Minimum essential equipment for a music venue

Then I find that odd... I setup the settings for my server to max 2 connections. Yet I had 6+ people in the club listening to my feed.

And I have 768k up connection for the record. I mentioned 256k under the impression s/he only had to upload ONE stream under the model I presented. Clearly if you need to feed everyone in the area in question and you have more then a handful of ppl more bandwidth is required.

There is more to "streaming media" than a typical http packet.

Protocals are not my forte, but I do know this: if you are streaming to 1 other listener, then you might as well be doing a file transfer. That is how much band width you are using.

If you have 2 listeners, you are not using 2 times the band width. You have the same, constant single stream plus a little overhead to tell the listeners "here it is, go get it."

If you have 6 or so listeners, you will not notice much different than 1 or 2. If you get 40 plus you will be choppy with constant drops and stream resets unless you have a pretty beefy machine and upload rate.

But then I may be waaaaayyyyy off here. Like i said, protocals are not my thing. Network traffic is, however, and I have had my office building of 500 watching high bandwith audio/video stream with a 15% increase over normal traffic.

You are, but that's alright - we're here to fix.

Shoutcast streaming works as follows.

Let's say you're streaming at best quality for a normal shoutcast stream - that's 128kbps. You can go lower - I use 96kbps, some use 64, but you can really start to hear the difference when you get as low as 64.

You have a "Shoutcast Source" - that would be your DJ, or live performer, with a bit of software (WinAMP, SAM Broadcaster, etc) encoding audio to the shoutcast format. The Shoutcast Source connects to a Shoutcast Server, commonly known as a Stream Server or Stream Host. The connection between these two machines doesn't have to be more than about 150kbps, best quality - 128kbps for signal, with some wiggle room.

The Shoutcast Server does the big work. Any client that wants to listen will connect to it - meaning your listeners. Their individual computers, NOT any machine at Linden Lab/Linden Research, will connect to that streaming server and listen for music. That connection is about 128kbps PER LISTENER - so if you're broadcasting to 60 listeners, that's 7.68Mbps - or the equivalent of 5 bonded T1 lines. Way more than you can get at home, unless you're a) wealthy, or b) a Verizon FIOS customer. Let's cut the quality by half, and go with 64kbps - that's still 3.84Mbps, more than any DSL or Cable provider will give you.

So yes, you will need a streaming server - unless your DJs and musicians have their own. The good news is that they're not that expensive, if you rent by the month, and don't go overboard on the number of listeners you'll need - remember, mainland only holds 40 at a time, and islands, while they can go VERY high, get way too laggy if they have more than 60-70 at a time.

Right--that's evidently using broadcast packets. While a TCP connection is point-to-point, it's possible to broadcast UDP packets across an entire subnet (or, conceivably, multicast to a group of addresses). Every shoutcast stream can't very well broadcast to all nodes on the internet, but a streaming media source could be broadcast to all the nodes in an office building network.

Thanks, Qie. That makes sense to me now.

BTW, I love your song
/me sings "coin operated boy, made of plastic and elastic, he is rugged and long-lasting"

There are a lot of dance balls in slexchange:
http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&CategoryID=44

Is there a sensible way to find and choose a good one?
How do we know what dances are included?
All the freebie dances, probably -- some are good, and some are not so good.

Essential requirements?

* A list of dances available before purchease
* Ability to add new dances
* Ability to remove unwanted dances
* Dancers should be able to stop as easily as start

Preferable:
* Non-rotating
* No animated textures

Anything else?

Here is an example of what I think is a good music venue - not minimum, but with no spurious gloss, or anything to detract from the music, in an authentic setting:
Trenchtown - http://slurl.com/secondlife/NASSAU%20SHORES/98/25/22
Probably a low budget too.

If you do this, be sure to put something in place that will allow people to camera around the venue. You can't lock in on "air". A pole, a plant, just something to lock on to every few meteres is necessary.

You can have a great venue which hits all the spots, and you can have fantastic music, and still get nowhere unless you get your name out there.

