Been asked to setup a School Radio Station

[farquea]

I've been tasked with setting up a school radio station. I've been given some advice from a member of staff's friend who runs an internet radio station. I need to do some costing for it so want to check a few things and wondered if anyone could help.

 

• Would we need 1 or 2 computers, ive been told to get 2 but unsure what each would actually do.
  
• Licenses, ive been told about PRS and PPL licenses but been told by this contact that we could buy a license from swcast.net for $10 a month. Also once you have the licenses, do we need to download music and pay for it or what?
  
• This guy also reccomended software called samsbroadcaster which im told is £200. I thought we would be able to get all software for free, is this the case?
  
• Finally when it comes to hosting, instead of paying for this service would it be feasible to host it in school, especially as to begin with it would only be students listening.
  

 

It is worth noting we are just setting this up to start with as a basic trial so we just want to be able to queue up some songs, podcasts etc and then also broadcast live as well. To begin with the idea is to have the link embedded into a player on our VLE.

 

Will this be easy to setup?

[featured_spectre]

right, BUY a fully licenced version of SAM Broadcaster, excellent program, you can add in your own adverts and such like, and an entire playlist for it to go through, and you can pause the music, live talking etc. Its great!

 

The free version of SAM broadcaster throws in adverts between songs (every 5 songs I believe) which you CANNOT stop.

[farquea]

ok but with us just starting out, can we not achieve anything at all similar through a combination of winamp/shoutcast etc which are free?

[sister_annex]

Would we need 1 or 2 computers, ive been told to get 2 but unsure what each would actually do.

 

1 would be for the actual radio playout system (the box that stores your music) the other would be a more beafy box that would provide your hosting (i presume)

 

Licenses, ive been told about PRS and PPL licenses but been told by this contact that we could buy a license from swcast.net for $10 a month. Also once you have the licenses, do we need to download music and pay for it or what?

 

Most schools have a PRS/PPL License - I would speak to whoever would looks after that (our finance bod does ours) as for music... it is up to you to provide, the license gives you right to publicly broadcast the music only. No music will be proivded.

 

This guy also reccomended software called samsbroadcaster which im told is £200. I thought we would be able to get all software for free, is this the case?

 

Sams is an all in one solution that provides a playout system and internet hosting more detail is here SpacialAudio Solutions, LLC - SAM Broadcaster - Internet Radio Automation Software

 

Free software for radio is few and far between and somewhat less advanced than the paid for software and services. that is not to say that it would not be of use but I do not know of any...

 

Finally when it comes to hosting, instead of paying for this service would it be feasible to host it in school, especially as to begin with it would only be students listening.

 

I have little knowledge of Internet radio i have only ever setup hardwired (100v line) and Broadcast (am/fm) but i can imagine one thing that would need to be checked would be the load that streaming audio would place on your network infrastructure.

 

It is worth noting we are just setting this up to start with as a basic trial so we just want to be able to queue up some songs, podcasts etc and then also broadcast live as well. To begin with the idea is to have the link embedded into a player on our VLE.

 

Will this be easy to setup?

 

In short a trial may be best carried out with a company that would be will ing to set one up for you - I have dealt with the following Synergy School Radio - School radio manufacture, installation and support and Welcome To Schoolradio.co.uk

 

HTH

 

Mark

[farquea]

thanks Mark.

 

We did look at having an external company come in but the money they quoted was a little too much so we decided that between me (I.T) the music tech and a member of staffs contact who has his own internet radio, that we could get it setup oursevles for a fraction of the cost. So i was just hoping to get some advice really.

 

I was hoping someone who has done this already would be able to advise what spec computers we'd need in order to host it in school and whether it would be realistic or not when considering bandwith consumption etc.

[sister_annex]

In terms of PCs the more HD Space the better - and the usual lots of RAM and a chunky CPU. I would go for XP Pro over win7 mainly due to the lower resource usage between the two.

