audio. We have this one: http://www.amazon.de/Samson-SASAMP-4-Kanal-Stereo-Kopfh%C3%B6rer-Verst%C3%A4rker/dp/B0002ORPU2 . It works with 6.35 mm stereo Phone connectors. You could use 6-to-3 mm Phone adapters if you have different headphones.

Would this one do the job?
http://ledaudio.hr/shop/prodaja/poja-alo-za-slu-alice-hpa4--4-kanala--ld-systems

Dynamic range compressor

This is optional. You need it only if you want to filter out background noise that you cannot avoid (like a busy road outside). We have this one: http://www.amazon.de/Samson-S-com-SA-SCOM4-4-Channel-Compressor/dp/B0002D0672 But the Behringer mixer has a built-in compressor that is lower in quality, but should do the job just fine in the beginning.

This one is a bit tricky coz there is a lot of background noise here (big park outside with lot of children during day-time and occasional teenagers during night-time) and almost no sound isolation, so we'd need something to damp that.
Would this one be OK (also second hand, used very little, but 6y old, and for only 1/3 of commercial price)?
http://www.provox.hr/audio/proizvod.aspx?IDProizvoda=228

 

[mkrnhr]

Have you considered the "audio-technica AT2020 USB"? It has very good reviews.

 

[Human]

Have you considered the "audio-technica AT2020 USB"? It has very good reviews.

It's a bit expensive for our budget, and we need at least two of them, in addition to XLR plugins to connect them to mixer.
For almost the same price there is a whole 3-part mic studio set, in the shop:
http://ledaudio.hr/shop/prodaja/mikrofon--i-ni-studijski-trodijelni-mikrofonski-set--ld-systems