Category: Techs

hod i do

  • How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (3: The DAW)

    How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (3: The DAW)

    In this serie:

    1. Introduction
    2. The audio interface
    3. The DAW
    4. Virtual Instruments (VST)
    5. Effects
    6. Cables&cables

    Now that we have bought an audio interface, we need to think about the tape recorder, mixer, effects, anything required in a studio.

    In a digital studio, the reel to reel recorder is part of the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

    The digital audio workstation (DAW) has become the music producer’s canvas, a central software platform containing all the sounds, instruments, and tools they use for recording music (and other).

    DAWs are deep, complex programs with lots to learn. Choosing a DAW is one of the biggest early decisions a producer faces. But what is a digital audio workstation exactly, what can you do with them, and which one is a best fit for your own ideas and interests?

    Think of a DAW as a digital representation of a physical recording studio where you can produce audio for a wide variety of mediums including film, gaming, podcasting, music, UX, and more. The whole studio process is packed into one, the creative ideas in tandem with the technical. You can record tracks, build up beats, add instruments or vocal parts, then lay out the arrangement, apply effects, and mix the finished work all within one interconnected hub.

    Today, the convenience and accessibility of DAWs have made them the most popular way of making music and editing audio — used by everyone from bedroom producers and songwriters all the way up to top industry professionals.

    There’s a range of DAWs available that we will explore in more detail below, each with unique features and advantages. That said, common standards of design and compatibility can be identified across the different brands. Personally i use as DAW Presonus Studio One and Reaper, but it’s just because in my opinion they have the best workflow for me, the one that facilitates my personal way of working.

    But all DAWs have points in common, find the one that best suits your personal preferences. If someone tells you “this sounds better than that,” doubt it. A DAW doesn’t have to “sound better” but allow you to manage the way you work most effectively without hindering your creativity.

    We’re talking bits, they can’t sound better in one DAW than another. If they feel like they do, there’s something wrong with either your setup or DAW. There are lots of both free and paid ones. Find yours and learn to use it well, even reading the fucking manual. The DAW is the most important tool in your creative arsenal.

    What can you do with a DAW?

    1. Record, play and edit audio tracks

    Digital audio workstations come with built-in viewport that allow you to record, save, edit, and playback audio. To record audio from external instruments or microphones, you need an audio interface. An audio interface takes audio signals and converts them into data that a computer can process, allowing you to record and edit audio in software based environments like a DAW.

    An audio track in your DAW (in this case in Studio One, but is the same in any DAW)

    Once you record, all audio is saved and displayed on the timeline, where you can cut, copy, and paste audio waveforms. From the sequencer window, you can easily mute waveforms, stitch them together, and crossfade them into one another, much like you would with audio recorded on physical tape.

    2. Record, play and edit MIDI virtual instruments tracks

    DAWs also allow you to play virtual instruments (VST) for composing music. Virtual instruments and effects are software programs designed to replicate the sounds of physical instruments like synthesizers, pianos, drums, guitars, violins, trumpets, and more, or create completely new digital instruments for which there is no analog reference.

    Most DAWs come with stock libraries of sounds, but they also allow for third party plug-ins—external software that can be “plugged in” to a DAW to enhance its functionality. In general, each VST has an installer that copies the needed files in the right place, a location predefined by Steinberg, the inventor of VST technology. However, many free plugins don’t have an installer, so you’ll need to place the necessary files in the correct folder by yourself.

    Also check that the VST plugin is consistent with your DAW, a 64 bit DAW wants 64 bit VSTs, or it won’t work.

    As you can easily imagine, a track in which the events you play or the settings of an audio effect are recorded is not equivalent to an audio track: another very important technology comes into play: MIDI.

    Yes, your DAW can record two types of events: audio, such as from a microphone or guitar plugged into your sound card input, or digital in a format called MIDI.
    Midi tracks don’t contain audio, but a list of events such as how you pressed the A key for 1 second and with what intensity, and a series of other performance-related events. A example in the following table:

    Before MIDI Learn, there were MIDI implementation charts only. This table shows how the Korg Volca Drum responds to various MIDI messages. The Control Change section in the middle lists the MIDI CC numbers and the parameters they correspond to. If you wanted to control the pitch of oscillator 1 from an external MIDI controller, for example, you’d set one of its encoders to output MIDI CC 26.

    Don’t be scared, there’s no need to handwrite these codes. Your MIDI keyboard (you have one, don’t you?) will send the DAW everything needed to write your performance, just like when you use your PC keyboard to write text.

