The Broadcast Radio Blog

Live from Las Vegas: Broadcast Radio Takes on NAB Show 2026!

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:30:08 GMT

Localised Radio Just Got Personal: Introducing Split Voice Tracking in Myriad Playout & Automation

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:07 GMT

Seamless Music Acquisition with Promo Only Integration and Myriad Playout & Automation

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 11:41:43 GMT

The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

7 Mistakes You’re Making with Radio Automation Software (And How Myriad Can Fix Them)

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:06 GMT

The 78% Cloud-Native Tipping Point: Why Broadcasters Are Moving from the Server Room to the Cloud

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 11:00:16 GMT

The Modern Newsroom: Streamlining Radio Journalism with Myriad News

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:56:19 GMT

The 'Pro Look': Why Studio Signage is More Than Just a Red Light

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:00:24 GMT

Studio vs. Cloud? Why 'Hybrid Radio' is the Ultimate Solution for Modern Broadcasters

Mon, 16 Feb 2026 09:02:15 GMT

How to Start an Internet Radio Station With Zero Equipment (2026 Guide)

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 11:01:34 GMT

The Future of Scheduling: Why Myriad Schedule Pro is a Game-Changer for Modern Radio

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:01 GMT

Does Radio Broadcasting Equipment Really Matter in 2026

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:59:23 GMT

Santa Baby Radio - Introduction

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:50:37 GMT

Too early to start thinking about Christmas?

You may not need to be baking Mince Pies just yet, but if you are thinking about running a festive pop-up radio station this holiday season, you may want to start planning for it now.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to guide you through the process of building a fictional festive station called Santa Baby Radio, using the Myriad Cloud platform.

This station will be a spin off from the equally fictional Kelfield Radio often featured in our demos and tutorial videos.

In this series we will cover every step needed to setup, build and launch Santa Baby Radio using Myriad Cloud.

This will include:

* Creating a new Station within the Kelfield Radio brand which will share audio content with the parent station.

* Use the Mass Change tools to only use the content we want on Santa Baby Radio, and fill in any gaps by uploading news songs and jingles.

* Build some clocks and assign them to the weeks leading up to Christmas.

* Setup AI Voice Links to add some special, context sensitive content that will make this fully automated service sound live.

* Design and build a simple website and web player for the station.

* Add in the details needed for the optional mobile apps (iOS, Android & Carplay) as well as an Alexa Skill.

* Invite some presenters to voice track shows and even present a special live show on Christmas eve.

* Launch the radio station and get started on the mince pies.

We will cover these steps in posts released over the coming weeks, so check back regularly for the latest episode.

Santa Baby Radio Part 1(a) -Adding a station to the Kelfield Radio brand

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:50:37 GMT

In this post we will run through how to create a new Station under the Kelfield Radio ‘Brand’ within Myriad Cloud. This assumes that your primary radio station is also on Myriad Cloud.

Don’t worry if your primary station is a traditional ‘on premise’ Myriad Playout 6 system, we will be covering how to setup from a traditional system in the next post.

In this post, we will cover the steps needed to create a new Station within an existing ‘Brand’ running on Myriad Cloud, but before we start, it is worth mentioning how hierarchy of Organisations, Brands and Stations works in Myriad Cloud.

The diagram shows the hierarchy of a Myriad Cloud account.

Organisation - This is the top level owner of the account (World Wide Radio Inc)
Brands – These are the distinct radio stations brands such as Big City Radio & Cardiac Radio.
Stations – These are the individual services within a Brand. All Stations share content within a single Brand but no with other Brands.

So, in the diagram, the Organisation owns two brands and operates 3 services under each brand. This means that Big City FM, Big City 90s & Big City Classics all share the same content library but have their own Clocks, Rules & Schedule for live and automated playout.

Similarly, Cardiac FM, Cardiac Musicals & Cardiac Soul all share audio content but do not share content with the Big City stations.

If all stations needed to share content then they would be organized into a single Brand.

So, for Santa Baby Radio, we want to create a new Station within the Kelfield Radio Brand, let’s see how to do it!

Click on the Settings button on the left navigation tab and scroll down and click on the Organisation Settings option.

Click on the New Station button in the Brand you want to create the new station in.

Fill in the Station Details such as station name, call sign and tag line, then click OK .

The new Station will now be listed in the Brand. Next we need to click on the Station to switch to it, so we can add the Myriad Cloud subscription to the Station.

If there is no Myriad Cloud subscription associated with this Station or you have an active Myriad Cloud subscription, you will asked if you want to start a Free 7 Day Trial . Click on the Start Trial button to begin the trial period. You can convert from a Free Trial to a full subscription at any point in the initial 7 day period.

Follow the on-screen instructions to setup your free 7 day trial .

After a few minutes, your new station will be ready to start working on.

If you have already completed a 7 day free trial previously, and do not have an active Myriad Cloud subscription, you will not be offered another 7 day trial. Instead, you will need to create a new subscription for your station.

Click on the Myriad Cloud option and select the plan you want to use you’re your station. In the case of Santa Baby, we was a fully automated station with AI Voice Links, so need to select the Myriad Cloud Pro option.

Follow the on screen instructions to select any options you want for your station and complete the checkout process .

Once you have completed the checkout process, your subscription will be confirmed and your new station deployed.

After a few minutes, your station will be ready to start working on.

In the next post, we will repeat this process but using the example of a station who doesn't use Myriad Cloud and instead has a traditional Myriad Playout on-premise option.

Santa Baby Radio Part 1(b) -Creating a Myriad Cloud station from scratch.

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:50:37 GMT

Ideal for Myriad Playout (on premise) users.

What if you don't currently use Myriad Cloud at all?

In this post, we will go through the process of creating a new Broadcast.Radio account and a new Myriad Cloud station from scratch.

In a future post, we will cover how to replicate content from an on-premise Myriad Playout system to a Myriad Cloud station.

Start by visiting https://www.myriadcloud.com/#FreeTrial clicking on the Start Your Free 7 Day Trial button.

This will allow you to create an account on the Broadcast.Radio portal.

Add in your Name , Email Address and Organisation Name (or Station Name) then tick the Agree to Terms & Conditions option and click Next .

Fill in the CAPTCHA challenge to prove you are not a robot!

Next check you email . You will have recieved an email from the Broadcast.Radio portal confirming your email address. Click on the Activate My Account button to activate your Broadcast.Radio account.

This will open a new browser tab with our email address and activation code pre-populated. Click on the Accept Invitation button to activate your account.

Set a suitably secure password for your account.

Next you will be asked to confirm your Station Name and Time zone. Click Continue.

Next, click on the Free Trial button and verify your age when prompted.

It may take several minutes to build and deploy your Myriad Cloud station. While you are waiting, why not watch the Welcome to Myriad Cloud Video using the embedded video in the center of the window.

Once the deployment process has completed, you will be ready to start adding content to your Myriad Cloud station.

As this is a brand new Myriad Cloud station, the 'first run experience' wizard will be displayed to help you get started.

The options are:

Add your own content - start by add a few files to upload to your system. This is the option we want for Santa Baby Radio.
Install demo media - a handful of copyright free audio items will be added to your Station to get you started.
Start with an empty system - Proceed directly to the portal without uploading any content.

In this case, select Add you own content.

Open a File Browser window and drag a few song audio files into the Click or drop files area and then select Song Category you want to put them into.

Once you have added a few Songs, click on the Next button. The files will take a few minutes to upload and import (depending on size and quantity.

Repeat the process with some Jingle audio files.

Finally choose whether you want to go straight to the Live Studio or select next steps from the Dashboard.

Click on the Take me to launchpad button.

Your new Myriad Cloud station is now ready to start working on.

The Evolution Of SmartSign

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 10:53:54 GMT

In anticipation of the release of SmartSign 3, we are looking back at the history of our screen studio signage system as well as a quick look at what the future holds.

SmartSign 1 (well just SmartSign) was originally conceived as a simple ‘tally’ indicator to how real world events such as when microphones are active or a phone is ringing. At the time, we were working on the BR Hardware Service as part of the general Myriad 5 development cycle, and wanted a way to showcase the virtual hardware events the BR Hardware Service introduced.

One of the aims was to make the system as cost effective as possible so work began on building an application that would run on Windows IOT on a Raspberry Pi. The Pi was ideal as it included physical hardware I/O built in meaning that SmartSign could use both physical and virtual GPIO and even convert physical inputs to virtual inputs for use in other BR software such as Myriad Logging or other SmartSigns.

We soon started to add other ‘tiles’ to the system to allow clocks, date / time, text, images, RSS feeds and more.

SmartSign was released in 2016 and was an instant hit with our customers.

