Hello, I have a client who needs to add streaming radio broadcast capability to his website. He thinks he heard about a platform that was similar to BlogTalkRadio. It's for a call-in talk show, so there is the issue of getting a clear signal with telephone callers without a delay. This is not my area AT ALL (I do copywriting and editing), so, since I'm a DP member, I thought I'd come here first and see if anyone could point my client in the right direction. Thank you for any assistance you can offer
Hey. As far as I know it's basically impossible to do internet radio without a delay. I use Winamps shoutcast and there is a delay of around 15 seconds at best. I suppose the callers will know there is a delay but anyone else listening wouldn't realise. Shoutcast is really good though. Id look into that... To be able to do call-ins, he is going to have to have some kind of decent studio setup with the phonelines going through a mic or something.
Those calling in to the radio show will talk with the presenter over the phone, and therefore won't need to listen to the stream to communicate effectively. The delay won't matter in this case. Getting streaming radio up is just a matter of how many listeners he plans to have at the peak. Streaming voice like that is at least 64 kbps for good quality audio. If your client has an upload speed of 1 mbps, he'll be able to support about 120-125 listeners concurrently. EDIT: I have seen streaming radio as low as 48 kbps, which would support a few more listeners per megabit of upload, but audio quality would suffer.
I have experience in the field of broadcasting and audio processing. I can set up a system digitizing the sound on the phone line and transmitting it online. Less than 5 seconds of latency should be possible. PM me if interested.
Thank you all for this information. I really appreciate the help Anything else you think I need to tell this client? He is an experienced radio talk show host, just not using internet radio technology.
Important question is how many concurrent listeners do you want to support and what audio quality do you want to transmit. Depending on your anwer here you can decide whether: 1. To setup an audio server from a residential or business web connection. 2. Subscribe to a professional streaming server (for more than 10 concurrent listeners). You can download Windows Media Encoder for free to test out audio streaming from your home to a maximum of say 5-10 listeners, the tricky thing will be the network setup (firewalls, IPs etc). Let me know further details and I'll be happy to help.