    The enormous advantage is that, just like in a word processor, it will then be very easy to correct any errors, modify the execution, align the MIDI messages in a grid, manipulate the intensity of a note, in short, everything you possibly want to modify in your MIDI track. This track will faithfully send all the necessary MIDI messages to the virtual synth VST, which will play it using the sound you have chosen (any sound included in the library of the VST) and on the dedicated MIDI channel. All this events are recorded in the piano roll, vhere you can edit each note in very simple manner.

    MIDI is so popular and flexible that you can find a lot of songs on MIDI format in many sites, where you can download a song and then import the file in your DAW, where you can manipulate sounds for better results for make the better cover never seen..

    Midi events in piano roll view, the area dedicated to MIDI in any DAW. Any event can be edited yout editing the notes on piano roll. Very easy!

    Sounds complicated but it’s not, just imagine a midi track as if it were text in your favorite word processor, and being able to edit each note as you would in the word processor.

    If these concepts are difficult for you to understand, I recommend watching this video. It’s based on Studio One, a commercial DAW, but the concepts apply to any DAW.

    Your DAW is not “only” a recorder, it also has a mixer to mix your sounds as you wish and VST plugins are not only instruments, but also sound effects of all kinds that you can apply to your tracks.

    Mixer console in Studio One Each slider represent a track.

    All this can be managed to get your final master in the preferred audio format and resolution.

    There would still be a million things to say, and we’ll do it in dedicated posts. For now it’s enough for me to think that you understand how important it is to choose the right DAW for you, don’t follow the advice of gurus but get an idea by trying to work with one software and then another. The main functions of DAWs are almost equivalent, find the one that best fits your creative workflow, it’s the only trick.

  • In-the-box or Out-the-box?

    In-the-box or Out-the-box?

    This blog declare in the tagline “About music made with virtual instruments in-the-box“,  however for many it may not be clear what it means, and it is legitimate. 

    What does “in the box” mean in music?

    “In the box” refers to the computer, and the accompanying audio software within. Historically, all songs were mixed “outside the box” because there were no “boxes”, meaning computers for music production didn’t exist.

    Obviously there are endless discussions between fans in which everyone highlights the strengths and weaknesses of digital vs analog instruments and effects, many times in a rather vague way and there are those who even talk about the sound of tantalum referring to ancient hardware equipment that used this material in precious transistors giving a special sound to mix (only in the full moon nights, maybe).

    In reality, there are bad, good and excellent equipment in both digital and analog fields. 

    Thinking that today nowadays everything is digitally recorded, it is a little difficult (at least for me) to understand why i should spend a fortune to buy an old hardware compressor when with the same money I can buy not only an accurate emulation of the effect itself in digital form, but probably an entire workstation. In anycase, your ADC and DAC take care to converti the “analog” sound to digital world, so why?

    But I understand audio fetishism, i suffer from it myself, but it’s certainly not a question of sound quality. I can sell my mother (no mama, is not true) for a EMS VCS3, but i can use a Xils 4 and actually do the same or more…

    Some time ago i too owned a whole rack of synths and effects and miles of cables to connect their outputs to a mixer, then one day I made the decision to sell everything and switch to an in-the-box solution, also out of curiosity.

    I have to say i wouldn’t go back. With a little attention you can find digital synths of equal or better quality than the analog ones, and the same goes for effects. Of course, given the availability of numerous VST synths on market, it is initially difficult to orient yourself, but with a little experience and tests you can find some real gems.

    I find it a bit senseless to redo equipment born in hardware in a software version, they are two different worlds that have different characteristics, it is an old controversy that cannot be resolved. 

    For example, I’m in love with a synth that exists only in digital form, Animoog (free on Apple Store) nothing less than produced by Moog Music, which certainly needs no introduction in the field of synths. In my opinion is one of the best currently available synths, and he exist only in in-the-box form.

    Find your sound the way you like it, bearing in mind that in-the-box it costs much less and therefore you are much more likely to find it. Apart from the flexibility and the complete absence of cables, noise and dust in your studio.