Whilst SmartSign was popular, over time it became clear that if we wanted to add more advanced features, we would need to move to a new platform so work began on SmartSign2 in Summer of 2021. SmartSign2 was only a minor variation of SmartSign with the main difference being that the platform changed to standard Windows devices meaning SmartSign2 could run on Windows PC’s and laptops as well as Windows based tablets. This move away from Raspberry Pi’s add more power which allowed us to add a new YouTube tile as well as a Media Tile capable of running webcams or audio streams. Much of the code from SmartSign was able to be reused allowing a rapid development cycle resulting in the release of SmartSign2 in October 2021.

That brings us to SmartSign3 which is currently in the final stages of development.

Unlike SmartSign2, we wanted to do a much deeper re-write for SmartSign3 so whilst many of the screens look the same and most features are retained, underneath, SmartSign3 is significantly different to its processors. The driving force behind this is the new multi-screen support which is a flagship feature of SmartSign3. This allows you to use a single device (with multiple video outputs) to drive signage in multiple locations. So, you can have a single PC that runs SmartSign screens in your studios as well as reception and your news area, with each screen displaying its own information. SmartSign3 will be licensed ‘per screen’ output but the ability to run several screens from a single device will significantly reduce the overall costs for multi-screen environments.

Key new features in SmartSign3 include:

Multi-screen support.
New weather tile.
Enhanced media time (supports a wider range of video formats).
Live preview of screen in editing view.
Fully rewritten as a Windows OS app.

SmartSign3 is undergoing final testing, with a planned release window of late Spring 2024. We will post an update once we have final details.

Artists Groups in Myriad 6 Schedule Plus

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 17:52:50 GMT

The 5 Spice Girl Problem

Sporty, Baby, Scary, Posh and Ginger – The Spice Girls, you can never have too much of them, right?

But, your listeners may well not agree with that, so how can you ensure that you wont be playing a classic Spice Girl’s song in the same hour as one of Geri Halliwell’s solo mega-hits!

Luckily, Schedule Plus customers can guard against this type of embarrassing 'girl power' overload using the Artists Groups feature.

To create and manage your Artist Groups, click on the View Menu > Manage Artists / Song Titles option .

Next select the Artists Groups option on the tab to view your existing Artists Groups.

In the screenshot below, you will see that we have selected The Spice Girls on the left side and the associated Artists are listed on the right.

You can add new Artists to an Artist Group by clicking on the Add Artist button.

Then type in the Artists you want to add to the Artists Group.

You can also download a pre-built list of Artists Groups by clicking on the Download button.

Select the list you want to download.

You will then see a list of Artist Groups that will be created or amended. Select the changes you want to be applied and click on the OK button.

Applying Artist Group Rules

To apply Artists Group separations, you need to add the Artist Group Rules to the Song Categories you want it to apply to.

In the screen shot below, you can see that a 2 hour Artists Group separation is being applied to Songs in the Gold Category. This means that is a Mel C Songs is scheduled from the Gold Category, we will not be hearing from Mel B, Emma, Victoria or Geri (or the Spice Girls) for a couple of hours either side!

For a more detailed walk-through on Artists Groups see - https://help.broadcastradio.com/hc/en-gb/articles/13275387301916

Songfacts® and Broadcast Radio - integrating them onto your website and into your Studio Workflow

peterj@broadcastradio.com (Peter Jarrett) — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:07:16 GMT

The latest feature from Broadcast Radio can really make your station stand out from the competition

As you may have just seen from the Myriad v6.2.1 release post ( https://www.facebook.com/.../permalink/6674476342616356 ), we are really excited about bringing Songfacts® to the Broadcast Radio platform and to Myriad v6.

The Songfacts service is an incredible resource for people interested in the stories behind the songs and artists, which naturally includes radio broadcasters - you can see the full Songfacts site at www.songfacts.com

Following a suggestion from a user to look into whether we could display Songfacts in Myriad, we took a look and LOVED what we saw - so much so that we've now officially partnered with the team at Songfacts so we can show facts not only on our Broadcast.Radio web players, but ALSO directly inside Myriad v6 in the studio.

The team at Songfacts believe this is actually the very first time this information has ever been shown in a radio studio within the playout system and the founder of Songfacts (Carl Wiser) even commented that he wishes HE'D had a resource like this in the studio back when he was on air - which is a pretty amazing testament!

So what does it do, and how do you use it?

Broadcast.Radio Web player

First off, this is a service that we are making available for free to anyone who has a streaming subscription with us on our broadcast.radio streaming platform.

The great news is that you don't even need to be running Myriad v6 to use it on the web player - the facts will appear as long as whatever playout system you ARE using, is sending now playing information to your broadcast.radio station account.

We're covering all the use and rights costs of using the Songfacts data as part of our deal with Songfacts, so as long as you have a streaming subscription with us, then you're entitled to show the data on your player, and ALSO in SmartInfo with Myriad v6 in the studio itself.

On the left is an example of how the Songfacts look on the web player - in this case, our in house test station is playing a song by David Jordan, and the broadcast.radio platform has automatically found some suitable short facts about him and is showing them on the web player in a new " Did you know " section at the bottom of the player.

Every time a new song starts, the platform automatically checks for any suitable facts, and then shows them on the player. If a song doesn't have any facts, then the area is gracefully hidden until the next song with available facts starts. Think of it a bit like the on-screen graphics on tv shows like TOTP2 giving you a bit of trivia about each hit.

Of course, the Songfacts company is US based, so there is a slight bias towards US based facts, but thankfully, as most English speaking countries often share the same music and artists - think international stars like Ed Sheeran etc - then you will find a surprisingly high number of facts even for non US artists.

If you already have a streaming subscription then you just need to edit your Player settings via https://my.broadcast.radio/station/x/options/style/player and turn on the new option to " Show a Songfact about the song " and within a few moments you'll have live facts appearing on your player.

If you don't already have streaming with us, then you can now sign up for it directly from the website - if you have a broadcast.radio account (and you probably do if you have any other services like Myriad Anywhere!) then just head to the Manage Subscriptions section and you can add streaming there, but if you have never had a broadcast.radio account before, just go to https://my.broadcast.radio/product/streaming and you can sign up from there.

All new streaming services get Songfacts enabled by default, but it's a simple matter to turn it off using the above option if you don't feel it suits your station.

Important note: You don't actually have to stream your live stream WITH us - if you are already streaming with someone else and don't want to change, then you can take out the streaming subscription to get access to the Player, but then actually enter the streaming URL for your existing streaming company and the player will then happily play from there instead. Your streaming server will be there waiting for you if you ever want to look at changing platforms - and it may well be worth looking at changing as our streaming service offers more than a few benefits over many of the other platforms out there.

MYRIAD PLAYOUT INTEGRATION

The next incredibly cool part of the partnership is being able to see Songfacts in SmartInfo directly in Myriad in the studio itself. Along with the existing Wikipedia information, this is a real boon to presenters so they can talk knowledgably about the music, rather than ending up with a more bland "that-was-this-is" type link. This information is automatically downloaded and presented to you every time you highlight a Song, so it's incredibly easy to get talking points for your show.

To enable Songfacts in SmartInfo, you will need to have downloaded and installed the latest v6.2 beta version , and you will immediately see the new Songfacts pane in the middle, along with a prompt to enter your broadcast.radio API key into Station Settings. If you don't have your key already, you can get it from the Playout Integration tab in your broadcast.radio account from https://my.broadcast.radio/station/x/options/playout

Copy the API key from that web page, then in Myriad Playout, go to the Station menu, then click Station Settings , then on the Connections tab where you will see where to paste your key into. It should immediately then show the Station name underneath. If you don't see your station name, then please check you've copied all of the key with no extra spaces.

Click OK , then select a song and you should see a fact straight away. If the item doesn't have a Song fact, you can then instead select to see Artists Facts instead using the button in the top right corner. You can see an example of a Songfact below.

If you don't have a streaming subscription from Broadcast.Radio for your station, then Myriad will show a message that it can't use it get Songfacts, so you will then need to follow the steps above to get a streaming service enabled.

Finally, if you don't want Songfacts showing for your station in the studio - although why wouldn't you - then you can turn it off on the same Connections tab in Station Settings. You may then need to restart for that pane to then be totally hidden.

Don't forget that broadcast.radio API keys are per-station, and that Songfacts is also licensed per-station, so if you have multiple different stations in the same database you will need to enter each Station's API key to enable it for those stations. But as before, if you have a streaming service for those already, then you are good to go.

Myriad Playout v6 - some exciting news about it's release

peterj@broadcastradio.com (Peter Jarrett) — Fri, 12 May 2023 08:11:55 GMT

Myriad v6 Public Beta testing has been going well... REALLY well!

