DJ Advice

I'm a beginner dj in SL, and I need a little advice. I'm presently using SAM to broadcast, but I find that my music keeps fading in and out on me, it can't seam to keep a consistent flow, and the delay on it is horrible. Is this a normal problem, is there another broadcastng software system that would be better? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

What kind of internet connection do you have?
Is the music just randomly fading in and out?
I'll see what I can find out for ya.

I have dsl, and for the most part I find that the Broadcaster comes in and out when there's a larger crowd, but on the other hand, I have had bad delays when I was the only one there. So really, it's hard to make an assessment on weather or not having too many people is the problem. At one point, I was testing the sound of voice, and I got like a 20 minute delay, and even after what I said came through the stream, it would repeat it over and over again what I had said before. I hope that gives a little more insight, and I appreciate you taking the time to help.
Thank you.

I usually experience a delay of 20-30 seconds or so. Annoying, because when I suddenly start the music, or stop it, it takes that much time to go into effect.

Do you use SAM to broadcast, or any other one?

You will almost always experience delay in Sam. Why? The lower the bit rate you stream at the slower the upload. if you broadcast on a 512 connection and on a 196bit server your delay will be minimal. If you broadcast on a 128 connection with a 24 bit server your delay could be up to a minute. It's just the evil of broadcasting over shoutcast. Plan your set accordingly.

One thing that can help you if you are using the same machine to broadcast as you are playing SL on it to CTL-ALT-DEL find Sam2 and right click it and set your priority to "Real Time" this will give you the best streaming results. Also visit a speed test website and test your upload speed to make sure you dont have other issues.

What is a good broadcaster to use?

I've used SAM for over 3 years.. the delay is the buffering in a shoutcast server. You need to use a shoutcast server to stream your streaming unless you have a HUGE pipe.

reading this post I have latest sam:
Now I thought I would try 32kb stream on there spacialnet.com.

Broadband connection is up to 11 meg, running SL on one machine and sam on another, now testing it the delay is terrible, you could heardly call that live streaming, anyone know why this could be?

the stream is fine, but you can hardly call it live |DJ'ing as I stated delay is terrible, any one please using simalar setup on why this is?

As Tazz and the others have said, if you look to use sam and stream to an external shoutcast server you should find the delay is alot better. as your connection will only need to send your single stream of live music to the server. The server would then handle all the listeners connecting to listen.

Usually I find the delay between saying something and hearing it on a stream is around 10-20 seconds on average when streaming to an external server. The main reason for the delay is that the server stores a buffer of music upto around 1mb, this is so as listeners can hear a steady stream of music when they connect rather than waiting for their local player to save the buffer.

Unfortunately there is no real way of removing this delay and so live performers do have to learn to work with it. The more you stream the more you will get used to it and in time will be second nature.

Abeez, if you try streaming at 64kbits, 96kbits or 128kbits you may find the delay actually sets smaller due to the buffer size being filled quicker. something to try out anyway

Jamie
Steaming Live Audio - Shoutcast / IceCast Hosting HQ (Bisque 245,155)

I haven't read every reply so I'm not sure if this was covered, but ideally you want to broadcast music at the same or lower encoding rate that the server is set for. If you send a 128k stream to a 96k server, it will cause more of a delay due to the reencoding the server has to do.

Everyone is making it sound more confusing than it is

A) Shoutcast is a program to broadcast & SAM is a program to broadcast... both are fine. Shoutcast is easier

B) the "kbps" is the quality of your stream... I recommend staying within 64 & 128 for SL

C) Feel free to stop by my DJ store. You'll find all the info you need to get started, and i can work with ya one on one. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Yeolmae/0/20/78/

The only fading (aside from crossfading of the songs) I've ever experienced with SAM is due to the very poorly set default parameters for the AGC pipe (auto gain control). The expander in combination with the AGC is wretched...it'll pump your music so hard it can sound closer to a raging river than music. If you have the Eq and stuff turned on, try first just turning off the expander. I spent weeks tweaking that block with the agc and compressor, use your ears to do it, not your knowledge of similar setups, because it's not based off of any standards.