    A digital synth. Look at the smile of Suzanne Ciani playing this little guy integrated with her Buchla modular system around 00:56 🙂
    Trent Reznor recounts his relationship with an iconic analog synthesizer and describes how it has fit into his creative process over his storied career.
    How Fairlight CMI changed the story of music.
  • How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (2: The audio interface)

    How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (2: The audio interface)

    In this serie:

    1. Introduction
    2. The audio interface
    3. The DAW
    4. Virtual Instruments (VST)
    5. Effects
    6. Cables&cables

    Now that we know the historical and technical details that led to the possibility of setting up a recording studio on a computer (if you haven’t done yet, I highly recommend reading Part 1), we can focus on some aspects of digital recording. At the end of Part 1, we switched from recording on magnetic reels (tapes or cassettes) to recording on hard or floppy disks in digital domain, that means there is not anymore a continuous flow of audio events recorded on a magnetic tape, but a flow of binary data, as happens with any information recorded on a computer.

    The role of audio interface

    The audio interface is responsible for the translation from sound waves into digital representation of the same sonic event.

    One of the main functions of an audio interface is to convert sound from physical instruments or microphones (analog) to a form that computers can process (digital). This is called analog-to-digital conversion, or ADC. It is a necessary part of the digital audio workflow.

    While real-world sounds are continuous and analog (think of the sound produced by a (physical) instrument or a voice), on the other hand, computers operate in a discrete, binary world. They process information as a series of digits represented in a binary form (ie. as 0’s and 1’s). 

    Hence, in a digital audio workflow where computers are the main processing engine, the analog signals from instruments or voice (through microphones) need to be converted into a digital form. This is the work of ADC.

    Once audio signals have been converted to a digital form using ADC, they can be processed using specialised audio software called Digital Audio Workstations (DAW). 

    DAWs are extremely powerful software and allow a range of mixing, processing, and production possibilities for digital sounds, and any sort of effects and magic transformations.

    But, how do we hear what we are doing if the audio events are just a series of 0 and 1?

    Here comes the digital-to-analog conversion, or DAC, which is the reverse process of ADC. DAC converts the binary data to analog signals and so we can hear what we are doing. The audio signal is sent to our headphones through a little integrated amplifier, or to a bigger monitoring system through an external amplifier and loudspeakers.

    Almost any computer integrates a sound card, but while these sound cards are adequate for everyday use, they do not produce a quality of output that’s sufficient for many audio processing requirements. The “sound card” may simply be a “sound chip” built into the computer’s motherboard. 

    This is why audio interfaces play a fundamental role in a recording studio.

    Audio interfaces are specialised hardware and software devices that are dedicated to ADC, DAC, and other functions.

    Audio interface drivers are a very important part to consider: the fluidity of your work in the DAW will depend on their stability and solidity, and each different interface has its own drivers.

    In general, each interface will allow you to select inputs and outputs and the relative volume, but some also offer useful tools such as the audio router shown in the following image: drawing virtual cables on the interface allows the connection or disconnection of any input and output as desired.

    You can find more information about different audio drivers in Windows here.

    Being specialised, audio interfaces generally produce much better output than computer sound cards and are included in any digital audio workflow where sound quality is important.

    Other than being specialised for ADC and DAC processing, audio interfaces offer a range of other facilities, such as:

    • They can have multiple inputs through various connection types (eg. XLR, TRS, and RCA connections) for recording voices or analog audio instruments (for example, a bass guitar)
    • For this work, they often include high quality pre-amps for microphone or low-level signal boosting
    • They can have a choice of outputs for better sound monitoring during the production process
    • They can help to reduce latency in the audio production workflow
    • They generally produce an overall higher quality of sound relative to computer sound cards

    Despite this, audio interfaces (or ADC in general) may not be necessary if a production process does not include any physical instruments or voice (eg. when using only virtual instruments – also called VST): in such cases, there’s no need to convert sound from an analog to a digital form, and obviously there’s no need for ADC.

    I think it’s now easy to imagine how a quality sound card will directly influence the quality of your productions; you can have the best computer in the world, ultra expensive microphones and instruments, but if the sound card does not have first quality converters the result of your work will necessarily be poor.

    But how are the input signals converted by the ADC and the output signals rebuilt by the DAC? They need a reference to work in sync and return the audio stream needed for listening by ears…Here comes bitrate, sample rate and bit depth.

    Digital audio is digital information. That information can be dense or sparse, high-quality or low. Bitrate is the term used to describe the amount of data being transferred into audio. A higher bitrate generally means better audio quality..You could have the greatest-sounding recording of all time, but if you played it with a low bitrate, it would sound worse on the other end.

    Understanding bitrate is essential to recording, producing, and distributing audio. To truly comprehend bitrate, you also need to learn what makes up an audio file and what different types of audio files exist.