I just wanted to post a quick update on where we are with getting Myriad v6 Playout up to "Full Release" status.

First off: a quick explanation on what we mean by "Full" vs "Beta" Releases and the process we use to get new releases of our software tested and released.

Full Release vs Beta Release - what does that mean?

When we are working on a new release of Myriad, our primary aims during testing are to make sure that the any new features work as designed, and more importantly, that when it leaves BR Towers that it's not going to cause real live radio stations any headaches. In the forefront of our minds is that Myriad is used every day by thousands of users in radio stations all around the world, and the last thing we want to do is give them even MORE to deal with - or even worse, to take a radio station Off-Air due to something we missed.

To do this, we work hard during development to make sure that new features do what they should, don't have any critical bugs, and just as importantly, don't break anything else.

All new software goes through a series of stages as part of each release cycle:

Alpha builds: This stage usually means that any new features are functionally complete, but will likely have some bugs in, some of which might even cause the program to shutdown unexpectedly. These are almost always only ever used internally at BR Towers and it's incredibly rare that these are let out of the building!
Private Beta Releases: By this stage, the software is usually complete, and has passed the initial rounds of internal testing showing that it is reliable and works well, with no critical issues found. These versions are used internally at BR Towers as well as at selected real world radio stations who we work closely with as part of their daily broadcasting.
Public Beta Releases: We are now happy that the software works well and does what it should, and that it hasn't caused any operational issues during testing. At this point we are confident that it's ready for everyone to use, and we expect that it should be able to move to Full release shortly. However, it's still considered a test release, so is not supported buy our normal Support team, and should only be used On-Air at your own risk on the understanding that there may be bugs we've not found!
Full Release: Once we are happy that the new release is in use at a significant number of stations and has been running long enough that we are confident that is has the high quality we would expect, we upgrade the Beta to "Full Release" status - at this point it's fully supported by our Support Team so customers can then feel confident enough to start rolling it out on their own stations - of course, subject to any testing they want to do themselves first! At this point we will also start deploying this new release ourselves to all new customers.

If you want a more detailed explanation about Beta releases, there is a full explanation here https://www.broadcastradio.com/beta-versions-explained

Developing new features:

As part of daily life in the Broadcast Radio software Dev team, whenever we're working on a new update, we regularly produce "Alpha" test builds that we run on multiple internal test radio stations - each one of these stations is testing a different common configuration. For example, one station might be using the built in media engine, whilst another otherwise identical station is using the Remote Media Engine Host instead. Another test computer might be running multiple radio stations all from a single PC, whilst yet another is simulating radio stations that use Split Advert Breaks and ID's to produce different branded content.

These test stations are much more than simple log playback - they are designed to simulate as many common scenarios that our end users carry out every day as possible - so we even use automated testing to simulate users deleting and importing media items, importing news and weather content, even making sure that we can correctly import syndicated shows from 3rd party providers, and validating that their "Now Playing" information is correctly ingested and then sent back out at playout time.

Once we have finished work on a new feature and are happy that it has passed the automated testing, a full internal private " Beta " build is then passed to members of our Support team who do "as-live" testing of features, as well as making sure that any customer reported issues have been resolved. The will also putt it through their own typical test scenarios based on their own real-world experience working with customers directly.

We also send that private Beta build out to a carefully selected pool of broadcasters who then test that new version on their actual live radio stations - usually on a test system first, and when they are happy, they will then run it live On-Air - you'll sometimes hear us refer to these stations as our " Private Beta Test" stations. These stations are essential to our testing process as it will put the softwar through its paces in the fast paced environment of a live broadcast studio - a true trial by fire if you will! Hopefully it's a testament to our development skills that these stations are always very happy to test these versions, as they know it's incredibly rare that it will cause them any actual On-Air issues!

We then expand our own internal testing pool to include other parts of the Broadcast Radio team to make sure that documentation can be worked on or updated, any training videos created, as well as making sure that the commercial team is happy that they are ready to talk about new features and improvements with customers, as well as making sure they are comfortable with how to demonstrate the new version at the many trade shows and Expo's that we attend each year.

Once all the above has completed and we are happy that Myriad is ready, we then do a full build of Myriad ready for a " Public Beta Release" .

Our quality target for these Public Beta releases is that this release should ultimately be good enough to be upgraded to "Full Release" status once it's passed public testing.

This means that it should be able to be used by normal non-technical presenters, on a real world radio station with zero "Off-Air" bugs, and as few minor issues as possible - we aren't perfect, and any coder who says they are is lying! - but we do our very best to make sure that these releases are as good as is humanly possibly.

Part of the reason for these Public Beta Releases is that although we have tested as many common environments as possible, it's impossible to simulate the hundreds of possible different scenarios that Myriad might be used in, and of course hundreds of thousands of different actions that different users will carry out at stations in real-world use every day. For example, one station might have a particular set of hardware that performs differently than others, or one user may use a feature differently from how we intended it, and comes across a bug.

So this Public Beta testing is an incredibly important phase in the release cycle - without knowing that other broadcasters have already upgraded and tested out each new release, what confidence would you have that your station is not going to be adversely affected by a change?

We also feel a strong sense of responsibility with these Public Beta versions - the last thing we would want to do is to to release something that is going to make a presenter or a station sound unprofessional. Further, if we were to get a reputation that our Beta Releases are unreliable then broadcasters would stop downloading and testing them because they wouldn't have the confidence to use it. This means we would lose that incredibly valuable real-world testing that makes sure that every release of Myriad that goes to "Full Release" is as rock solid as possible.

Sometimes during this Public Beta Release phase, an issue will be found that we feel is critical enough that we need to issue a fix before we are happy to sign off on that version going to Full Release.

An example of this recently was with the first ever Beta Release of Myriad Playout v6 (v6.1.1), when a user in France found that in certain circumstances Myriad would not run correctly - in this case, because in France a decimal point is represented by a comma "," instead of a "." character. Obviously this is not a good thing(tm) so we got that fixed and issued the v6.1.2 release along with some other tweaks improvements and bug fixes that came up with that first release.

This testing and release cycle will then usually repeat until we are confident that the most recent Beta is ready, at which point it is then upgraded to Full Release status.

So, that's the process explained, where are we with Myriad Playout v6?

First off, the really great news is that Myriad Playout v6.1 has turned out to be REMARKABLY reliable.

Between you and me, we fully expected that there would be something that we would have to re-work with the very first release, maybe even meaning that we would have to do another big release to get things sorted - after all, v6 is a huge update from v5, and there are thousands of UI changes, and tens of thousands of code line changes that we've been working on for the past 9 months or more, so even with fingers and toes crossed, we did think that we might need more updates before it was ready for "Full" release.

The amazing news is that we were wildly wrong - Myriad v6 has proven to be incredibly reliable - so much so, that almost 1 in 10 Myriad v5 stations have already updated to the latest beta release (v6.1.2) and are using it live on-air , and almost every station that has downloaded the beta to try it out has ended up being so happy with it that they have rolled it out on-air. Yes, we are feeling more than a little bit chuffed about that!

BUT! (And there is always a BUT!) - Our own testing and feedback from the beta testing programme has shown a very small number of issues (less than 10) that we want to get fixes out for before it goes Full Release - rather than do a Full Release now, then have to wait for the next big release to get those fixes out.

For example, the method used to "Group" items in the Media Library search results has stopped working. It's hard to imagine how this could possibly take a radio station off-air, but I'm pretty sure it might well drive a presenter up the wall if they have come to rely on using that as part of producing their show! So we fixed it, along with the other niggles.

So - whats next?

The plan is now pretty simple - within the next week or so we will be shipping a v6.1.3 Public Beta release that fixes those last few bits, but ALSO adds in a couple of new features as well - for example you can now configure Remote Edit Server to process each recorded voice link using a 3rd party audio processor such as StereoTool to help iron out those differences that come from different rooms, microphones and techniques. This feature was in Myriad v5 RES, but it wasn't quite ready in time for the original Beta release of v6, but it is now, so we've been able to include it in v6.1.3.

Typically we let a Beta release run for about 4 weeks to make sure enough broadcasters have put it through it's paces before we declare it ready to upgrade to a Full Release, however, as the changes in v6.1.3 are relatively minor we are hoping that we will be able to cut down this period slightly to get it up to Full Release status more rapidly than usual.

We actually took a big step towards this goal today internally at BR Towers, as we completed the upgrade of ALL of our internal "long term" test stations to Myriad v6 - this is a huge step towards us being ready to certify that we are happy that Myriad v6 will be our flagship product - but also a slightly sad day, as some of those stations have been running Myriad v5 for nearly 7 years through various versions - But that's the price of progress!

(Note to v5 users: Don't worry, we still have several other test stations running the latest v5.32.2 release as well, just in case!)

