Feb 21 2005
♫ Mud Radio
My webcast experiment continues…
I’ve changed the name simply to Mud Radio (which could also change). I’ve also decided to remove the roots reggae music from the playlist during the latter half of the day (after Jim & Esther’s daily appearance on Whole Wheat Radio) when more people are listening. I’m doing this because I’ve noticed that when a listener tunes in for only 30 seconds or so, they do so when a reggae song is playing. My reaction to this is one of dismay, because the reggae selections in the playlist are part of a music form which I think is one of the purest I’ve ever encountered, more spiritual and more feeling than even bluegrass… Reggae and bluegrass players are masters of intricate rhythm. There is more soul in two notes of a reggae bass and a single riff from a bluegrass manadolin than all the rock bands in the world put together. The similarity between the two forms of music is astounding to me. Oh, well.
So for the 2 listeners who regularly tune in, here’s the new programming schedule:
— Anything goes from 8:00am to 3:00pm (EST).
— Only non-RIAA (or independent) music from 3:00pm to whenever I go to bed.
Jody’s also done some good work on the main Mud Radio page, which now displays the current song in the playlist, with a few more goodies to be added soon. Thanks, Jody.
And the music library is continually being updated.
54 Responses to “♫ Mud Radio”. Leave a Reply.
When is hardcore trance hour?
Yeah, I’m with Pender (surprisingly) on this one :)
Was just thinking about another source of what I think might be very interesting music to play. http://www.archive.org … lots of live concerts etc. I can’t afford the bandwidth to download and don’t want to do a huge download only to have to break an hour long set into individual tracks. Anyway, if your setup allows, I’ll bet there are some really primo live concerts on archive.org …
Speaking of bandwidth: my ISP capped my download limit at 60 GB per month, which is huge, but still a limit. I’ll post my server’s use soon.
Phillip: you should check your internet provider’s limit. Who is your provider? I can look it up.
My provider is Aliant, and I don’t think I have a limit.
Thanks for the archive page, Jim. Wow. I’ve heard all of two of the bands in that huge list. I wonder if they’re arhived by genre; that might make it easier.
The webcast will be down until Friday evening (Feb. 25). I’m making some major overhauls, installing some new software, figuring out how it works, etc (and I have other things to worry about besides this webcast). Sorry, but it can’t be helped.
The MUD RADIO stream is up again. But I’ll be experimenting with some software and WinAmp plug-ins from now until tomorrow evening, so although it may be up now, could easily be down in 5 minutes, and then back up for all night. Ain’t no tellin’.
I installed a WinAmp plugin that removed the gaps between songs, but when I did anything on my computer, say, check my email or any damn thing, the stream would drop. So I got rid of the plugin. I’d like to get rid of the large gaps between songs (without having to re-encode all my MP3s), but it looks like I’m stuck with them.
Yeah, Winamp plug-in hell. I musta goofed with 30-40 of ‘em before I finally settled on the ones I use now. They tend to be the most unreliable thing about the whole setup and I know my plugins are responsible for weird Winamp and freezeups. What can you do?
I’m not in any way trying to be secretive about the plugins I use. I really should just take a zillion screen snapshots and document it all. But that’s too much work right now. And if I throw them all at you at once, if you’re anything like me, you’ll get overloaded and just say ’screw it all’.
So, here’s another one. It *may* help with the silence gap between songs. It may not. It is definitely the most problematic plugin I run. I don’t believe it’s supported any longer. It’s a bastard to tweak to where you finally get it working the way you want. But it’s better than trying to use 5 different plugins.
It’s called SqrSort Advanced Crossfading. I have v1.75. It’s an output (vs general purpose) plugin. It is the 1st plugin in the output chain and then sends its output to the Shoutcast plugin. It has gap-killer logic (which I don’t use) and crossfading between tracks (which I do use). You set it up, then in the DSP tab, put the Shoutcast plugin that actually sends out your stream. If I were setting it for the first time, I wouldn’t turn on crossfading or anything else. I’d simply install it and get the music playing through it and streaming correctly. Then I’d start turning on crossfade. One of the nits is that when you adjust crossfading, the player will frequently crash a few hours later and any changes you made will be lost. So when I initially set it up, I would change crossfades etc. then shut the player down, then bring it back up so my changes were saved. Sorry if all that seems overwhelming, but that’s life in the webcast world.