 

For streaming your man may be able to tell more, i know it can be quite intensive on RAM and processor E.G 25/30 simultaneous connections per 1Gb Ram (not including OS)

 

as for bandwidth as long as you dont start streaming High Quality i.e. > 128Kbps (or even 96Kbps) Audio and you're not doing other network intensive jobs such as ghosting I doubt it would be a majore impact unless you're expecting 100's of simultaneous streams

 

Have you considered getting the students to record their segments having the music Tech edit them into a 'show' or multi topic piece and then just making the files available for download from your VLE??

 

M

[farquea]

We have a load of old Dell GX60's which are 2ghz Celerons with 512mb RAM in them. So was hoping to use those rather than the better pc's we have in school which we are running low on. I do have a couple of spare dual Xeon CPU servers though which could be used for hosting i guess if it really needed something that powerful?

 

The teacher whose idea this is wants it as a "Radio Station" so just uploading pod casts to the VLE wont float his boat. He wants people to tune in and out through the day with a continous stream of music or learning material being broadcast during the day.

[danbuntu]

it's not a fully 24/7 streaming service but it might be interesting to look at;

 

School Video | School Radio | Free School Websites | Radiowaves

[dhicks]

The teacher whose idea this is wants it as a "Radio Station"

 

We had a discussion about this a couple of years ago - you could actually make a low-power FM-broadcast station, just around your school, by placing lots of small FM transmitters around the place - the kind of things that are used to play the output of car stereos to people's personal radios. Then you could transmit a show at lunchtime or whenever.

 

If you're not transmitting live, but are just streaming pre-recorded material, then that's pretty pointless and you should do a podcast instead. The whole point of the Internet is that it enables point-to-point communication, shoe-horning last century's broadcast model into it is rather missing the point.

 

--

David Hicks

[rlweb]

Sam is way to complicated for a school radio. I've used rsplayer its much easier and cheaper.

 

Radio Server Player 2 - Simple. Professional. Affordable.

[sister_annex]

We have a load of old Dell GX60's which are 2ghz Celerons with 512mb RAM in them. So was hoping to use those rather than the better pc's we have in school which we are running low on. I do have a couple of spare dual Xeon CPU servers though which could be used for hosting i guess if it really needed something that powerful?

 

Sounds Good, i would up the Dells to 1Gb RAM though

 

Low power FM Transmitters wont work - sorry i'll rephrase it will work but you will have to pay OFCOM a ridiculous amount of money (and go through reams of paperwork) just to get licensed - even the low power ones, in enough quantity require a license.

 

The link from @rlweb looks like it will do what you need - and it's cheap

[Willott]

I've been doing some research recently and found 2 possible playout/automation systems - one created by the Student Radio station at Warwick Uni Radio Warwick - Digital Playout Software, and the other a quite sophisticated one called Rivendell Rivendell Project Home Page. Both are either opensource or free. I've been trying to work out the best input/output path to reduce the chances of silence being broadcast for long periods of time (with the Rivendell software you can route the output to an input on the soundcard, which would mean that you could use the input as a source for your external broadcast taking input from a desk, and when a certain amount of silence is detected you could force it to switch the stream to the output of the playout system [ie if a student forgets to put the computer fader up on the desk before leaving]). Seems that school radio is something being considered by a lot of schools currently.

[dhicks]

it will work but you will have to pay OFCOM a ridiculous amount of money (and go through reams of paperwork) just to get licensed - even the low power ones, in enough quantity require a license.

 

Drat - what, even the £5 a time ones offf eBay? I thought (from the thread a couple of years ago) the legislation covering FM licensing was being reviewed - did that just never get done?

 

--

David Hicks

[brookesandrew]

One of my primary schools in Coventry has a radio station which streams to the internet and also over their wifi network to wifi radio receivers.

They use an Apple Mac and software I think called DeeJay (although I would have looked for FreeBSD/Linux/MS Windows based solution, but they had a grant and external help from creative partnerships) , they also needed a licence of some description I think to cover the music rights.

I'm at that school again on Thursday so will find out the full spec and what licences were required and PM you the details at the end of the week if you are interested.