Summary

So in summary - within the next week or so we will release Myriad Playout v6.1.3 , and once that is released, we'll then follow it up shortly afterwards with a Myriad AutoTrack SE v4.6.1 beta release with the aim that these will both go Full Release shortly after.

As you can imagine, we're incredibly excited about this, and we genuinely can't wait to get Myriad v6 to Full Release as we know so many stations are waiting to upgrade as soon as they can- we know they are as excited about it as we are, because we get asked about it multiple times a day - and we genuinely love that keenness!

Once both Myriad Playout and AutoTrack have gone to Full Release, we will then be working on the first release of Myriad Anywhere v6 Self-Hosted for stations that host their own Myriad Anywhere sites.

Of course, Myriad Anywhere Cloud itself is always kept up to date by our team here, and it all Myriad Anywhere Cloud stations receive updates automatically every week or two, and it also has it's own Beta versions that are updated more often than that - for more information on how to opt-in to these Beta Releases of Myriad Anywhere Cloud v6, see this post on on facebook

Hopefully this helps explain where we are, and just how soon Myriad Playout v6 will be ready for the big time!

Neat Bumble Bee Microphone Review (for Myriad Anywhere)

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 10:52:29 GMT

This smart microphone may be ideal for Myriad Anywhere users.

Recently, during a custom visit to BR HQ, they mentioned they had equipped multiple Myriad Anywhere users with the Bumble Bee Microphone from Neat Microphones. We were intrigued by the specifications so ordered one to give it a try!

One of the great things about Myriad Anywhere is that it allows presenters to record Voice Tracks or even present live shows with very little equipment at the remote site, but you do still need a good quality microphone and some headphones to get the most from the system.

Most presenters will use a good quality headset as it allows you to hear the audio and record just your microphone. The only downside to this arrangement (for broadcasters at least) is usually, you cannot hear your voice through the headphones. In a studio, what you hear in your headphones is typically a mix of audio and voice but inherent latency on any remote audio system (like BR Live) means that if listen to a mix of audio and voice, the delay would be difficult for your brain to work with! This is the reason that normally, the audio freed from your studio (via BR Live) will need to be a 'clean feed' ie everything but your voice.

This is different to working in a studio and it is something you get used to fairly quickly but one beg advantage of the Bumble Bee microphone is that as well as providing an audio feed from the studio, your microphone is also sent to the local headphones so you get a general experience that is much closer to working in a studio.

The key features of the Bumble Bee include:

High quality microphone audio
Built in PC sound device (so Anywhere can use it for playback)
Local microphone audio sent to headphones (and mixed with PC audio)
Three microphone tone modes (Music / Neutral / Voice)
Angle-poise microphone with adjustable mic gain
Adjustable headphone gain

For more details, check out the Neat Microphones website - Neat Bumblebee | Neat Microphones

Setup

Setup could not be easier. Just unbox and plug in the included USB cable and Windows 10 will quickly detect and setup the Bumble Bee. We didn't try it on a Mac but setup should be just as simple!

The microphone will appear as a standard recording device and the audio output will appear as a speak device so you can easily configure Myriad Anywhere to use these for recording and playback via the Media Settings option.

If you are using Anywhere Pro with BR Live for live shows, you will also need to set the input and output device to the Bumble Bee when you connect to the BR Live Audio Room.

With that done, just plug some standard headphones in to the headphone jack on the front of the Bumble Bee and you are ready to start broadcasting.

Using the Bumble Bee

Having used Anywhere a lot without the local voice being in the 'headphone mix', it is a little odd to go back to hearing your voice through the headphones, but after a few seconds, it is just like being in the studio.

We did a range of tests for both Voice Tracking and Live Shows via Anywhere and the results were pretty good. The audio sounded rich and clear although it is worth remembering that this microphone is designed for podcasts and so you do not need to get close to the microphone, like you would with a traditional studio microphone.

We also tested the microphone in a Teams meeting to get realtime feedback and other participants reported good audio clarity.

The setup was particularly effective when coupled with a Midi Controller as the extra level of control (of both Myriad Players and Microphone) gives an experience that is very 'studio like' but at a fraction of the cost of setting up your own home studio.

Where to buy?

As a mainstream microphone designed for podcasting, the Bumble Bee is available from most of the larger music technology websites including:

Gears 4 Music ( Neat Bumblebee Desktop USB Microphone at Gear4music )

Other retailers such as Amazon also list them although they were showing as 'out of stock' at time of writing.

Broadcast Radio is not able to supply these microphones so we recommend you shop around for the best deal.

The verdict

If you are looking for a good quality microphone to use with Myriad Anywhere, with the added advantage of being able to 'hear' what you are recording then the Bumble Bee from Neat Microphones is a very good option.

At around £70, it is not the cheapest option on the market but we think it represents good value when you consider the quality and features. We found it a particularly effective solution when coupled with a Midi Controller and used for live shows via Anywhere Pro.

DIY Equipment Tricks for the Budget Home Studio

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 15:33:24 GMT

Image Source: Pexels

Introduction

Whether it is recording podcast & full shows, voice tracking or presenting live remote shows via Myriad Anywhere Pro, more and more presenters are turning to small, low-cost home studios to safely produce content. Creating a home studio need not cost a lot of money and this week’s guest contributor, Blanca Jonathan, has some tips and tricks to help you get the most from your home studio setup.

Aside from making music, another great reason to set up your own studio is to create a podcast. In recent years, the popularity of podcasts has risen significantly. Alongside major celebrities, personalities are becoming known primarily for their podcast content. The average percentage of monthly podcast listeners aged 12-to-34 years old is now at 49%. According to Statista , podcast advertising spending in the UK in 2020 was £33.56 million, and is expected to more than double by 2024.

If you’re interested in jumping in yourself, you can easily set up your own studio at home even if you’re on a budget. As long as you’ve got your essentials, there are a few key DIY improvements you can make to make your set-up complete.

Use egg crates as acoustic foam substitutes

It should be noted that most sound professionals warn about the inefficiencies of egg cartons as decent sound absorbers. However, a study featured in the Building Acoustics journal shows that using cardboard egg crates filled with dry recycled materials balled up as filling provides enough absorption of lower to upper mid-range frequencies, so long as the dominant noise source is the human voice. This should be very usable for podcasts and radio shows, since instruments won’t get in the way.

Use vocal pedals instead of sound mixers

Sound mixing equipment can be quite expensive, so a good workaround is to simply make use of vocal pedals. If you already have a set number of effects or processing that you plan to use, you can just stick to a few pedals that you can use to enhance your recording. TC Helicon is noted for vocal pedals that are specifically used to enhance vocal sounds in different engineering aspects. So, in the context of podcasting, one could easily start with a VoiceTone Correct XT pedal and a Talkbox Synth for voice correction and pitch.

Make use of carpets and blankets as sound traps

Since the egg crates above only supply partial diffusion, you want to create more absorption that blocks outside noise and enhances your intended recorded vocals. While you shouldn’t go for a fully-carpeted room, some well-placed carpeting under your main sound stage and some thick blankets to cover any windows and door frames can help create some makeshift sound traps.

Use your tablet as an extended display

If you don’t want to shell out for another monitor for your DAW or you want to create your own MIDI set-up without actually having to buy a bunch of equipment, you can simply use a tablet and connect to your computer. You just need to get the right software and make sure both your computer and tablet are connected to the same network. Usually, if you connect an Android device, you can see an option displayed for Windows systems to make it MIDI. Some good budget-friendly options are the Alcatel Joy Tab 2 or the Lenovo Tab 4 8.

Combine software to create live broadcasts

Though you could easily do recordings solo, there is also a lot of value in being able to do interviews and collaborations even if you aren’t recording in the same location. A good way to pull this off remotely is by making use of broadcasting software like Myriad 5 Playout . You can pair this up with other remote-control solutions available online like Teamviewer so you can record with your partner in real-time.

These DIY tricks are easy to apply and should do the job well. These ensure that you can have a reliable starting studio without sacrificing sound for savings, so you can slowly build up your equipment from there.

Post specially written for broadcastradio.com

by Blanca Jonathan

Possible Low Cost Mixer For Smaller Stations

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 15:55:28 GMT

We take a look at the Behringer DX2000USB

We are often asked for recommendations for smaller, low cost mixers for stations that are launching on a tight budget or looking to add additional studio capacity as cost effectively as possible.

Type 'stereo mixer' into Google and literally hundreds of options will come up but the vast majority of them are not really suitable for use with Myriad because they do not have enough stereo inputs, are designed for sound mixing or do not offer the basic facilities needed to present a radio show. But there are a few that could be considered as a possible alternative to a full broadcast mixer. The Behringer DX2000USB may be the ideal mixer for smaller stations, as long as they are willing to live the compromises it brings when used in a broadcast radio environment.

