DJ Garybaldy - The Only sound you need

Every now and then we get new users registering on the RadioDJ forums who start kicking off because the software isn't doing what they want it to do within 5 minutes of installing it. Woah! Back up and take stock for a couple of minutes! It takes time and PATIENCE to get to grips with what RadioDJ is capable of. People had tried helping a recent user who threw his toys out of the pram on the forums about track rotations. When I first installed RadioDJ way back in 2010 it took me a while to figure out the optimal rotation setttings. When you program a rotation you need to make sure there are enough songs in the category and subcategory for the rotation to pick from. In newer versions of RadioDJ if you click on EDIT at the right hand side of your rotation entry it tells you how many files you have available for that rotation to pick from. Its not exactly rock science but th

I keep getting hassle for my views about RadioDJ FREE radio playout software. When will you start to giving independent advice instead of giving the same old opinion everytime someone asks a question about a playout system. I'm getting really really TIRED of people spouting BILE at me on forums about my meerest mention of RadioDJ. I suggest RadioDJ as an alternative to other badly coded radio automation solutions and there are lots of awful radio playout solutions. Its NOT my fault paid for radio playout solutions such as SAM Broadcaster Pro don't work as advertised IS IT? NO the fault lies with the often LAZY software developers programming badly coded software solutions. I've paid for software & then found it didn't work as advertised and then I've ran into a brick wall when trying to get support or refund. Spacial Audio are the worst company when it comes to cheating people out of a refund for their badly coded software s

Zara Radio Free Version: Why Bother? This is another piece of radio software that I tried to use before I discovered the benefits of RadioDJ I had to switch to another program Zararadio would crash after 20hrs of use. Zararadio was another piece of software I couldn't get to work properly. Even after RTFM. The crossfading was awful & I would always end up with lots of dead air between songs. The sound quality was poor with some songs sounding distorted even though they sounded OK on other players. It would frequently repeat songs & artists as it didn't have any playlist rotation rules built in. It wasn't much kop when it came to leaving it unattended to automate my music. I would wake up and look at the PC to find it wouldn't be playing anything. You could never call Zara radio professional radio software... It's a horrid piece of software to even try and run a radio stream with. Infact we'd go as far as saying Zararadio is nothing more

Spacial Audio Solutions like to play the part of a BIG corporate company when it comes to their software and support when in reality they are just a small time software company based out of an office in California. The support team is staffed by people who have NEVER used the software and who usually send the wrong replies. The Customer Support Manager is RUDE to users on a regular basis (Why he's still in a job I don't know) Spacial Audio may well have been worth $59,000,000 based on the amount of copies of SAM Broadcaster they have claimed to have sold worldwide. We doubt they're even worth a quarter of that these days, According to a recent Google search Spacial Audio turnover is rumoured to be around $5M a year. Yes Spacial Audio Solutions may well have sold software to over 150 countries BUT that was years ago when there was NO viable alternative. SMART radio station owners don't want to pay out $$$ for software anymore

Its 7 years since Radionomy bought Winamp & Shoutcast for $5M from AOL. In that 7 years there have been a plethora of Shoutcast v2.x.x releases but not much has been done to Winamp since. Sure theres a BADLY CODED 5.8 BETA version but according to lots of reports it doesn't work properly. Winamp doesn't have the massive fan base it once had. Just a few users hanging onto the GLORY DAYS! Technology has moved on far too much for Winamp to be considered USEFUL. Indeed in the 7 years since Winamp was sold other audio software has evolved to overtake the software. Winamp wasn't a great media player many a time I'd listen to a Shoutcast stream and It would start buffering after a while. I attempted to use it for my Internet radio stream back in 2002 it wasn't great at playing songs without a car crash of a crossfade. Winamp had so much promise but development wasn't great unde

This is yet another issue within SAM Broadcaster Pro I could never get a sensible answer for. As hard as I tried I could never get SAM to play jingles or station ID's properly it would always CHOP the end off. This was a question asked recently on the SAM Broadcaster Forums. Can anyone help with how to prevent radio spots, Station IDs, Jingles, Promos (Voice Ads) from being cut-off at the end? Right now the ones I have get CHOPPED of at the end before they COMPLETE. It also does it with songs SAM Broadcaster Pro could NEVER crossfade properly. I am still fighting with this. I have a problem with the tracks snipping on the end just a fraction before the track is finished. I have tried every combination I can find regarding gap killers and even tried various settings on crossfading in case that was the issue. You always ended up with a CAR CRASH of a crossfade between tracks in SAM. I regularly see people asking on the SAM f