    Just like images vary in quality and clarity, audio files differ in how large they are, how much information they contain, and what role they fill. While there are some exceptions, uncompressed files will contain the most information and therefore have the highest bitrate. Compressed lossy files generally have the least amount of information and therefore a lower bitrate.

    The sample rate is the number of times in a second an audio sample is taken: the number of instances per second that recording equipment is transforming sound into data. Most digital audio has a sampling rate of 44.1kHz, which is also the sampling rate for audio CDs. This means that the audio is sampled 44,100 times per second during recording. When the audio is played, the hardware then reconstructs the sound 44,100 times per second. 

    Those individual samples vary in the amount of information they have. Bit depth is the number of bits in each sample, or how information-rich each of those 44,100 pieces of audio is. 

    A high sample rate and a higher bit depth both increase the amount of information in an audio file, and likewise increase the file size. Just like some photos have a high resolution, audio files with a high sample rate and high bit depth have more detail. Having more detail generally requires a higher bitrate.

    Why these boring details? Ye,s they are a bit boring, but they will be less boring when you buy an audio interface. They are not all the same, although there are an infinite number of models and brands. 

    Virtually all of them offer so-called CD quality (sampling rate of 44.1kHz, bit depth 16 bit) which is a standard, others will offer higher resolutions (personally for my recordings i use a resolution of 48.000 kHz at 24 bit depth).

    It is a good idea to find the best setting that your workstation can manage effectively. It is completely useless to choose the higher resolution that your audio interface makes available, if the computer can’t handle the produced files, because they are too big for the available CPU and RAM. Each track in your DAW requires hardware resources, then they run out quickly. Don’t kill your computer, it’s your friend. 

    In the next episode we will talk about another fundamental element of our studio, the DAW. Because without software what do we do with hardware?

  • How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (1: introduction)

    How to use my computer to make a recording studio? (1: introduction)

    In this serie:

    1. Introduction
    2. The audio interface
    3. The DAW
    4. Virtual Instruments (VST)
    5. Effects
    6. Cables&cables

    It is a legitimate question, in fact a computer today can be used to create a recording studio to create even complex works which until recently would have required the use of a real studio, equipped with gigantic mixers, multitrack recorders reels and every blessing tools.

    However the response to this question is long, and therefore I will divide it into different parts.

    introduction

    The recording studio is a fundamental part of music production process, as it directly influences the quality of your final product, let’s say the record.

    These studios each have a distinctive sound, influenced by available equipment and recording environments (it’s easy to imagine that having a large room to record in will produce a sound with unique natural reverb, for example). 

    Over time some of these studios have become legendary, for example the Abbey Road Studios or the Sarm Studio, used by very famous bands (Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley tell you something?).

    Furthermore, each of these studios had several legendary sound engineers, able to manage and create great works such as Atom Hearth Mother or The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and many other works that have made the history of modern music.

    Thus the combination of studio equipment and sound engineer was a fundamental must for any artist who wanted to try their hand at making the fundamental album of their artistic career.

    The studio itself was equipped with gigantic mixers, huge multitrack reel to reel tape recorders, walls of audio and effects equipment, miles of cables. The musicians and sound engineers communicated behind a large window, which divided the musician from the actual studio.

    A legendary multitrack Otari MX 80 Tape Recorder

    All of this equipment had one thing in common: they cost a fortune and to be able to afford to do a studio production you had to have a fat wallet (here come the legendary producer, a guy that have the ability to find the money needed for pay the studio).

    Each instrument had to be recorded on a single track in order to be able to mix it with the rest of the instruments later, but the tape recorders and magnetic tapes of that era had physical limits, so the sound engineers had to resort to particular tricks such as bounce, transferring some tracks to a single one to free space on the tape. There was no copy/paste, and in the case surgical cuts of the tape were used, which was glued to the joint with adhesive tape. To record complex arrangements (think for example of those of the historical Pink Floyd) the life of the studio was not easy at all.

    Life wasn’t easy even for aspiring musicians: to spread and sell your work you needed at least a recorder, and a Revox or a Teac cost a kidney at the time. Billy Studer, the inventor, was very happy dude.

    Then a miracle happened: in the early 1980s Tascam’ produced a small integrated portable studio, called Portastudio, mixer and 4-track recorder on the then common cassette tapes. Incredible. 