C haracteristics of a traditional broadcast mixer

In an ideal world, every station, no matter the size would have a full broadcast mixer built by a company specialising in professional broadcast audio equipment. Brands such as AEQ and Sonifex have spent decades perfecting mixers that are built for radio studios.

Broadcast mixers are typically characterised but the following features:

Multiple stereo inputs / channels
Multiple microphone input channels
Telco channel (with cleanfeed / mix-minus output)
Prefade listen (sometimes called PFL, Cue)
Monitor muting - mutes speakers when microphone are on to avoid feedback
Fader starts

There are many more features that are commonly included with modern broadcast mixers (like AoIP or Playout system integration), but almost all mixers designed for broadcast use share the characteristics above.

Unfortunately, because broadcast mixers are not mass produced, they are generally more expensive than mixer designed for DJs or sound production with even the cheapest broadcast mixer (we are aware of) costing around £1000.

Technically the Rodcaster Pro could be considered a broadcast mixer based on the list above but it has very limited stereo inputs (1) meaning it is not ideal for use with a playout system like Myriad!

Could the DX2000USB be used as a broadcast mixer?

We wanted to take a look at a few, low cost stereo mixers to see if any of them would be suitable for use with Myriad Playout in a small broadcast studio. After an extensive search, we settled on the Behringer DX2000USB as the most likely candidate.

So how does it stack up?

Multiple Stereo Faders

The DX2000USB is well serviced in this department with seven fader channls each with a two inputs. In total you could have up to 10 stereo devices connected plus 1 x USB and 2 x Microphone. It is even possible to connect turntables direct as three channels can be switched to RIAA levels!

Multiple Microphone Inputs

This is a little more limited with only 2 x microphone inputs but it does also include support for dynamic or condenser (powered) microphones and an insert channel for an external mic processor. If you needed more microphone inputs you could always use a mic to line converter and use a line level input as it does not do monitor muting anyway! Also not that there is only one headphone output so if you have two presenters you will need a headphone splitter of some description.

Telco Channel / Cleanfeed Output

This is definitely something you don't get with the DX2000USB. There is a built in USB which offers input and output to a host computer so this could be used with software such as Skype which does a reasonable job of generating it's own mix-minus, so whilst you cannot connect this mixer to a traditional TBU, you can use modern software based VoIP systems.

Prefade Listen

The DX2000USB includes Prefade Listen (PFL) buttons on each channel. For monitoring you will need to either press a button to switch headphones to listen to PFM instead of main output, or you could use the 'split' option to listen to both main out and PFL. PFL also gets it's own dedicated level VU bar for setting levels.

Monitor Muting

This is the biggest issue with the DX2000USB as a broadcast mixer, it does not mute the monitors when the microphone channels are 'open' meaning if you have speakers plugged in, you run the risk of getting feedback. The answer here is to either remember to pull down the monitor fader (it is a fader not a knob) each time or simply not use speakers and rely on headphones.

Fader Starts

Each of the five stereo fader channel has a physical start button and corresponding output for trigging external devices (such as CD players or Myriad Media Players). We did not test these but connecting them to a physical GPIO device on your PC should allow you to trigger the Media Players from the buttons on the mixer

Anything Else?

There is a lot of features on this mixer that you will not need for broadcast use. Things such as the crossfader section are just not needed but they can also be bypassed to you can largely ignore them.

So all in all, the DX2000USB is a good, low cost alternative to a traditional broadcast mixer, as long as you are happy to live with some fairly sizable compromises in terms of ditching speakers in favour of headphones.

Testing It With Myriad

In order to test it with Myriad, we added a Terratec Aureon xFire8.0HD audio interface to provide the four output channels from the Myriad Media Players. These were connected to channels 4 - 7 on the DX2000USB via jack to phono cables. To test the recording into Myriad we used the built in USB interface provided by the DX2000USB. Finally we connected some standard AKG K52 headphones and an AKGP120 Condenser microphone (we also tested a generic dynamic mic).

What we found

Once the Aureon xFire was configured as the output for the Media Players in Myriad and the USB output from the mixer was setup for recording in Myriad, the DX2000USB was ready to go!

Audio from the Myriad inputs was clear and everything worked as you would expect it to. The microphone inputs from both dynamic and condenser microphones was also clean with dynamic mics needing just a little more gain (as you would expect). Monitoring and PFL worked well although the need to manually switch to PFL would take some getting used to if you are used to the auto-switching most broadcast desks do but again, that is something you would grow accustom to.

Probably the biggest headache would be manually muting the speakers but in our test, we just stuck to headphones so it was not an issue.

Luckily, the crossfader section can be disabled altogether so can be totally ignored when using this console for broadcasts, but I guess it is also there if you ever need to DJ with it!

In terms of build quality, the all metal construction is a nice surprise in such a low cost unit and Behringer have a long track record of building audio mixers so we do not anticipate any fragility there. Heat can be an issue with some Behringer gear but there mixer has a large chassis with vented sides, in fact the size is worth pointing out as it is a fairly large unit so you may need to consider positioning on a cluttered desk! There is also the option to rack mount it or drop it into a cutout on your table top (which is what we recommend). The faders work well, they do feel a little budget but no more than you would expect from a low cost mixer. The VU is easy to read with coloured LED segments for main and PFL outputs.

Another big plus is that the main output of the mixer is balanced so you could connect it to professional equipment such as a processor if required.

The Verdict

All in all, this is a mighty impressing piece of equipment for the price. Our test unit came from Amazon and cost just £199 inc VAT and delivery. When you consider what you are getting for that, it is remarkable value.

It also is a practical solution for using with Myriad Playout (with the addition of a suitable multi-channel output sound card). It has enough faders to allow you to have one per player with the option of using an additional fader for preview / editing. The PFL system works ok and the microphone support is adequate for a small studio. The only real negative point is the lack of monitor muting but that is something that is not included in any other mixers (that we know of) in this price bracket.

All in all we would recommend the DX2000USB for any station that needs a practical solution for building a small studio for Myriad Playout, that cannot stretch to a dedicated broadcast mixer.

Pros

Excellent value for money
The right number of inputs & faders
Support for dynamic and condenser mics
Built in stereo USB (good for Skype)
Well built

Cons

No monitor muting
Some functions not required
Only 2 x microphone inputs
No cleanfeed / mix-minus
Bulky design

The DX2000USB is available from most online audio stores as well as Amazon .

Guest Post: "The technical side of a radio station" by Arran Hodges

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 13:06:04 GMT

This weeks guest post is by Arran Hodges from Reach Radio

This post was originally posted on Arran's blog https://thisisarran.me/index.php/2020/12/04/the-technical-side-of-a-radio-station/ and is reproduced here by his kind permission. If you have a post you'd like share, please contact us and let us know!

When we had an idea to start a radio station- we didn’t really know where to start. There is so much work that goes into it- a lot on both the technical side and on the actual station output side too! I’ve done quite a bit of the setting up of the technology so I’ll go through some of the things that I had to think about before deploying networks and technology to keep a radio station online 24/7.

We had so many meetings back and forth with the brilliant guys over at Broadcast Radio. They produce a piece of software called Myriad. This is by far the biggest technical challenge that I have had to think around- since it’s not designed for our specific use. The whole application runs off of either local files or SMB shares and a Microsoft SQL server. There are four different instances that we had to plan around. Two of these instances would be in the same building as the server- however the rest would have had to have gone through a VPN connection in order to achieve remote access.

So- firstly.. how do we connect the multiple sites together? As a small start up the budget for anything technical is extremely small. Upon joining a group which discusses all things to do with the software that we used there was a suggestion made for people who use the Remote Voice Tracking client to use ZeroTier VPN for security and other reasons. Upon inspection- this particular client combines the capabilities of a VPN and a software defined network. ZeroTier is also an open source application that provides peer-to-peer connections- meaning that the connection doesn’t need to pass through any kinds of servers and as a result the latency seems to be brilliant. We took the advice that was in the support group and adapted the model of the use to be for our larger network that ran playout installs and SMB shares + connect together our SQL server to the different networks to give up-to-date information regarding playout and also have the ability to have 2-way-syncing. This worked really well for us.

It’s crucial that we had playout installed physically rather than the cloud because of this exact reason- I don’t believe we could have achieved what we have done without having it physically stored. The drawback of having this physically installed is that it runs off of a home network that can get congested at times (meaning slower loading times) and doesn’t have a suitable SLA agreed with the provider- therefore susceptible to drop outs in the transmission chain. We’ll talk about the ways to prevent the station going off air at this point later on. It’s worth noting that we have imported as much as we can infrastructure wise to FyfeWeb– a brilliant service provider. You should check them out.