Here is a link to their blog and podcasts Super Star Radio

Andy

[sister_annex]

@dhicks; it was, and as far as i know the personal ones can be used, but as a school is classed as a commercial building even the smaller ones require a license.

 

It does seem that grants and funding are the way to go, we had one company in who wanted nearly £15,000 for the priviledge of setting up a school radio. Lets just say that the idea was soon put on the back burner surely to be forgotten at some later date...

[farquea]

One of my primary schools in Coventry has a radio station which streams to the internet and also over their wifi network to wifi radio receivers.

They use an Apple Mac and software I think called DeeJay (although I would have looked for FreeBSD/Linux/MS Windows based solution, but they had a grant and external help from creative partnerships) , they also needed a licence of some description I think to cover the music rights.

I'm at that school again on Thursday so will find out the full spec and what licences were required and PM you the details at the end of the week if you are interested.

Here is a link to their blog and podcasts Super Star Radio

Andy

 

That would be a big help if you could thanks. I've just spent 2 hours looking at licensing, and im only a little clearer on just exactly what we need and how much it will cost.

[OllieC]

Sorry if I'm repeating anything else that's been mentioned. I'll just go throuh what we've got in our radio studio and stuff that it's been used for in the past...

 

Fairly out of date website can be found here ATR

 

Our setup includes a baaasic Sempron machine running Sam Party DJ with a a fairly decent sound card acquired from music and a dual monitor config. There's an ancient P4 RM machine hidden behind the desk running win2k with Real Encoder (external streaming through the LEA Helix server) and Windows Media Encoder. Those two machines are hooked up to a KVM. We've got a 1tb network drive and another 1tb USB drive connected to the network drive.... the network drive is meant to backup to the USB drive (doesn't atm ) which also provides us with a more portable copy of the music if doing stuff at sports day or suchlike.

 

There's a Mac Mini as well for general use or admin.

 

We've got a Yamaha O1V96 mixer, dual CD player, 3 Rode NT1 mics (2 used). JBL control 1 studio monitors and Behringer headphone amp/splitter and audio splitter - the audio splitter sends the main mix to the streaming machine and back to the playout machine's onboard input for recording (Audacity or Cool Edit/Adobe Audition). I forget what the amp we use is but it's reasonably decent, acquired from performing arts. Also recently had speakers installed in the large open atrium that lead directly back to the studio.

 

We have a keyword text number (ATR + message to 60300) from http://www.itagg.com/ which I believe is £50 a year but also offers things like polls and suchlike, quite nice.

 

For future use we also have a 6m FM antenna directly above the studio with cable leading back to the studio - when it's used, transmission gear will be hired due to 2 week a year RSL restrictions, cost of equipment and technical expertise that comes with equipment when hiring.

 

The school has run 3 RSL broadcasts before using this setup.

 

Obviously this is quite an expensive set up, most stuff being bought over the years as funding has been made available. It can be done just as effectively for a lot less. I like Sam Party DJ (we've never found a need for Broadcaster) and the streaming provided by our LEA seems pretty good. I'd recommend having some kind of mixer in there, even if it's just a cheap 4 channel Behringer job as it's considerably easier for students to have a physical means of controlling levels imo. Definitely two computers as well although they don't need to be anything that fancy imo.

 

We can broadcast on the school tannoy system when required, for parents evening and suchlike. Just got a spare thin client in the cab with all the tannoy gear in. Streaming doesn't get any simpler than Windows Media Encoder imo.

 

Errr, also use a few Marantz solid state recorders that have a Sennheiser mic in each case.

PRS and PPL licenses as well.

 

We've previously taken basic kit (portable PA, laptop, small mixer, music drive and a radio mic from performing arts) to events outside the school- primaries we work with, sports day and also set up equipment on our field for things like sport relief mile. We once employed someone to work with the primary schools and the radio station, some really good stuff was produced which also generated positive interest from local press. Also in the past, trips have been run for students involved to BRMB and BBC Birmingham.