I've recently seen an updated changelog for a piece of radio playout software. The author of the software proudly exclaims the software now supports video playback. Added support for video playback plugin Native video playback improved Q: Why on earth would you need video playback in an Internet radio playout solution? The software apparently uses libVLC to handle the video playback. Just like it utilises Winamp for certain plugin functions. There is No way your listeners would see that video unless you were sending out the video stream live to a service such as Twitch/YouTube. However you want to dress that up... It isn't Radio its Televison! People have asked the author of RadioDJ for video playback in the past and they've all been told a BIG FAT NO. While RadioDJ plays .m4a files it only plays audio content. I just don't get as to why radio software developers THINK their users need video playback support whe

The Spacial Audio support department strike again! I have been a Sam Broadcaster customer for over 15 years. I have reinstalled a PC due to a problem with Windows and when I wanted to activate my license it did not allow me. I've been writing to Spacial technical support for two days and they won't give me a solution. I have my radio station losing thousands of listeners, We have audiences of 1000 concurrent listeners and now I am below 100 because the software is not fully working. I don't know what to do anymore. It appears the activation system is yet again causing users issues even if they've deactivated before reinstalling Things like this should NEVER happen with radio automation software. A radio DJ needs software to work so they can do their job or hobby. It all stems from the fact SAM Broadcaster was pirated a LOT back in the days on 4.x.x versions. Spacial Audio introduced the activation requirement to cut down on the amount o

Over the past few years I've seen Tweets on Twitter offering cracked copies of SAM Broadcaster Pro I'm pretty sure the same thing has been going on on other social media websites. Recently the Tweets offering these cracks have calmed down. Not seen anyone offering pirated copies of SAM since late 2020. Not even seen anyone offering SAM Broadcaster 4.2.2 which was the most pirated version of SAM Broadcaster. On the whole that has to be GOOD NEWS. I'm sure Spacial Audio will be thrilled. These software Pirates have obviously realised you DON'T NEED a Pirated version of SAM Broadcaster you just need RadioDJ No keys – No hidden fees – No activations – No contracts - No catches - No gimmicks How To Install RadioDJ I guess my Hardwork battling those Tweets about pirated software has somewhat paid off. If you're still one of those people who has a pirated/warez/cracked copy of SAM Broadcaster Pro installed then S

As the title of the blog post would suggest SAM Broadcaster crashes when .XML files get corrupted. It can be frustrating when SAM goes wrong for no apparent reason. For the past 4 weeks I've been trying to get SAM Broadcaster Pro to work on Windows Server 2019, but it crashes within 24 hours. SAM Broadcaster Pro relies on .xml files for its operation it only takes one of those files to become corrupt and BANG SAM does a disappearing act often requiring a complete reinstall. Sounds like a broken SAMBC.core.xml file. Try uninstalling and reinstalling SAM. Although you will loose all of your settings. How the XML files become corrupt in SAM Broadcaster Pro is anyones GUESS! RadioDJ also relies on .xml files for backend & plugin functions & I've NEVER had RadioDJ crash like SAM. RadioDJ performs better than SAM Broadcaster Pro In 10 years of being a RadioDJ user when something has gone wrong its been computer hardware takin

That is an interesting question: Why do I only promote free radio software from this blog site? In my own experience when I've paid $$$ for software in the past I've ran into issues that stopped me in my tracks. Users like me have paid hundreds $$$ for radio automation software & found the support can really suck for those pieces of software. Some software companies seem to plod on year after year not updating their software all the while still taking paying customers money. I don't need to say who the biggest bunch of cowboys are when it comes to customer support. You only have to search this blog to find that one out. Lack of customer support is one huge reason I hate paying for software. Another is when Vendors/Authors of software suddenly disappear off the face of the Earth and then their software becomes obsolete. I find some FREE software can be absolutley Amazing sometimes. FREE SOFTWAR

This was a question I saw askd by someone on a Forum. Q: SAM Broadcaster Pro: How good is it? A: IMHO It's not a very good piece of software & it's not worth the $299 & $699 pricetags SAM Broadcaster can be extremely tricky for a novice to setup it gets confusing having 5 different database options on first run. Firebird is the worst of the database options and is flaky and unstable. Firebird can only hold around 50,000 tracks in its database so no good if you have a large library (100K+) of songs I installed SAM Broadcaster with the help of a software engineer. We used the included Firebird server. That worked well for a few days. Then SAM wouldn't restart. I'd have to start over again. SAM fails more and more now. To the point where it crashes at least once/twice a Week. This is taking the fun out of this. We often hear users reporting crashing/buffering/activation issues with SAM Broadcaster often taking stations o