Let’s talk about the transmission chain altogether. There are lots of moving parts within this;

Everything runs from Icecast within this chain. Since a physical audio switcher isn’t possible- this is the next best thing. The switching is done via fallback mounts on the raw feed of audio that’s being sent. Remote Contribution could be any of 3 studios- when they are live, they get broadcasted out to the listener via the two Icecast relays. As you can see from the diagram above- this goes through about 3 servers and 7 mountpoints. What’s not being seen here, though, is the transcoding that’s happening behind the scenes to provide lower bitrate mountpoints in formats like AAC or MP3. The audio switching on the playout system side is handled by Myriad’s built in smart log transfer.

Speaking of Icecast- it’s vital that you provide all of your audio via SSL now. Chrome 80 that was released earlier on this year had a security upgrade that meant that HTTP media requests would automatically get upgraded to the secure form, HTTPS. If HTTPS is unavailable- the request will fail. This was an issue for many stations around the globe that didn’t really know about this feature update- listeners weren’t actually able to tune in online to a lot of commercial stations here in the UK- which wasn’t a desired outcome. You can view more about Mixed Messages on chrome here.

So- it was important that we had a version of Icecast that supported SSL. There were two main options- Icecast-KH or a modified version of Icecast that Xiph provides with support for SSL. Since I didn’t have much knowledge of streaming solutions back then I decided to opt for the pre-compiled Xiph version of Icecast. Adding SSL is actually more simple to do than I imagined with Icecast- I make use of the LetsEncrypt certbot which gives you a free SSL certificate. Since we have 2 relays to add SSL to that are in a DNS round robin- it’s always interesting to see which one resolves first. This also means that we have to keep a close eye on expiry dates- as we can’t automatically renew both at the same time. There is a configuration I have found for it but I’m not particularly interested at this point in pursuing it.

Going off air in the case of a network dropout was a significant concern for me personally as it’s placed in a home environment. I’m not worried about the physical equipment- just the network that it ran on so I made sure that there were contingencies in place in the case of a network dropout. On both relays- there is a separate “backup” stream that is with a completely different provider that will automatically be fallen back on if connectivity goes boom. This has saved us in so many ways imaginable- from routine system maintenance to full on disasters this has always been a part of our contingency plan that every single station should have. This backup stream runs from open source software, namely AzuraCast. Additionally- AzuraCast provides all of the transcoded streams for the relays to play at lower bitrates too. It’s a brilliant piece of kit for you to use. Check them out here.

Also- since there’s no silence detection along the chain of transmission we have placed a silence detector that listens to the feed of both streams (studio 1 and remote contribution) and run PiraCZ silence detection software in order to be notified when something may go down. This is placed on a server in a datacenter so emails can still be sent if the network connection has stopped working in the main location.

The whole prospect of both server and playout upgrades are daunting for anyone who works with servers. It’s extremely time consuming but a small task compared to some of the security flaws that have been discovered with certain versions of Windows. Firstly- we need to install the specific Windows & Myriad version we want to upgrade to on a machine that doesn’t power any on air output just in case the update messes up drivers for audio cards and things. Once it’s been verified that everything works- the playout is transferred to a remote location that caches the audio that’s in the playout system and the next 50 or so media items so that the station can carry on running from the outside broadcast mount. Then both the server and playout PCs are upgraded and maintenance is performed on them- and then everything should be able to be transferred back to our “automation” PC.

We haven’t even gone into the depths of audio routing and how presenters can go live using AOIP from across the UK.. but I think that’s enough of telling our secrets for one day!

Once everything is put together- you get a radio station that is online 24/7.

Home Studio Mixer Review

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:56:37 GMT

We take a look at a couple of mixer that are perfect for using Myriad Anywhere.

With the World still struggling to adapt to the 'new normal' of working from home and minimising social contact, more and more stations are using Myriad Anywhere to enable presenters to record Remote Voice Tracks or even prevent live shows from their own home studios.

Generally, all you need is a good microphone and a pair of headphones (we recommend a headset if possible) but we are hearing from a number of customers who are looking to create a home studio setup to allow them to get more creative and emulate their studio experience.

So we thought we would take a quick look at a couple of home mixer options that work well with both Myriad Anywhere and fully installed Myriad Playout.

The Mixers

For this test we chose two mixers that are aimed at the home market but also offer features that are particularly well suited for using Myriad Anywhere. We also wanted to look at two extremes in terms of cost to see how they stacked up!

Having considered a few alternatives, we settled on the RodeCaster Pro by Rode and the GO XLR Mini by TC Helicon. Both offer good Myriad Anywhere experiences on paper but we were excited to see how they performed in the real world!

So let's dive in.

The RodeCaster Pro

Billed as the worlds first fully integrated Podcast Studio, the RodeCaster Pro certainly offers a lot of features for your money and from out initial testing, the audio quality and reliability seems to also be top notch.

The main features include:

8 x Faders
4 x Microphone Inputs (supports dynamic and condenser microphones)
Built in mic processing
1 x USB audio channel (input & output)
1 x Analogue input channel
1 x Bluetooth channel
4 x Headphone outputs
8 x Pad buttons for playing audio files downloaded to unit (plus you can assign multiple pages)
1 x Speaker output
1 x SD Card (which you can record directly to)
Cost: £470+vat

One really interesting aspect of this mixer is that it was originally designed as a pure podcasting solution but a recent firmware upgrade (v2.1) adds some additional features that make it better suited as a true broadcast mixing console:

Monitor muting - the speakers are cut when the microphones are live.
Prefade - the 'solo' buttons can be switched into 'prefade' mode for previewing content without opening the faders.
Talkback - by pressing the 'solo' & 'mute' buttons simultaneously on a channel, you can create a 'talkback' channel which is really useful in combination with the Bluetooth channel to allow you to talk to guests without putting them 'on air'.

So whilst the RodeCaster Pro is definitely aimed at podcasters, the new features bring it a lot closer to a small broadcast mixer, as long as you don't need many audio faders. This makes it ideally suited to using Myriad Anywhere Pro to present a 'remote' live show in combination with Cleanfeed.net but may not be ideal for a desktop Myriad Playout studio as all your Myriad Media Players would be on a single fader on your mixer. You could use the analogue input fader for a preview channel so it could still work.

But today we are mainly concerned with how the RodeCaster Pro works with Myriad Anywhere so we put together a simple setup consisting of a condenser microphone, a pair of studio speakers, some headphones - and of course a PC running Myriad Anywhere.

The Setup

Initial setup of the RodeCaster Pro is as simple as plugging in the provided USB cable and powering up the mixer, however, if you want to get the most from it - and also access those more broadcast focused features outlined above - then you will need to download the 'Companion App' from the Rode website ( https://www.rode.com/rodecasterapp ) which will then automatically prompt you to update to the latest firmware. This companion app is also how you transfer audio files to the 'Pad' buttons on the mixer.

Once installed, the RodeCaster Pro presents it's USB audio channel as a standard input / output sound device so you can configure Myriad Anywhere or Myriad Playout to use this for the recording input and the playing output (see screen show above).

The RodeCaster Pro will work with both Dynamic and Condenser microphones with the ability to switch on phantom power for each microphone input channel (via the user friendly touch screen). We tested a couple of different condenser microphones (AKG P120 & IMG ECM-90) as well as a Rode Podmic dynamic microphone. All worked well and sounded great. There is also a wealth of options for microphone processing but for this test, we just stuck with the basics!

Using The RodeCaster Pro With Myriad Anywhere

With the initial setup complete, we fired up Myriad Anywhere to see how the RodeCaster Pro would perform.

First impressions were really good. As with any mixer when voice tracking, the aim is to be able to hear the audio from the previous and next tracks but only record the voice track (plus anything else you intend to include), so with the RodeCaster Pro that means you need to press the 'prefade' buttons on the USB Audio channel and the microphone channel(s) so that you can hear everything in your headphones, then push the microphone fader up when you want to record.

With our first Voice Track successfully recorded. we tried a few of the other features the mixer offered. We found that loading beds or sound effects on to the 'Pad' buttons provided a really convenient way of adding extra audio depth to our Voice Tracks. You can do the same with the 'local player' option in Myriad Anywhere but the Pads certainly provided a convenient option.

We also tested bringing in a phone call via the Bluetooth channel (paired to iPhone) which worked really well with the caller getting a 'cleanfeed' back just like in a full size studio.

It was also great to be working with a domestic tier mixer that mutes the speakers when the microphones are active as it allows you to use the mixer just like in a full studio.

All in all the RodeCaster Pro is a fantastic option for Myriad Anywhere or possibly even for a small broadcast / production studio.