 

BBC School Report is a good project to get a school radio station embedded in the curriculum. You even get a BBC mentor who visits and helps out. I ran this project with an English teacher in my school for the first time this year and it was reasonably successful.

 

Things like revision podcasts by teachers are a really nice way of using it as an educational platform... podcasts using the equipment also form good lesson tasks.

 

pixx xD http://i48.tinypic.com/330tx82.jpg

http://i50.tinypic.com/2wfihpx.jpg

 

Sorry for launching into all that waffle, another local school has a similar kind of setup as well.

(:

Edited June 22, 2010 by OllieC

[p858snake]

Who will be listening and when? if its just for students at lunches and such just put speakers around canteen or such and not worry about web boardcasting.

[Tricky_Dicky]

We set up a system with the help of Psquared. They do a school radio kit for about £6500 which is all set up, installed and trained. It is then sent around the school on the network so everyone can listen to it on their PCs and also streamed to some outdoor speakers.

 

Well worth the money in my opinion as the children get a huge amount of enjoyment out of it and I could just let them do the work otherwise it is just another piece of equipment that I have to support.

[OllieC]

I was met with strong resistance from SMT about it being played in the canteen - Creates the wrong atmosphere for the time of day apparently, plus, they don't want people loitering once they've eaten. :@ Likewise, there's always been resistence to playing in the atrium area as well but there's less of a valid reason against that, that they can produce, lol.

[NPSTech]

I discovered this thread rather late but I hope this contributed information will be of help the others.

 

I was also charged with starting a radio station for the K-12 school district that I'm employed in as an audio/video/computer and electronics technician. One of our high schools were renovated not only with rooms designated for a future television / media center but with a two studio suite for a radio station.

 

No plan was in place to put this all together. Having been lucky enough to become involved in my own community's high school radio station some 35+ years earlier along with the fact that I had gone on to engineer several local full power AM and FM stations I had the background to pull this off. It was up to me to develop a plan and become the guiding beacon.

 

Being a stone's throw from New York City the radio spectrum is crowded to the point where it would be impossible to obtain a license for an LPFM station - the smallest licensed station grade available to date. I also wanted the students to have the opportunity to learn about "real" broadcast radio and not just webcasting. I decided to go with Part 15 radio broadcasting. The Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Part 15 regulations allows the legal use of certain low power radio devices without the need for a license - one common device most anybody can relate to are the little FM transmitters used to broadcast an iPod to a car's FM radio.

 

The radio station placed in our high school took a three-fold approach. I used a free radiating (i.e, antenna-based) AM transmitter on top of the school's roof. I also engineered an FM station using something called "radiating" or "leaky" coaxial cable strung in the ceiling of the building and connected to a special low-power FM transmitter. Both transmitter's signal are confined to the campus grounds but allows the station to be "on the radio." The third approach is that the station supplies audio to the school's video bulletin board channel on the building's television system. Lastly, the station will also webcast with limited hours due to budget constraints. For the more complex systems like the ones I've used you may have to find a local broadcast engineer to assist your school as most won't have the test and/or measurement equipment to insure your campus station's signals are within legal limits.

 

While I had the knowledge to do all of this thanks to my extensive background in broadcast engineering I also sought out existing resources to assist me with this project. Unfortunately the resources I located mentioned nothing about implementing this type of project in an academic setting and of those resources I found they were either poorly organized or of questionable merit. My work with building the campus station allowed me to "roll my own" resources which I've shared to assist others in their quest.

 

CampusBroadcaster.net is the site I started to compile all the various resources i compiled along the way to help other K-12, college and university educational institutions build a legal, low-power, Part 15 compliant campus-limited radio station. The site includes references not only for applicable FCC law but also equipment and program sources. There are station profiles demonstrating the various uses of Part 15 broadcasting for hobbyists and businesses in addition to campus radio applications. An online community forum allows members to share tips and tricks as well as ask for advice on building or improving their station.

 

I've centralized all the resources together under the name HobbyBroadcaster.net but there's plenty of info for the campus broadcast enthusiast. Hopefully this information will be of use for the next person desiring to building a campus radio station.