Regular users of RadioDJ will know that version 1.8.2 used to support plugins made by other users. One of those Plugins written by SnowHow supported the use of certain DSP plugins within RadioDJ. When RadioDJ rolled over to version 2.x.x.x the plugin structure was changed and OLD plugins weren't supported as they had been in version 1.8.2 HOWEVER If you really neeed a DSP (digital signal processor) plugin to enhance your sound you can do it from within Sound Empire Caster Sound Empire Caster supports the use of DSP plugins. You need to place the .dll and .xml files into the main SEC program folder and you should then have access to that DSP after a restart. They will be in the left side panel to activate a plugin hightlight the DSP you want to use and use the arrows to move it into the right side panel. TIP: Click SAVE so it remembers the plugin all the time. Sound Empire Caster shouldn't have issues with the DSP of

2021 will mark 7 years of me being a MariaDB user. I've used it alongside a few versions of RadioDJ. I'd seen someone mention in 2014 that they had found MariaDB so I went and installed it. In 7 years Maria DB hasn't let me down. I can't even remember the last time I had to fire up HeidiSQL to do maintenance to my databases. We had MariaDB powering my old website before my partner sadly passed away and I had to cancel the VPS. Even on our VPS servers MariaDB performed amazingly well compared to MySQL Community Server from Oracle. Don't get me started on the headaches I had with Oracle MySQL. I only ever need to do a bit of basic housework from time to time with MariaDB. I optimise my RadioDJ database every day by an event. I backup my database using the database setup tool that comes with RadioDJ and its been a LONG time since I had to restore from an .SQL file I've had the same Rad

Its 10 years since I first discovered RadioDJ 1.3.7.0 I first discovered RadioDJ via a Google search in late 2010. I found Radio DJ was easy to use from the start and once I'd configured the database and program settings it was great. I'd been looking for another piece of radio playout software because the software I was using back in 2010 wasn't much KOP for doing radio with. A couple of the pieces of software I used kept crashing and malfunctioning quite regularly which got on my NERVES. It became tiresome when I had to keep reinstalling SAM Broadcaster after a crash. I started using RadioDJ full time after SAM Broadcaster Malfunctioned on New Years Day 2011. SAM was only playing Jingles and Station ID's on an infinite loop. SAM Broadcaster suffered what's known as a Clockwheel FAILURE! The Clockwheel rotation in SAM Broadcaster had over 5000 songs to choose from so lack of available files wasn

Q: Are you a Budding Internet Radio DJ? Starting out doing Internetradio as a hobby can seem daunting at first but when you get used to streaming it can be a great hobby to have. If you're a Budding Radio DJ and are looking to get started then may I suggest a few pieces of software to use that won't cost you a penny. In order to start streaming on the internet you will need the following... Broadband connection with minimum of 2MB per second upload speed 1 Music collection with at least 2000 tracks, make sure you use properly ripped audio files at 320Kbps (CBR) mp3 or FLAC A decent computer with a decent processor and at least 2GB RAM. Plus an operating system LATER than Windows Vista. A decent radio automation program. We recommend RadioDJ FREE radio playout software for this. 1 You may encounter issues if other members of your household are streaming TV/Movies at the same time. How To Install RadioDJ 5) A decent encoding program. In ord

@Spacial Audio have written a blog post about choosing the right software for running a radio station with. When it came to free radio automation software they said this. Beware of Free Radio Automation Software, Free software can often come at a higher cost in the long run, with hidden fees and complex contracts that can be costly if you don't foresee them. What planet are you on Spacial Audio? Because it sure isn't Earth... Calling occupants of Interplanetary craft. With RadioDJ there are NO complex CONTRACTS Being free Radio DJ doesn't require online activations or registrations in order to unlock the program. Genuinely free software sometimes does not deliver on expectations, from poor performance to a lack of support when things go wrong. WRONG AGAIN! RadioDJ has GREAT Stability & Reliability. One user had the program running on their laptop for 4 years RadioDJ has really great support via the Community Forums

I first used SAM Broadcaster way back when v1.3 came out in 1999. One thing that bugged me about is that it always FROZE while adding music into the software. Adding files is a very time consuming process and SAM freezes for a while It won't transition to the next song until the folder scan is done Back in v1.3 If I tried adding a large folder of music to the software it would cause the program to crash. It was exactly the same with versions 2/3/4. The reason SAM freezes while you try to do things is down to the fact that the software suffers from bad memory leaks. Plus the software is well known for using lots of the computers resources & CPU. SADLY 20+ years later the same thing is still happening in Spacial Audio's SAM Broadcaster software. Saw this on Social media recently. I'm making headway adding music & jingles to SAM but it keeps freezing The fact its happenin