Any Bad Points?

Not many. The cost will be prohibitive for some users and only offering a single USB channel means it would be restrictive for use with desktop Myriad Playout in a full studio but if you are looking for a small, well built and highly spec's mixer for Voice Tracking, running a web radio station or a production studio, the RodeCaster Pro is definitely worth considering.

The Go XLR Mini

The Go XLR Mini is primarily designed for streamers on platforms such as Twitch so it is designed to allow a streamer to control their own microphone as well as a few other audio sources via the four fader channels. Unlike the RodeCaster Pro, the Go XLR Mini does not have ambitions to be a full broadcast mixer and so you forego many of the standard mixer features such as speaker outputs or the ability to prefade. Instead you have a powerful software interface that allows you to setup the inputs, outputs, processing and routing so that controlling your microphone and other audio sources is as simple as it can be!

The main features include:

4 x Faders
1 x Microphone Input (supports dynamic and condenser microphones)
Built in mic processing
4 x USB audio channels (input & output)
1 x Analogue input channel
1 x Analogue output channel
1 x Headphone outputs
Cost: £145+vat

One of the things that impressed us with the GO XLR was the flexibility the software application provided. With only four faders and virtually nothing else, you will be relying on the software to change even simple aspects such as headphone control but thankfully, the software is very simple to use provides some very powerful options.

For example, the Routing table allows you to set what inputs should be set to what outputs which is ideal when you are Voice Tracking as you can have the Myriad Anywhere audio on a fader that you hear in your headphones but excluded from the mix out for recording.

The Setup

In order to setup the GO XLR Mini you first need to download and install the control application which also installs the drivers. Without the control application, our test PC did not recognise the Go XLR. You can download the software from the TC Helicon website

https://www.tc-helicon.com/product.html?modelCode=P0DI7 .

Once installed, the various inputs and outputs are all presented as standard windows sound devices that can be allocated and accessed from the Media Engine setup sections of both Myriad Anywhere and Myriad 5 Playout.

The control software also allows you to switch the microphone input between condenser and dynamic depending on whether your microphone is powered or not. Once again we tested the IMG ECM-90 and AKGP120 condenser microphones as well as the Rode Podmic dynamic microphone. Again all three sounded good on the basic settings and we didn't investigate the built in compression & gating.

Using The Go XLR Mini With Myriad Anywhere

Once again, we headed straight to Myriad Anywhere to see how it would work. Before we started, we used the routing table in the Go XLR software to exclude everything but the microphone from the 'stream output' that was being fed to Myriad Anywhere. This allowed us to fade up the Segue Editor player knowing that only the voice was being recorded. You can also set the 'Players' to be one of the other sources on the Go XLR and include that in the routing if you wanted to.

Voice Tracking in Myriad Anywhere with the XLR GO was fast and simple and the lower price will surely make it an attractive option for many users. The limited functionality would mean that it would be more difficult to use as a broadcast mixer although with each fader having it's own USB audio I/O would mean it would be possible to setup 3 x Myriad Playout faders plus one mic in a local studio for production, OB's or a small web radio station.

We think that the Go XLR Mini is a good choice for someone looking for a high quality solution for Myriad Anywhere at a reasonably price.

The Conclusion

We wanted to see whether these two mixers would offer a good Myriad Anywhere experience and the answer in both cases was a definite yes!

Which one is better suited to your needs probably depends on what else you would like to do with it. Certainly the RodeCaster Pro offers a lot more options with the ability to use as a simple broadcast mixer, include phone calls in your shows and create podcasts, but it also costs more than three times the cost of the Go XLR.

On the other hand, the Go XLR is virtually perfect for Myriad Anywhere but has limited applications beyond that (aside from live streaming).

Ultimately it probably comes down to the budget you have and what you want to achieve with the product.

There are also many other options on the market ranging from low cost sound mixers to full blown broadcast consoles, but we thing the RodeCaster Pro and the Go XLR are well worth a look!

Automatically Repeating Hours From Your Log

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 11:07:03 GMT

You can do all sorts of Log copy trickery using Commands!

Sometimes you want to repeat complete Log hours in your schedule. Under normal circumstances, Myriad Schedule (or AutoTrack) will generate a new Log Hour for every hour of the week.

But once you have edited and Voice Tracked an hour, it is sometimes good to be able to re-use that Log Hour elsewhere in your schedule or maybe even on another Station (if you are running more than one.

This can be done using the Log.CopyHour Command.

The Basic Idea

We can create a Command Media Item that will perform the following tasks:

Delete any existing Log from the target hour that you want to copy into.
Copy a previous Log Hour to the gap you created in step 1.

You can expand this to have a single Command that could copy multiple Log Hours, to multiple destinations, but for now we will simply create a Command Media Item that will copy the content of the previous Log Hour paste it into the Log tomorrow evening.

The Process

The first step is to create a new Command Media Item to perform the task.

Find an suitable and empty Media ID.
Click on the Edit button on the Media Wall ribbon.
Give it a suitable Title.
Click on the Command option on the Editor tab.

Expand the Command Examples tree node and select Log > Copy the previous hour to tomorrow option.
This example includes the code needed to copy the previous Log Hour into the Log tomorrow, later in the day.

Let's take a closer look at that code:

REM First delete the destination hour to make sure it's empty

REM The first parameter being set to -1 means 'in the current open station'

Log.DeleteHour(-1,NowDay+1TNowHour+7)

REM Now copy from the previous hour (NowDayTNowHour-1) to tomorrow, 7 hours forward (NowDay+1TNowHour+7)

REM The first and third parameters being set to -1 means 'FROM the current open station, TO the current open station'

Log.CopyHour(-1,NowDayTNowHour-1,-1,NowDay+1TNowHour+7,true)

Any lines that start with REM are only there as documentation so the only active code in this Command are the two lines that start with Log.DeleteHour & Log.CopyHour.

First lets look at Log.DeleteHour. As you would expect, this Command is used to delete an hour from the Log

This is the Station Database ID. -1 Means the Station that is open when the Command runs!
NowDay allows a relative date to the current day when the Command runs. In this case NowDay+1 means tomorrow.
After the 'T' is the section where you set the time. In this example it is NowHour (when Command is run) + 7 so if the Command runs at 1pm, this time would be 8pm! You can also specify an exact time like 20:00:00.

The Log.CopyHour Command is very similar.

Database ID for hour to copy from. Again, -1 means current open Station DB.
Set the Log Hour you want to copy. In this case the NowDayTNowHour-1 means the previous Log hour to the time/date when the Command is run.
The next setting is for the Station Database ID you want to copy to. In this example, -1 means the current open Station.
Set the target date / time to copy the hour to. In this example we are using NowDay+1 (tomorrow)TNowHour+7 (whatever the current hour plus seven). So if we ran this today at 1pm it would copy the Log Hour to 8pm tomorrow. As before, a specific date and time can be used.
ResetAdvert Breaks - True / False. If set to True then advert breaks will be removed as part of copy.

As you can see, you can create Commands to copy hours relative to when the Commands are run or with very specific dates and times built into the Commands.

Remember that you can also have multiple 'lines' in Commands that will be executed in sequence so you could create a single Command Media Item that you run once a day that copies all the desired Log Hours into your future schedule.

You can learn more about Commands and what the attributes mean by clicking on the Display Available Commands button at the bottom of the Commands window.

CAUTION: Triggering Commands

Now that you have a Command that copies the previous hour in the Log to tomorrow (7 hours ahead) you can simply schedule it to to be included in the Log hour after the one you want to copy.

Caution - Why not put in the end of the Log Hour being copied? Well if think about it, the complete Log Hour would be copied to tomorrow including the Command to copy the Hour so you would end up with a cycle of the same hour being copied across your schedule. By running the Command in the following Hour you can avoid this.

Other Options - This works ok as long as you don't need to copy any of the Hours that include this Command. In practice you may be better creating a Media Command (or several) that do all the copying you need, that can be ran once a day in an hour that is not being copied. Commands also act like any other Media Item which means you can trigger them by double clicking them on the MediaWall, add them to Favourites or even drag them into the Log.

Commands are a very powerful tool that can be used for a wide range of applications. It is well worth taking the time to explore the Command documentation to see what is possible.

Remote Voice Tracking - Some interesting Numbers!

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 14:14:03 GMT

How many stations & presenters are using Myriad RVT?

We thought it would be interesting to share a few numbers with your with regard to Myriad Remote Voice Tracking over the past two months.

Prior to 2020, Remote Voice Tracking (RVT) was an important feature of our software but not one that a lot of stations took advantage of.

Our internal metrics showed small but steady use.

