Would it be possible to add support for audio plugins to mAirList?
DirectX plugins or the ones from www.soundsolution.it by example.
Regards!
Bart
BASS, the audio controller that mAirList uses has loads of addons.
Found here: http://www.un4seen.com/bass.html#addons
You can add support for them in the config. (You place the files in the “/plugins/bass” folder)
In particular, WADSP will allow use of WinAmp-style plugins. You can also use VAC and create a Virtual Audio cable, saving looping soundcard signals. There will be some latency between what goes in and what comes out - So monitoring it via headphones isn’t possible, which is why a hardware processor is always a better option.
You can add support for them in the config. (You place the files in the "/plugins/bass" folder)
Caution, this only applies to those BASS add-ons which add additional file formats (FLAC, WMA, AAC, …). Other plugins, like the WADSP plugin, would need hard-wired support within mAirList.
After all, I still think that sound processing should be done at the end of the audio chain, not in the playback software.
Torben
Yes torben, but when you don’t have a Soundcard in a Server with Windows you can’t use mAirList. Thats the problem that i have. with the WADSP and Shoutcast can i Stream it than in a good quality. Thats no sound processing. Only Streaming to a Shoutcast Server. I hope, that you can implent this.
and sorry for my bad english.
Which software do you use to encode the audio and send it to the streaming server? Shouldn’t the processing be done in that piece of software?
For the price of a dedicated processing PC (which is how it should be done, anyway!), you can get a reasonable hardware audio processor…
Matthias’ problem is that he wants to run mAirList on a dedicated root server hosted by some ISP. Of course, that machine does not have a sound card. Bit mAirList needs one (or something like Virtual Audio Cables).
To clarify this - there would be much easier ways to give mAirList direct streaming functionality. In particular, BASSenc supports it out of the box. But I don’t have plans to implement that, just because mAirList is not a “streaming software”, but a playout software for studios.
Torben
yes, thats right. But … we don’t have a Studio. We aren’t central. The Moderators are in German and in the complete German … also in Berlin, St. Goar, Koblenz, Bonn, Köln etc. Look at SlashFM.net and than under Mitgliedskarte. Then you can see the Moderators. They are green. And now i hope that you understand that it doesn’t goes that we stream from a PC all the time. When all Moderators are Offline will the server send the Music. And for this we need a good software… better than Winamp or sc_trans from Nullsoft for Windows or Linux. It didn’t go. And a virtual Audiocable didn’t goes to, because Windows is a VMWare Image. I hope, that it goes that we became that Plugin for mAirList. It is very usefull for us.
Even if Winamp DSP plugins were supported, they would be applied per file (or per player, to put it this way) but not on the final mix. Because there is nothing like a “final mix” in mAirList. In a usual setup, each player uses a different output on your sound card, and your mixing desk does the mixing. And even if you set up all of your players to use the same sound card, it’s not mAirList which mixes the channels, but the sound card driver. mAirList does never “see” the final mix. So there’s no point at which mAirList could grab it.
For “standard” DSP plugins (processors, compressors, equalizers, …) this is not much of a problem. But it is a problem for the Shoutcast plugin, because it would create a new stream source each time you open a file.
The easiest solution would be to use Virtual Audio Cable (which functions as a mixer then), route its output into Winamp (or Simplecast or whatever) and let the Shoutcast plugin do the streaming.
If I got you right, the only reason why you can’t use VAC is that you run mAirList inside a VMware virtual machine? Why don’t you use a native Windows box then? Or look for a different playout software that matches this “crazy” setup. But mAirList won’t do, sorry.
Torben
Ok. If you can give me a Link for a Virtual Audio Cable that runs under Windows (so … that what Jack-Audio does in Linux) then it is ideal. I have watched for so a Virtual Audio Cable for Windows but i didn’t found anything. and … that mAirList for each File open a new stream haven’t know I. Thank you for the information. And i hope that you can help me with the Virtual Audio Cable, if it is easy for you.
Thank you
“Virtual Audio Cable” is the name of the product, to be found here: http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.html
I have never used it myself.
Torben
thabnk you very much torben! it goes!!!
I still think that sound processing should be done at the end of the audio chain, not in the playback software. TorbenOver 30 years in the broadcast industy has led me to the same conclusion, absolutely!
I must confess to having used software solutions on the odd occasion - Even so far as software RDS + Stereo Coding, which works quite well. Software processing seems to have taken off big time, simply because you can achieve that “big station sound” with little or no outlay.
SoundSolution seems to work fairly well, although I have recently had to set-up (the now free) MBL4, and it’s sister program: Sonos. The guy who wrote MBL also helped develope some of the Innovonics range.
At work, we’ve got an Optimod 8300 - it makes even Mickey Mouse sound butch 
At work, we've got an Optimod 8300You lucky, [i]lucky[/i], [b]lucky[/b] man…!
We just manged to scrape up enough cash to buy a second-hand Behringer Ultramizer Pro (the DSP 9024), so you’ll understand why the mere mention of the ‘O word’ has me turning greener by the second.
And I don’t mean anything to do with ecology either! 
BFN
CAD (sobbing uncontrollably into his handkerchief…)
Hmmm … I guess I shouldn’t mention that we have both an Optimod 8101B (for terrestrial distribution) and a DSP9024 (for the internet stream)?
My apologies, Cad. I can understand your situation very well. It took us four years until we could afford anything else but the DSP9024 (which itself was kindly donated by Behringer back then). We first looked for a Combinator, but then someone offered us that 8101B …
Torben
PS: By the way, the DSP9024 ist not the Ultramizer but the Ultra-Dyne - so which one do you have?
Cad,
If you do indeed have the UltraDyne 9024 - I would steer clear of the Limiter feature, as it’s pants. It only goes down to 500mS Release Time which is no good as it’ll “catch ‘n’ drop” as it gets triggered. Does your FM transmitter have an in-built Limiter ? If so, that’ll be sufficient - But you may wish to increase the Ratio on the Ultradyne bands just so that it’s doing most of the work.
Anybody using the Ultramizer 1424 ? I’m on the lookout for a subtle processor/limiter for a studio feed - It’s 2-band DSP is fine, but I need to know how good the limiter is - ie: no distortion/clipping like the analogue Composer…
OK, here’s what I’m trying to do …
I know hardware sound processing is the best solution for radio broadcasts, but I’m using mAirList at home to play my music and I’m streaming this music to my home network … I’m using a Pinnacle SoundBridge to listen to the music streamed from my computer.
The only thing I’d like to do is to use the sound solution dsp plugin to process the audio provided by mAirList. I’m using the same soundcard for playback on all mAirList players.
The processed audio should then be streamed over the network (I have the streaming software, only need to get the sound processing to work).
Thanks for your help
Bart
Processing should be applied to the final mix. A usual studio setup would work like this:
mAirList -> mixing desk -> processing -> distribution
When routing all mAirList players to the same sound card, it’s the sound card which does the mixing, not mAirList (see explanation above), so we have
mAirList -> sound card -> processing -> distribution
You see my point? The processing cannot be done by mAirList, as it is on the wrong side of the mixer. I see two solutions:
- Apply the processing to each single player instead of the final mix. I’m not sure if this leads to desirable results.
- Use BASS software mixing, set all players to the same device (= BASSmix instance), and apply the DSP plugin to the output of that BASS mixing channel:
mAirList with software mixing -> processing plugged into BASSmix -> single stream to sound card -> distribution
This would be the only way to achieve a mAirList-driven processing. If you like, I can investigate this solution.
Torben