If you end up finding a better plugin that works well for you, I’d love to know what it is! I don’t have all the answers by a long shot and would love to know better solutions that someone else has figured out and tested!
Er, SqrSOFT not SqrSORT. A search on google or the Winamp plugin page should find it.
Yeah, Jim, that’s the one that messed up. I keep getting audio “blinks” every time I do more than one thing on my PC. I lowered the buffer setting as low as it could go, but still no dice. I got 512 RAM, which should be enough. Frig it.
UPDATE: I’ll be playing NON-RIAA BLUES all night long. Cuz I got the blues.
I was going to get on the mic and talk about it, but then Jim took off before I was setting the levels on my mixer. (Sigh.) Man, I’m so sad even my tears are crying. Zero listeners…
I promise I won’t do this too often (respond to you on-air) but I did just hear “Damn, lost my one listener!” I so know that feeling! But I was just switching between Winamp and Jetaudio. I’m here! And will be for about 50 minutes. Man, it’s nice to hear something (and a more focused playlist) that doesn’t happen on WWR anymore - if it ever did.
Oh, bummer on the plugin. Yeah, you could throw more memory at it and that would probably do it but then we’re buying bass boats when all we really wanted was to go fishing for some bluegills. If I think of anything I’ll let you know. (I’m still running Winamp 2.91 … doesn’t version 5 have built in crossfading and gap killing - I dunno but seemed to remember seeing that when I downloaded a version for a test machine???)
Oh man, this is so COOL to be on the listening end! Sorry about your mood - but you’re making my day! :-) Obviously, a step to realtime interaction is to set up an ICQ chat (do you have one and I missed it?) on some public server. It’d keep your blog entries from getting cluttered like this. As a listener, it’s pretty tempting to write back at you while you’re talking! :-)
BTW, I’m not rebroadcasting you. You’re free with no worries about what you want to say or do. :-)
Just a thought that you’ve almost certainly got set correctly, but just to make sure, in Device Manager, click Properties for your IDE ATA/ATAPI controller and make sure they’re all set to DMA mode and not PIO mode. I don’t know why, but occasionally mine get changed by the system and I have to set them back to DMA mode. PIO mode will kill just about any audio/video when you try to do anything else on the computer.
And just this pain-in-the-butt nit for Jody .. on the status page, http://steelwhitetable.org/pict/sc-small.gif (the image) doesn’t exist on your server so it gives the big red X for images that can’t be found.
No, I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about with the mo-fo this and god-d that. ROTFL! Double ROTFL! This is great man … I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Yeah, go eat man! Go eat! :-)
At one time I really hoped someone would set up a huge server that indie artists could upload their music to so webcasters could get it for airplay. But it’s never worked well, MP3.com being the best example. I’d love to make my MP3 library available for you to download selected stuff, but that just insures the same shit gets passed around. So now I’m more interested in rebroadcasting webcasts like yours because then I’m hearing stuff like Elizabeth Cotten that I don’t have in the library. Anytime you want to set up a solid time to do a show for rebroadcast, just let me know. Live concert or anything. Just say the word.
APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE, APPLAUSE for the live concert! I wish Esther were here but she’s wandering around somewhere down the street. Hi Jenny!!!
Hey Jim, doing yesterday’s dishes and making supper right now. But, yeah, simulcasting a show — I’m up for that. I’ll make sure to expand my bandwidth and block everyone else out, so you’d have a good quality stream to work with… Something burning! Talk to you later.
Gotta go … thanks for a great afternoon of blues and personal radio!
MUD RADIO. The rest of the night will be random non-RIAA tracks.
> And just this pain-in-the-butt nit for Jody .. on the status page,
What status page? Mud Radio’s? I don’t see any X, plus I don’t have a “pict” folder on this server. Phillip’s up to something…
Phillip: you screwing around with files you shouldn’t be?
Jody - the What’s Playing / Who’s Listening page at http://steelwhitetable.org/mud....._stats.php … the image at the very bottom of the page.