    The recording quality was certainly not that of a studio, the cassettes were certainly not equivalent in frequency response to those of an Ampex tape, but who cares! For an aspiring musician it was an epic step forward. Or at least for me it was

    The home-recording wave, which allowed musicians to cheaply record and produce music at home was started, and is cited as one of the most significant innovations in music production technology.

    I was the lucky owner of a Portastudio, and enjoyed it very much.
    However, for now we are talking about analog sound on tape recorders, but the first computers for music are arriving, which record digitally.

    Atari 1040 ST come in 1985, and the game change again. Its MIDI ports and VST technology will change the way music is produced forever. But this is the next episode.

    Before go at Part 2, please look the following video, he explain a lot on recording process on a computer. Next step we need to talk about weird stuff like MIDI, VSTs and DAWs, so follow the given links to start understanding what they are.

    We don’t want to be amateurs who just push the button, do we?

  • Using ENDLESSS

    Using ENDLESSS

    Real time loop-based music making. Endlesss is an app that promise to create, collaborate, publish and discover music faster than ever. And is true!

    Endlesss Studio is a free app, and can be dowloaded for Win, Mac and iOS.

    Video show a little introduction to Endlesss made by Art Olujia in Second Life.

    Where: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife… When: Thursday 15 december at 10am SLT Teacher: Art ღ littlewing (artistik.oluja)
  • How play music in Second Life: the definitive guide

    How play music in Second Life: the definitive guide

    1. What we need
      1. Music
      2. A player
      3. A web service: Shoutcast

    Ok, now that I have caught your attention i can say: there is no definitive guide to audio in Second Life. Programs and solutions available for this activity are so many that it would take a book to talk about it. But there are some fixed points, and we will focus on them.

    Goal: i would like to play a sound event (any type of music, self-produced, DJ, audio for a show, everything that comes to mind talking on audio) in Second Life, how can I do?

    in any case, we will need four mandatory elements: the audio to be played, a program that plays the audio files, an interface to an audio server, an audio stream to be connected to the sim or parcel where we want to play the audio. Each audio event to be played requires a parcel to associate the stream URL with. Each parcel can only play one stream at a time, so when you hear about double or triple streams it’s just nonsense.
    For simplicity, let’s pretend that we want to play music for our friends like a DJ.

    What we need

    Music

    First, the music. We need good music, of course. But by good music i don’t mean the musical style, but a good quality audio file. So first of all prepare an optimized library of audio files, at least make sure that all the songs you play have the same volume. Cut the empty start and end parts, assign to files clear and correct metadata because these will be shown to listeners. There are many utilities that can help you in this challenging but qualifying job.

    A classic example of audio editor is Audacity, open source and free, or you can try paid software like Sound Forge. Or, for the lazy, you can try a program like Platinum Notes, which in one fell swoop optimizes an entire folder. Both open source and commercial solutions are many, find the one that seems most suitable for you

    The important thing is that before presenting yourself to the public your library be clean and tidy, or everyone will think that sloppy DJ, and you don’t want it, true?

    There is one important thing to take into account though: then you will have to choose with which quality to send your audio to the listeners (audio formats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_file_format), and here opens a somewhat complex speech.
    In any case, know that an MP3 format 128 kbps 44.1 khz is the most used format and constitutes an acceptable balance between sound quality and load on listeners (we will soon see what this load on listeners is).

    When we get to have to tell our DJ program where and how to send the audio stream and to which server, we will also have to indicate at what quality. The audio formats available in SL are many, but we will have to deal with our main enemy, lag, and find the right balance between audio quality and user experience.

    A player

    Second step: the player. We have our own optimized library, now how do I get someone to listen to it in Second Life?
    Any program you use to listen music on your PC can be used to send music to Second Life (this is called audio streaming). There is no need for sophisticated DJ programs or special equipment that you may not know how to use. The simple Winamp compared to the other desktop players has an advantage, it has a dedicated Shoutcast DSP that allows you to connect the player to the Shoutcast server and play, and then i will use it as an example. But whatever program you use you will still be required to establish a connection with a server, and this server will provide you with the URL that you will have to apply to the sim or parcel where you are going to play.

    Don’t be afraid, it’s simpler than it seems. If your favorite player does not have a Shoutcast interface (iTunes for example), do not worry. Download BUTT and you can broadcast your music in anycase. Butt capture any audio signal running on your pc and send it to a Shoutcast server, simple. But remember, any signal running on your audio card. If you are talking on a messenger with a friend, also your talk is sent with the music. Careful!

