Posts

Can I Transfer A SAM Broadcaster Pro Licence To A New Email?

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This was a question posed by someone on the Spacial Audio SAM Broadcaster forums after their station manager left the radio station. How do I go about transferring our SAM Broadcaster Pro 2021.4 license from our old station manager to a new email account? AFAIK: You cannot swap someone elses registered email address for yours. Its not as simple as that. This is the KICKER! Spacial Audio will most likely tell this user that they need to purchase a whole new SAM Broadcaster licence. Which means paying out $$$ just so they can broadcast with SAM Broadcaster If this user switched their station and DJ's over to RadioDJ then they wouldn't need to pay any money. Reasons to Use RadioDJ: Once installed it's stable and works for days/weeks without needing to keep an eye on it Great Music library support add as many categories & subcategories yo

Blogging For Over 10 Years

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Looking at my old website on Wayback Machine its made me realise its over 10 years since I started blogging. I started my blog in 2011 to get a few things off my chest that I couldn't say on forums. Mainly about software malfunctioning and other general annoyances in the world of Online Radio. I've been into Internet radio since I first tuned into a LIVE365 Station way back in 1999. In all those years I've been shocked by just how awful MOST of the paid for radio automation playout solutions actually are. I've had no end of headaches when I've paid for radio automation software in the past. Getting support for paid for software was an absolute nightmare with some online radio software companies. Some pieces of software were easy to use and others were downright awkward/difficult to use. I never got great uptime from software such as SAM Broadcaster or Zararadio they would crash when I lea

When The Buffering Starts Its NOT Your Computer (SAM Broadcaster Pro)

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A station owner apologising because the SAM Broadcaster Encoders have taken his station off air with the BUFFERING problem. I have SAM Broadcaster and it will not stream because of buffering errors I know from past frustrations how awful it is when the encoders in SAM Broadcaster decide to start buffering during a live show. I tested an old version of SAM v2.7.9 on a XP virtual machine and I had buffering within 10-15 minutes of firing up the encoder. Buffering happened with many Shoutcast/Icecast hosts & ISP connections The Issue extends to over 28 pages of posts on the SAM Broadcaster Forums Users have been told its THEIR connection at fault when its the software Its another (BUG) that the developers of SAM Broadcaster Pro don't appear to be in a hurry to fix. The SAM (Streaming Audio Manager) encoders have been like this for 20+ YEARS. It's NOT the user's Broadband or Shoutcast/Icecast server at fault

Running RadioDJ On A Macbook

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While RadioDJ is a Windows program a user recently posted on the forums that they had it running on their Apple Macbook. It doesn't appear to be too diffcult if you know your way around a Macbook. Amazing program runs well together with MariaDB on Windows 10 in a Parallels (16.5.1) virtual machine hosted on macOS (10.15.7 Catalina) on a Macbook I know from experience RadioDJ behaves in a Virtual Machine Environment as its a method I used on Linux for quite a few years. Virtual machines don't have to be a scary prospect. If in Doubt search G o o g l e Reasons to Use RadioDJ: Once installed it's stable and works for days/weeks without needing to keep an eye on it Great Music library support add as many categories & subcategories you require RadioDJ is 100% FREE and has ZERO restrictions on what YOU use it for The Database is really stable. Plus RadioDJ comes with a D

The Perils Of Activation Servers (SAM Broadcaster Pro)

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Since December 2007 Spacial Audio have required users to activate SAM Broadcaster Pro and all their other software. However the Activation Servers can sometimes have issues with how many active activations a user has. When I try to reinstall SAM I am getting an error message stating I am over the allowed number of activations. I only had it installed on one machine Hundreds of SAM Broadcaster users have had the same issue since the activation requirement was hard coded into the software You are entitled to 1 license for this program 1 licence = 1 registration key which activates the program You are permitted to activate the program on different 3 systems You can only run 1 copy of SAM Broadcaster Pro per licence and you CANNOT run multiple copies. Its another reason that SAM Broadcaster Pro sucks the way Spacial Audio LIMIT usage of their software. The SAM activation server has a nasty habit of locking users out of the software, sometimes as t

Disable Cortana Windows 10

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If you don't want Cortana taking over your Windows 10 PC you can easily stop Cortana by a simple registry hack. 1) Download this .zip file and Extract the files to a folder of your choosing. Disable Cortana Zip 2) Double Click on Disable Cortana.reg registry file and run when prompted. 3) You should now have Silenced Cortana on your PC. RESTART WINDOWS AFTER CHANGING THESE SETTINGS! Important: This tutorial involves changing registry settings so you run the instructions at your OWN RISK