Group - snazzy titles people might want to keep on elsewhere (avoiding the old cliches like "VIP" etc ... be creative! Then people will ask what group the tag is from and voila, ADVERTISING)

Post events. Events don't have to be music lead. Make sure your event has the venue and artist PROMINENTLY in the title, and that you have posted them in advance. Again, be creative, sell your venue, positive, upbeat and fun!

Consider the banner ads on SLX if you can get artwork together, this may be more than your budget can stretch to.

Have you considered approaching the tourist office for the specific area you're aiming to portray? You never know ... they MIGHT give you backing, ditto if there are any African music organsiations. I am way out of my depth re practical advice, just brainstorming it out here

Also, your audience don't NEED to sit but dance poseballs and also maybe a dance floor with some funky moves are a good call.

Check out some of the pretty places in SL ... try The Cape (there's also the Bay and another sim, very pretty builds, very talented lady is Kaiya).

You should maybe also try Haven Colville's places ... check out the Mankind Tracer Ampitheatre (and while you're at it check out MK himself).

The one Learjeff linked to above meets all those criteria except listing the dances before you purchase -- the dances are all freebies and if you want I can post a list. It has 50 freebies, all that he could find. To add or remove anims, just add or delete them to its contents.

What's your issue with rotating or animated textures? Those things don't contribute to lag; they're all client-side. If you have lots and lots of objects doing it, sure, but a few won't matter. In any case, it's modifiable so you can make it look however you want.

That one also allows the user to choose their dance, which many don't. Also, many don't let the dancer click the ball to stop.

Another fun feature, which Learjeff's does not have, is synchronized dances.

I did not realise that, so I have no issue!
Thanks Lear, for putting me straight.

The point is, some client computers might not be able to handle it. Like was stated earlier, she needs to play to the lowest common denominator, e.g. the person whose computer can barely handle SL. She can't assume that everyone has a super duper system!

Verizon FIOS? I have that. Does that mean I could use a computer hooked up to that as a server, then? Interesting. I couldn't do it with my laptop, but that is interesting.

Or, is there a particular reason you mentioned Verizon FIOS?

Ambient reflective lighting doesnt have to be a visible stream of light anymore.. Glow on a totally tranparent prim, or light from a totally transparent prim is invisible but reflects from any object it touches.. just like real light..

ive built a lighthouse that uses just that effect.. the only "light" one can see is the source, and the path of the reflected light as it rotates from any any object in range.. the range is defineable.. one can even script it.. so the light source can change colour.. and the objects that light touches reflect that colour..

the days of visible beams is over.. one doesnt have to travel that road anymore if its not wanted..Windlight does so much more now..

a single prim can hold as many "frames" as one desires.. but in practice.. 80 frames still allows detail. The script to animate such a prim.. is contained in one line...

dance floors can use such single prim multi frame 2d animation.. and cycle on a random basis across how ever many multi frame textures one decides to use..

your audience and its ability to use your site is your choice.. if you want every possible customer regardless of their PC`s ability.. then basic is your only option.. you decide...

Secondlife doesnt cater for Commodore 64`s or Amiga`s... for example..


i make 2d animation.. dance floors.. 2d light sources multiframe 2d animation ... you can always e mail me , i dont sell anything.. this is no advert.. [email]incony@incony-secondlife.org[/email] or [email]incony@incony.org[/email] im always happy to share with anyone keen enough to make an effort.

I mentioned Verizon FIOS simply because they offer very high speed upstream connections. For instance, the "Faster Plus" package gives you 15mbps upstream - that's enough to support 117 128kbps stream connections, or more if you go with 96kbps. The other regular packages are 2mbps upstream, which is a much more conservative 15 listeners - so you would still probably need to use a professionally-hosted stream server.

However - if you do have the "Faster Plus", yes, you COULD use a laptop - I use an older ThinkPad as a Shoutcast Server (colocated at my office, with a 6mbps 4xT1 connection). The actual streaming process is not processor-intensive. However, don't try using a single laptop as a Shoutcast server and SL client at the same time