Jim: You’re STILL using IE, aren’t ya? No obvious error showed up using Firefox. It’s fixed. Thanks.
Jim (again), under the Input tab in my “SHOUTcast Source” window, in the Input box I have selected “22040Hz, Mono,” but do you know it’d be just as well to set it for 44 kHz — because who cares what the input is? The stream is being encoded at 22kbps no matter what the “input” is.
I ask this because I’m thinking a 44kHz input will give me better sound, even if the stream is still going out at 22kbps.
MUD RADIO. Yeh, I’m learning how to create playlists!
I’m going out for awhile, but while I’m gone I’ll be playing only folk music, both RIAA and non-RIAA recordings.
The stream may be up and down today, but right now it’s up.
I read somewhere that shoutcast only accepts certain User Agent strings to avoid stream rippers, so the rippers usually spoof a UA string.
I currently appear to you as “xine/1-rc5″ but I was wondering if I could patch this to, say “Dave Royal” - just as an experiment.
Is there a UA whitelist or blacklist on your system?
It’s fairly easy to change the User Agent in browsers, so I suspect media players have a similar dynamic setting you could change.
Shoutcast has the ability to ban users, which is what I think you’re referring to by “UA whitelist or blacklist”.
Yes - but what’s in the list? For example would it reject “My Name” but accept “xine(My Name)”.
One reason I’m interested is how else can you identify individual listeners with dynamic IPs? There are no cookies with media players.
And geobytes is inaccurate - I’m not in London ;-)
I’m glad Jody answered that, because I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
NOTE: I wouldn’t be webcasting, podcasting, blogging, or any of it, if it wasn’t for Jody. I tell Jody what I’d like to try, and he sets it up for me. The only thing I’ve done is design the Mud Radio page. I mess with the Winamp and Shoutcast settings from time to time, and I had to figure out how to configure my wireless router, but that stuff is nothing compared to all the work Jody’s done behind the scenes.
“…User Agent strings to avoid stream rippers, so the rippers usually spoof a UA string.” I don’t know what any of that means. I’m glad Jody’s here so I don’t have to bother learning any of it. I wouldn’t have the patience. (And Jody’s a lot smarter than me.)
Anyway, a big hello to my listener in Brooklyn. When I came home today and saw that FOUR listeners (all at once), I nearly had a stroke. I don’t think I’d ever want more than 10 though.
“We may not be big, but we’re small.” — The Vinyl Café.
Hi.Phillip.
The music’s good - that’s the main thing.
Geobytes provides an approximate location; sometimes it’s exact, sometimes it’s not. Jim in Talkeetna, Alaska, shows up as Wasilla, which I think is the biggest city/town closest to Talkeenta — or it’s where Jim’s ISP is headquartered.
I’m going to a concert tonight - Martin Carthy. One of England’s foremost folkies. Should be good.
> For example would it reject “My Name” but accept “xine(My Name)”.
I think it can only ban by IP address. Shoutcast keeps a log of who connects: their IP, User Agent, how long they’ve been connected… the stats page displays the information from that log (an XML file).
Thanks. I’m off to eat before the concert (it’s 18:20 here).
Thanks for the music.
Bye
Mud Radio. At 2pm EST, I’m switching over to non-RIAA music, minus the roots reggae.
At this moment, I’m listening to Jim on WWR read from some plant book — while continuing to play music from my non-RIAA library. That is, I’M supplying the background music to his rant. Which totally changes (and improves in this case) the mood of his rant. Jim doesn’t know it, but the Preservation Hall Jazz Band is providing the background to his reading. This is good… Too bad I only have on listener.
Damn. This keeps happening. I get someone listening for something like 4-5 hours. Then I switch to WWR, and I lose them. ZERO listeners.
Anyone know if it’s possible to webcast and listen to something else at the same time?
That’s what sucks about this set up. If I do any other audio while webcasting, it either has to go out on the webcast, or I have to shut the webcast down. Can’t do ‘em both at the same time.
To my Brooklyn listener: When I do tune into WWR at 3pm EST, it’s only for an hour.