Important: Turn Off Windows Sounds And Other Audio Settings

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I quite often see new DJ's asking how they stop the sounds from their PC going over onto their stream. This is another good question & it's really quite simple to fix. You need to right click on the speaker icon in the taskbar and choose "Sounds" or use Control Panel>Sound Right click on the sound output you use and choose properties. The sounds tab is where you need to be. In the drop down menu choose "No Sounds" and click apply then you shouldn't hear Windows sounds over your audio. There is another audio setting you should change 1) Find your soundcard in the list of sound devices and right click choose properties. 2) Under the Advanced tab uncheck the tick boxes under exclusive mode and click Apply. TIP: Also do the same for your default recording device and/or Virtual Audio Cables. 3) Under the Communications tab you need to set it to "Do Nothing" Most settings

Switch Off User Account Control Windows 10

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There are certain pieces of software out there that just don't work or interact well with UAC. For anyone else who may come across this topic here is how you Disable UAC (User Account Control) on Windows 10 In order to switch off UAC in W10 you need to go to the Start Menu and search for Regedit & run it as administrator. You need to navigate to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System In the right hand pane you need to find EnableLUA right click and choose Modify and change the value to 0 When you have done this Restart your computer and UAC should now allow you to install software on your Windows 10 PC Important: This tutorial involves changing registry settings so you run the instructions at your OWN RISK I cannot be held liable for any damage or data loss that comes from changing UAC settings.

Run Multiple Internet Radio Stations With RadioDJ

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Running an online Internet radio station can be a fun thing to do. However running one radio station isn't enough for some people they want to run more than 1 station. I know of several users running multiple streams & stations using RadioDJ free radio automation software. It's another reason why why RadioDJ is so great and flexible. You can run as many stations as you WANT without it costing you hundreds of $$$ Did You Know? It costs HUNDREDS of $$$ to run multiple copies of OTHER radio playout software Running 3 stations with SAM Broadcaster would cost $897(USD) I attempted to run two copies of SAM Broadcaster on Windows XP once upon a time, I'll let you guess how that went. Whereas I used to run 2 copies of RadioDJ v1.6.0 together with Virtual Audio cables with zero issues. Obviously there's a limit to how many copies of RadioDJ you can run on one machine but you get the idea!

Make your Station POP! With SAM Broadcaster Pro?

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Seen a couple of posts on social media where users claim you can make your radio station sound great with SAM Broadcaster Pro REALLY? I don't think so somehow! I used SAM Broadcaster for over 10 years and was frustrated time and again by audio distortion. My music files were ripped at the same audio levels and bitrates but despite this my music sounded CRAP in SAMBC. You CANNOT make your station POP with SAM Broadcaster as the audio output is AWFUL and amateurish at best. The last thing YOU need as a DJ is piss poor sounding audio your listeners will tune out if it doesn't sound right. It didn't matter what sound settings I tried my stream always sounded piss poor with SAM Broadcaster The audio quality from the bass sound engine really does make RadioDJ sound PROFESSIONAL. I can play different genres of music through RadioDJ & everything sounds GREAT with the above settings. Download RadioDJ and install it and you should not

Radio Automation Software For Schools (Free)

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Are you a teacher trying to teach your students about radio and how it works? Radio can be a fun thing for your students to learn about & who knows it could set them up for future careers media. You have software that can be used to teach your students the workings of radio streaming and automation. One of the best programs to use is RadioDJ and its really easy to setup and use RadioDJ is like the brains of the studio, Its great for automating music/podcasts/interviews etc... The RadioDJ features list includes: Compatible audio formats: mp3, wav, wma, flac Now playing artist-title exported to file, web or serial (by plugin) Custom number of auxiliary players (by plugin) Audio Processor plugin (with AGC, Compressor, Stereo widening and 10 band Equalizer) Automatically overlap sweepers over start/intro/end Now playing artist-title exported to file, web or serial (by plugin) Auto skip silence from start and end of the tracks Bac

RadioDJ Online Requests

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Did You know: RadioDJ has the ability to take listener requests online? I thought I would do a short tutorial on how to setup RadioDJ Online Requests. To get the request system working with RadioDJ you need to do the following. 1) Make sure you have RadioDJ installed. How To Install RadioDJ Tip: When setting MySQL up choose a strong password with lots of number and symbols and & make sure you write it down! 2) Create a new MySQL user that isn't "root" You can find out how to do that HERE Please try not to use root for requests it won't be as secure. 3) Place the Plugin_Requests.dll and .xml file in the plugin folder within RadioDJ. (The files can be found in the disabled plugins folder) 4) Download one of the RadioDJ request templates. RadioDJ Template 3.0 RadioDJ Template 2.2.3 Note: These scripts are intended as a pointer for you to build your site around. I cannot promise that these scripts

