So I have a question. We are using the mAirlist scheduler at the moment, but we would like to have a bit more control over our playlist.
We are planning to use Stationplaylist Creator for generating our playlists. I know how to set it up so that playlists are imported. But I have a few questions.
Does anyone know:
What about hooks. Is it still possible to create hooks? At xx:00 and xx:30
How about syncing the music files? If we are importing the music to Stationplaylist, the music will not be entered in the mAirlist database. What is the best way for the music to be imported?
the Creator schedules Hooks using what they call a āBreak Noteā which SPL Studio can read. mAirList will not work with any Break Notes.
What you should be able to do, though, is to let the Creator create a m3u Playlist and then use a hour template in mAirList to import this m3u playlist. This way, you can create an automatic hook container in the hour template. This will, however, only work before or after the m3u import, so at the beginning or the end of the hour.
Audio files will not be synced throughout the mAL DB and the Creator, you will have to sync them manually. The best way of handling this will depend on your current setup.
However, if you do not yet have a SPL Creator licence, I would personally not recommend you using the Creator. I have been using SPL products on a daily basis for nearly 2 years now and a lot of problems have occured so far. If you want more details regarding these issues, feel free to contact me privately .
Thanks for your reply. I did have an old license for SPL Creator so I managed to get it working very quickly.
I duplicated my database in Creator and generated the playlist with ease. I also exported all my existing cue points as MMD files, then imported them back into the database.
So now I can just add new songs to my folders, then click on āSyncā in the mAirlist database. Then I can set cue points and after that I can generate the playlist.
What problems did you have with Creator? My rotation is much better, for some reason the mAirlist Scheduler doesnāt work well with artist and title seperation.
FYI. Not entirely true. If you leave the files physically where they always are, it doesnāt matter that much. You can do whatever you want with categories and tracklists in SPL as long as you leave the physical files where they are. In fact, the categories in SPL are the same as the virtual folders in mailist, but SPL also checks the physical location of the files.
I have used SPL for years and now use it for 1 channel and I am thinking about migrating that to mAilist. SPL can be very slow in some cases when reading files from S3 file storage. SPL makes hours accurate to the second without cutting off music, that is really great. mAirlist is less good at that.
But I was wondering why exactly you want to switch. It gives a lot of hassle and I am curious about your consideration.
SPL has a lot of separation rules, but you could also create them with mAirlist attributes in combination with filters and soft filters. mAirlist is database oriented and works much faster, the management is better in my opinion than in SPL.
So my question is: Why? What are you missing?
Only if you donāt add the files as such to a Category but rather an entire folder - if you then want to change Categories, youāll need to move the audio files around.
Not only when reading from S3 storage, but even on local HDD storage. The installation that Iām using has around 20-25000 audio files and Creator takes around 2 minutes to just start up and initialize.
From my experience: yes and no - if the feature works then Creator indeed does a quite good job there.
A lot - from SPL simply ignoring schedule restrictions (playing the same artists 5 (!) times in a row), it being quite slow, unreliable, it sometimes crashing (leading to a loss of what you just did, as you have to click āSaveā all the time), Playlists showing a different runtime in the Editor than they really have, ā¦
What you also have to keep in mind: Unlike the mAirList DB, SPL is not designed for multiple users/generally networked installs. Whilst you can activate your licence on 2 PCs, you will only be able to work with one Creator-Installation, as they do not sync the data.
Using filters to schedule tracks with specific attributes is more complicated in Creator.
One big thing is also, that unlike mAirList, the Creator cannot seperate Artists on its own. If you have āa feat. bā, mAirList will identify āaā and ābā as seperate Artists. Creator will only see it as āa feat. bā. So it might happen, that it first schedules āa feat. bā, then a song from āaā and then one from ābā in the same hour. There is a feature called āArtist Seperationā (if Iām right), that will however need you to specify all artist combinations manually and will then bring new problems, especially with smaller archives.
But letās come back to mAirList
What exactly is your problem with the integrated scheduler and the issue of
Are your rules set up correctly? And how does your database look like, are all files in only one virtual folder, or are they sorted into different Categories?
Funny to read how different experiences with software and its use can be. I still find it fun to write a little bit about SPL, although I personally find it more interesting to talk about mAilist and what is missingā¦ Or is it a lack of knowledge and can we help with that. After all, it is āourā mairlist community.
What you can do at SPL is create a category e.g. ā2024 songsā and then create a category that you want to program with the songs you want. You do this in tracklist. So donāt move files to another category, I think SPL uses a link.
To be honest, I havenāt had as many problems with SPL as you did. Only that itās slow if you donāt work locally with SSD. The service desk always works very fast and always has a quick solution.
A few years ago I integrated SPL creator to mAirlist for the playlists and quickly found out that in Dutch we say: āIk was het paard achter de wagen aan het spannenā, i.e. not very smart. So I switched completely to mAilist for 1 channel.
But anyway, again, I personally find it more interesting why someone wants to make the switch (back) to SPL. I donāt have that need anymore. And as with every software package, one does āthisā better and the other does āthatā better.
I hope that we in the community can help ājeebee123ā further with his playlists in mAirlist or in SPL.
On my side, it even depended on the PC it was installed on. Funnily, some PCs (newest Win10 version) have less SPL problems than others.
If you do that, the Creator will store each individual file in the Category properties. Makes the management in the Creator super easy, because you can easily move songs around. If you add an entire Folder, SPL will just link this folder to the Category.
I was once told that Iām the problem and I have to figure out on my own, what the issue might be. Great support
Currently Iām dealing with another issue - moved the Creator to a new PC and now I cannot import any files anymore, because the dialogue box does not open.
Iām telling our management at least once a week āwe need mAirListā. But so far, I had no luck yet, haha.
Quite true, yes. I think, both the Creator and mAirList have their things they can do better and they donāt. SPL, imho, is more for a ābasic and easy automationā and mAirList can do pretty much everything. Except for making many problems, unlike SPL (in our country, the company behind the 6 biggest commercial stations was also using SPL - they threw it out because of constant issues).
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