    Typical client/server connection scheme for audio

    A web service: Shoutcast

    Third and fourth, how I connect the server, my player and the parcel

    This is a somewhat technical step, which requires understanding what the relationships between a server and a client are, but nothing scary. You use clients and servers daily, for example if you are reading this post the browser is the client of a server that responds to your requests from the address (called the URL) slendowmentforthearts.wordpress.com. When you click on a link, the server receives your interaction and responds by sending new information to the browser. When you read your emails from web, is the same: a mail server send to your browser the emails you received. If you respond, your client (the browser) send the message to server, that take care to deliver the message.

    So, nothing you haven’t already seen many times.

    Any information you want to distribute via the internet requires a server that contains the informations and know how manage them, and a client that receives and interprets it. In the case of music, we will need a Shoutcast type server (there are different types of audio server, but the most used and certainly working is Shoutcast).

    The most simple manner for get a Shoutcast server for broadcast your audio is rent it on Second Life Marketplace. Just do a little search for “Shoutcast server” and you get any sort of results.

    The Second Life Marketplace offer Shoutcast Services

    You will notice that the services offered are numerous and of different types. Look at the numbers: the number of listeners indicates how many users will be able to listen to your stream at the same time, not the overall total. For how many days, and with what audio quality.

    Choose the type of service that seems most suitable for your purpose (remember that in a sim more than 100 people is impossible to have, and that for a decent quality audio MP3 128kbps 44.1mhz is enough) and buy it. After the purchase, you will receive all the infos needed to connect your stream to Second Life! Finally we are almost there.

    What you will receive will generally is a notecard containing the essential information. Something like this (the example show a stream i rented time ago from a provider, data are not real and just for example):

    Datacenter : EU
    Shout login page : http://eu.down.net:2199
    Land URL : http://eu.down.net:8199
    Shout username : bb_kbass
    Shout admin password : WChgxnpY16
    Stream IP : 207.23.11.64
    Stream port : 8399
    Stream password : biMGlqySbY
    Software : ShoutCast2
    Listeners : 200
    Bitrate (kbps) : 192
    AutoDJ : false
    Expiration date : 2022-07-22 05:46:16

    Some infos are generic (datacenter, expiration date, software, autodj) but others are essentail for can broadcast our music. Let’s look at them one by one.

    Login page is the web page that allows you to start, stop and restart your Shoutcast server. Type the address into your browser, enter the admin password and here is the server management panel.

    Land URL is very important: this is the URL (the address of a web page) that connects the server to the parcel, the server to which all clients (listeners viewer) will connect when the user clicks on Play.

    This is a very important point to understand: the listener does not connect to your computer, but to your Shoutcast server. You will notice that between when you as DJ click on the Connect button of your DJ program and the sound actually arrives at the listener in Second Life there can be a high delay, even 30 seconds. Second Life viewer use some libraries from FMOD for play audio (while for other media is used a little internal browser called Dullahan). Then the trip start be enough long: you send your music to Shoutcast server, that start play your music on server. Then the listener click the Play button on his viewer, the viewer ask the server, FMOD interprets audio signals coming from server and sends them to the listener’s sound card.

    At this point the listener’s viewer will begin to play the audio, and this will produce continuous traffic on his PC (for this it is important to balance audio quality and user experience). On our example case, is generated a continous a stream of 128 kbps, until the listener stops the audio. This “audio” traffic is added to the normal sim traffic generated by visitors, scripts and so. A too much high audio quality can kill the user experience, take care of this

    This important info must be inserted in the Sound tab of About Land window (World > Parcel Details).

    Stream URL in the Sound tab of About Land window

    In this way the parcel is ready to receive messages from your server. Second Life side we are done, now is time to take care of our player, connecting him to our server.

    Every Shoutcast interface from any program ask you this data:

    Stream IP: address of your server

    Stream port: every server can have many ports, sort of house number

    Username : your username as reported in the notecard

    Stream password: your password as reported in the notecard

    Plus, information about the audio quality of the stream you have rented for set what encoder use, format (MP3 the most common case) and bitrate, that you find in Bitrate (kbps). Bitrate value mean the max bitrate you can use, lower values are accepted, biggers can raise troubles.

    Settings in ShoutCAST DSP in Winamp.
    The same infos on Mixxx Live Broadcasting panel

    Click Connect, play your music and magically the rave happen! 🙂

    ps: this is just a first try, please feel free to send me any correction addendum as notecard in world (livio korobase).

    Featured Image: Party illustration vector created by pikisuperstar – www.freepik.com