Spacial Audio Revoking SAM Broadcaster Pro Licences

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As many of you know I take an interest in what goes on in the world of Spacial Audio. I saw a Tweet on Twitter that made me shake my head... This company is so vile. One of the worst on the Internet. Even when you pay for SAM Broadcaster Spacial can decide to revoke your licence. So as much as $299.00 down the drain. Don't buy from @spacial So let me get this right, Spacial Audio are revoking peoples licences for no reason? I've blogged before about Spacial revoking licences when customers complained about the software and its still going on. That's awful espcially when users like the one quoted above have paid $$$ for the privelidge of using SAM. It never ceases to amaze me what the support staff at Spacial Audio do! Spacial Audio have ALWAYS had an awful way of dealing with paying customers It's WRONG when users pay out good hard earned money for software and then they get treated like this. RadioDJ is a great alter

Winamp Can't Handle BIG Music Collections?

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Someone recently Tweeted about issues they were having with Winamp The Tweet was about Winamp not being able to handle 2TB worth of songs being loaded into it. My library is now is over 2TB and Winamp kinda chugged with it Winamp takes a long while to load (5+ min) & occasionally it crashes Its not the first time I've heard of people having issues with the amount of files they were attempting to import into Winamp I feel this users frustration I had various issues trying to use Winamp & recently a Windows 10 update broke it so I uninstalled it. Winamp hasn't seen any development since 2013 and v5.666 can be buggy as hell on Windows 10 As for the 5.8 leaked BETA that was even worse I couldn't get it working at all. Yes Winamp was a thing 20+ years ago but these days there is better and more robust software out there for playing music with. Reasons to Use RadioDJ:

Who's Using Marketing Gimmicks Now? (Spacial Audio)

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A couple of years back I was accused by Spacial Audio of using GIMMICKS when it comes to my promotion of Radio DJ software. Dear Spacial Audio my Blog posts are NOT Gimmicks The software I promote doesn't require any marketing gimmicks as its 100% FREE The links I have in my posts are links to RadioDJ tutorials, Downloads or other sites with useful software & information. The exact origin of the word ‘gimmick’ is unknown But there is one theory that it comes from the word ‘gimac’ an anagram of ‘magic’ Spacial are the ones using marketing gimmicks as there are lots of links for their products in their blog posts. Even posts about stuff thats nothing to do with Spacial Audio even end up with links to their products. Spacial Audio are struggling for sales of their software and they seem to be using blatant & desperate gimmicks! The fact t

Please Buy Our Software We're Desperate (Spacial Audio Solutions)

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I can't help but notice that Spacial Audio posts on social media of late smack of desperation for sales. Instead of paying month-by-month Get a whole month free from Spacial's yearly purchase plan They want you the user to cough up a years worth of subscription money in one go. Who on earth can afford to pay up to $825 p/a just so they can use SAM Broadcaster Cloud? Most Hobby Broadcasters I speak to don't have that sort of cash to spend year on year. I could understand paying out all that money if the software solutions and customer service were up to par but alas neither are. What would happen if Spacial Audio closed down and you'd paid all that $$$ in advance you would be left out in the Cold. We all know Spacial Audio don't like giving customers refunds which is a bit naughty if you ask me. We DO NOT offer refunds because of our free trial o

RadioDJ Sounds Wonderful (Professional Audio Output)

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I'm testing streaming codecs in Sound Empire Caster and it doesn't matter what bitrate I stream at the audio from RadioDJ sounds Wonderful. I've ran 3 different tests on an Icecast server. Streaming out in 64K OGG/48K AAC+/64K OPUS and all the streams sounded amazing. Sadly the OPUS stream encoded by MB Recaster kept cutting out on song change which was a bit annoying. The Audio quality from RadioDJ when you have properly ripped files can be amazing. I couldn't get this sort of audio quality from other radio playout software I wonder why. I found software such as Zararadio made everything sound awful. The AGC & EQ in SAM Broadcaster makes everything sound distorted. You cannot get a professional sound from some software that often costs $$$ I'm so glad I discovered Radio DJ when I did in 2010 I found it had great programmed audio processing from the get go.

Take Your Time And Have A Bit Of Patience! (RadioDJ)

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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 items 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

Why Is It Wrong to Have An Opinion? (Internet Radio Forums)

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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) automation solutions and there are lots of awful 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 radio playout software solutions I've paid for software & then found it didn't work and then I've ran into a brick wall when trying to get a refund. We DO NOT offer refunds because of our 14-day free trial version, which allows users to try the product for free and make sure they are sa

Zararadio Why Bother?

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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 tha