Mud Radio. The webcast will is going hi-fi stereo for the rest of the night (all non-RIAA music), just to see what happens. Which means I’ll be webcasting at the same frequency and kbps as the WWR high-speed connection. My apologies to dial-up listeners.
Please let me know if there’s any buffering once you connect to the stream. If I can webcast a higher quality stream, I will (though I don’t think my system can handle it).
I’ve set the max. listeners to 5, so as to prevent buffering.
Update: I got a report of some buffering, so I lowered the bandwidth a bit. Still in stereo though.
Another update: It was set for stereo, but when I picked up the stream on my laptop, it was in mono. So I’ve returned it to the usual setting.
Damn it. Mis-typed the code and lost my message. Buggerit.
Bubba Ho-Tep is a good one to fall asleep to. Don’t get me wrong, I just love Bruce Campbell to bits, but this movie was too weird. Saved! is fantastic. Donnie Darko is freaky but good. The original Shall We Dance is worth it. And if you’re going to the Blockbuster on Queen St. across from Sobey’s, they have The Castle, which is one of the best Australian movies ever made.
And do you have ICQ or some equivalent, or have you considered setting up a chat interface?
Great set of music this afternoon. Keep it up!
As far as adjusting the stream’s characteristics, I’ve found that with JetCast, the broadcast must be stopped and restarted for any changes to take.
Reno, you’re probably right. I’d have to disconnect and restart the stream. Screw that… I was testing it out earlier and it looks like the current setting is about all my system can take.
I think Jenny’s getting impatient, wants me to make a decision about what to do tonight. I might have to leave in a minute…
I’m listening! Mud Radio is looking good!
Southampton, England! I’m Gnomalarta on WWR.
Evil mummies!
I’m so glad you enjoyed the movie! You’re very welcome :)
Saved! is almost a parody of ultra-Christian teenagers, but then it turns on itself and looks at the movement from the outside. It has a positive message, and is uplifting without being preachy. Michael Stipe (of R.E.M.) was involved in the production, and Macaulay Culkin does an excellent job.
Mud Radio for Sat. February 26: I just created a 5-hour playlist called Phillip’s Whole Wheat. It’s a selection of my favourites from the non-RIAA recordings I have in my library. Most of the songs for now are a little on the quiet side, and there are some reggae songs, but not many, and they’re “nice” and easy to digest. Music for a quiet Saturday afternoon.
Phillip, I love your selection of favorites. I have heard some of these artists on Whole Wheat Radio, but never in such an excellent concentration. I am not much of a reggae fan I’m afraid, because I haven’t had much exposure to it, but the occasional reggae song that comes up is, as you said, easy to digest, and sounds better than any reggae I’ve heard. Your classical music selections, while sparse, provide nice calm interludes. Again, you chose well. I don’t have time to tune in during the week, but I will tune in next weekend if this is what I can expect to hear. Thanks for the enjoyable music.
Holy shit, Bruce, thanks. I’m glad at least one listener gets and appreciates what I was aiming for when I created that playlist. As for the reggae, I admire your tolerance. (As I write this, Joe Higgs’s version of the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band” is playing on my webcast. Sweet. Uplifting.) Too many people can’t tolerate music that comes from outside their immediate culture, let alone develop an appreciation for it. I’m not trying to make a reggae fan out of everyone, but it’s nice to hear someone say, “I heard a reggae song on your webcast and DIDN’T tune out.” Thanks.
So far today, I’ve only peaked with 3 listeners; I guess you were one of them. As I write this message, nobody is listening, so I’ll probably just let the random 5-hour playlist repeat until sometime tonight, whenever I feel like mixing things up and getting behind the mic.
Thanks for your message. (I’m thinking about framing it.)
My girlfriend has to do some audio work on the computer, so we’re shutting down the stream for the next hour or so. (Nobody’s listening, but you never know, someone might drop by for the daily Mud Radio fix and won’t know what’s going on.)
The stream may be up and down tonight.
Townes! Yea!
Townes Van Zandt it is then! Seeing how no one’s listening anyway, we’re going to play Townes Van Zandt for the rest of the night.
Until I get my own message board set up, Mud Radio comments will continue here.