Well I am still getting a delay of 40 seconds+
Now I was told I have up to 128kbs.

Are there any experienced stream people out there that no sam?

My sam encoder set up shows only a max setting that I can input of 56kbs, is this having an effect on the delay.

I have now tried 2 streaming providers and can't seem to reduce delay despite reading about higher kbs etc.

I am maybe thinking sam is the issue.
Any streamers out there use SAM with a good configuration?

Hi Abeez,

Inside SAM, in Desktop B, when you configure the encoder select the MP3 and MP3pro encoder. Then in Converter tab of the encoder, the format drop down should have wide range of bitrates, I would suggest selecting MP3, 128kbit/s. 44.10kHZ, Stereo.

(if you can't see any higher bitrates than 56kbits, you may need to reinstall SAM or check which codecs you installed)

When streaming to the server, check the servers webpage and just see what bitrate it is showing for your stream.

As several have said already you should only see around a 10-20 second delay on a 128kbit/s stream.

Hope you get things sorted, if not just reply back here.

Jamie
Steaming Live Audio - Shoutcast / IceCast Hosting HQ (Bisque 245,155)

Ah now it was down to me not correctly checking encoder settings, I actually had it on 56, the reason for this was when i first set it up i couldn't see a higher setting.

I redone it by doing as mentioned, not sure why it didn't give me higher kb/s at time.

Now the delay is what people say the norm at 10/15 secs.
Excellent.

Congrats Abeez. Glad to hear you worked it out.

Happy streaming!

Jamie
Steaming Live Audio - Shoutcast / IceCast Hosting HQ (Bisque 245,155)

Hi ya, great to find this post - exactly what Im looking for.

I notice that SAM is circa US$199 but I cant see a price for shoutcast, is it free? I dont need an all singing all dancing, just need to be able to give a shout to my customers.

Rgds

If anyone needs help with Sams, Winamp/Shoutcast, or setting up a stream, please contact me in game and I would be happy to help -- it's what I do

I provide free streams that we can use to try out different settings and test the delay, mic, etc. and can quickly diagnose issues. I work with Spinstream Media Services.

Together with our years of experience and 99.9% uptime, you will be on your way to successful djing and streaming.

Cher Harrington
Audio Consultant

JJ Collingwood
SpinStream Media Services

Hi LadyLutha,

Sam is a great product, and simply streams over a shoutcast or icecast server. If you want a simple free program, then probably winamp + the shoutcast plugin and then stream to a shoutcast server.

There are some details on how to get started here...
http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=083

Jamie
Steaming Live Audio - Shoutcast / IceCast Hosting HQ (Bisque 245,155)

Thank you, I'll give it a blast and leave the clever stuff to the professionals

Shoutcast itself is free. However, unless you have your own mega-highspeed connection, it would be a good idea to retain a service to host it to get a good bandwidth.

I'm using one called Server Room. The downside to them is that they don't have great help files, so working through technical problems has been frustrating. The upside to this is that they were cheap compared to the others I researched- $12 U.S./mo., 30 GB bandwidth per month. (Since it's just bandwidth per month, you may set your own stream quality/maximum users.) But with the tech issues worked out, the thing has worked fine for me.

When I'm having a computer dedicated to running WinAmp (absolutely nothing else), I often have less than 10s delay. That's with a second computer running Second Life using the same network connection. My delay seems to depend more on what is happening on the computer running WinAmp. When I start running things besides WinAmp, the delay shoots up. If I use Napster to look up a song on that computer, delay goes up. I can't run WinAmp and Second Life on the same computer; WinAmp gets completely choked.

I'm runing at a modest 64 kps. The sound quality is just fine, except that it seems to lose a little volume compared to other stations.

There are quite a few services that host Shoutcast, so you can shop around.

I have noticed Sam available on BitTorents and other file sharing sites...now we all know that pirated software is not to be used, right?

So that renders this argument moot...