Of course all that changed a few weeks back when many stations found themselves in the situation where RVT was vital to allow them to continue to broadcast. But just how much are stations relying on RVT (in all forms)?

Let's Look At Some Numbers

In the past two months, Myriad 5 customers alone have uploaded a staggering 60 thousand voice links . More than 68% of these have been on the brand new Myriad Anywhere platform (as opposed to desktop RVT) and the vast majority of these have been Cloud hosted (as we only have a small number of self hosted!). Considering that Anywhere Cloud didn't exist before the lockdown, this is fairly astounding.

The graph below isn't for COVID cases or critical hospital beds, it is daily volume of voice links uploaded to Remote Edit Servers around the country!

We don't have metrics for v4 users but we can assume that a fair number of v4 stations are also heavily relying on RVT based purely on the number of inquiries we have received.

It is clear that many stations are now using Myriad RVT to help maintain their station output through this difficult time and we are delighted to have been able to offer the Myriad Anywhere Cloud platform to assist stations to adapt to the new circumstances.

The response has been fantastic and our team are very proud to have been able to help stations "keep calm and carry on"!

We continue to work on the Myriad Anywhere Platform with lots of new features and enhancements planned for the coming weeks to further enable stations to produce quality content despite having limited access to traditional studios.

Need Access To Myriad Anywhere Cloud?

We are currently offering all Myriad 5 customers, free access to Myriad Anywhere Cloud until at least June 2020. All you need is to upgrade to the latest release (free of charge for existing v5 customers) and contact us for an API key. You can download the guides for both setting up and using Myriad Anywhere Cloud by clicking on the links below.

If you need any assistance or to request a free API key, contact our team.

Interested In Remote 'Live' Shows

Checkout this previous Blog post and download our comprehensive walkthrough .

Myriad 4 Customers

Remember that RVT 4 and Myriad Anywhere 4 also exist although both are licensed applications (not web based). For a limited time we are offering v4 customers extended 'evaluation' licenses of the above products to help facility remote contribution in this challenging time.

Myriad 5 Guide To Remote 'Live' Shows

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 14:14:23 GMT

How to broadcast live shows from remote locations!

There is one question we have been asked again and again in the past few weeks, how can we present a live show from a home?

With many stations now finding access to their studio restricted and increasing restrictions on non-essential travel, most stations are now having to consider how they can continue to provide vital services.

We are doing everything we can to assist stations through these difficult times with regular software updates that include features to assist with remote working as well as help articles and documents to help people get the most from their systems.

To recap, the remote working options for Myriad 5 Playout users are:

Remote Voice Tracking (RVT) - Desktop application that allows you to edit the Log and add Voice Tracks.
Myriad Anywhere RVT (Cloud or Self Hosted) - Similar feature set to RVT but with a web based interface to allow greater access across a wider range of devices.
Myriad Playout Remote - Desktop application that offers partial remote control over your studio Myriad 5 Playout system.
3rd Party Remote Control Solutions (Teamviewer, VNC etc) - Services that offer full remote control of your Myriad 5 Playout System to allow advanced features such as scheduling, but not usually useful for audio based features such as RVT.

Myriad Anywhere is explained in detail on the Myriad Anywhere section of our website and full documentation on both Myriad Anywhere and RVT can be found in the documentation section of our support site. Voice Tracking provides a great way to add 'live' sounding elements to your automated output and for many stations, will be the main tool used to 'keep the lights on'.

But what about if you want to present a live show from a remote location? What tools will you need and how will you go about setting it up?

Presenting a live show.... from your bedroom!

Unfortunately, there is not currently a single tool that we can use to achieve full live playout from a remote location (short of a mobile studio and playout system) so instead we will combine a couple of Myriad 5 based tools with some 3rd party technology to give us a workable solution.

The fundamentals are:

Use Myriad 5 Playout Remote to provide partial 'real time' control over our studio Myriad 5 Playout System.
User a 3rd party VoIP (IpDTL or Cleanfeed.net) solution to feed the microphone in our bedroom to the studio and also feed the studio output back to our bedroom.
Use some advanced Command features in Myriad 5 Playout combined with Myriad 5 Playout Remote to automate a 'ducking' of audio at the studio end to simulate using the faders.

By combining these three features, it is possible to have live shows driven by the presenter and including real time presenter links!

And the best bit is because Myriad 5 Playout Remote is free for Myriad 5 Playout users, and 3rd party VoIP services such as Cleanfeed offer free basic accounts, you can do it all without it costing your station a penny more!

Here is how to do it.

The Basic Principles

Download and install Myriad 5 Playout Remote at the remote studio end.
Connect to the studio network via VPN.
Enable remote control in Myriad 5 Playout on the workstations you need to be able to remote control.
Ensure the user has the right permissions to edit the log remotely.
Signup for an account with a VoIP service (in the documentation we used Cleanfeed but you can use any such service).
Configure the studio end of the VoIP service to use the same sound device as Myriad for playback and desk output (PGM or AUD) for recording.
Configure the remote end of the VoIP to use your local headphones and microphone.
Download and install the example Command Media Items for 'fading Media Player'.
Add them to Favourites for easy remote triggering.

Easy right? Well there are a few more steps involved so rather than write a massive blog, we fully documented the process in the guide below that you can download and read at your leisure.

Download Our Guide For Full Details

For more information and access to documentaiton, visit the Broadcast Radio Helpdesk .

Not on Myriad 5?

If you are a Myriad 4 user then you can still do live shows from a remote location using a very similar method. There was no Myriad Playout Remote application in Myriad 4 but there was a product called Myriad 4 Anywhere which performed a similar function to Myriad 5 Playout Remote. Unfortunately Myriad 4 Anywhere was not part of the core Myriad 4 suite so you will need to contact the Broadcast Radio team for licensing options and costs. The 'Fader Player' Media Commands will also not work with Myriad 4 Playout although an alternative solution is available.

Using Myriad Playout Remotely (v4 and v5)

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 15:09:25 GMT

How to keep your station rocking even when you can't be there!

Introduction

Myriad Playout v4 and v5 have both always had very strong remote features and this document will outline those features, potential use cases, and security precautions.

The features and security precautions can be different between the 2 product versions, so any differences will be noted in each section.

Products covered:

Myriad Playout Remote v5
Myriad Anywhere (Cloud) v5
Myriad Anywhere (Self Hosted) v5
Myriad Remote Voice Tracking v5 and v4
Myriad Monitor v4
Other 3rd party Remote Control Products

Myriad Playout Remote (v5 only)

Usage:

Myriad Playout Remote is used to remote control an instance of Myriad Playout v5 running on another computer.

The most common uses for Playout Remote are for remote control during outside broadcasts, for presenters working from a remote location, monitoring (for example monitoring the playout PC's from a central technical area) or as a secondary screen in the live studio for other presenters to use when co-presenting a show.

It can run in one of 2 modes - single or multi. In single mode, it connects to a single remote system and can show the Dashboard, Favourites, SmartInfo and the Scheduled Log. You can control which tiles are visible, so for example you might only want the Dashboard and the Scheduled Log.

In multiple mode, it connects to several different computers simultaneously and displays the information in a configurable grid. This is most commonly used in a central monitoring facility. Each display has a "popout" button to quickly expand a connection into a dedicated window for more in depth use.

Connection method and security precautions:

Myriad Playout remote connects to the PC's using a TCP connection, and can be either by network name or IP address. You must enable remote connection in Myriad Playout's Application Settings before Myriad Playout Remote can connect.

Myriad Playout Remote can connect to Myriad Playout v5, Myriad Playout v4 and Myriad Network SE.

Myriad Playout Remote does not have integrated security as it is designed for direct connection, so if you want to connect from outside the station's core network then you MUST implement a VPN facility on your network. You must NOT expose the TCP ports on your Myriad Playout PC direct to the internet.

Myriad Anywhere Cloud (v5 only)

Usage

Myriad Anywhere is a web browser based solution that allows you to remotely make changes to your Myriad Playout v5 system. It is fully supported running in Chrome and Firefox running on Windows, Apple Mac and Linux devices. Android phones running Chrome will also work to a limited extent, but iOS is not currently supported.

Currently it offers remote Log Editing, as well as full remote voice tracking including full envelope volume changes, as well as remote library searching and preview.

Myriad Anywhere Cloud is hosted by Broadcast Radio on secure cloud servers and only requires a single easy to setup connection from Myriad Remote Edit Server v5.22 or higher. This makes it incredibly easy to setup and is continually updated with new features by the Broadcast Radio Dev Team.

Connection method and security precautions:

Remote users just enter a web address into their web browser (for example http://myradiostation.myriadanywhere.com ) and then login using their normal Myriad login credentials.

For the connection between the actual station infrastructure and the Myriad Anywhere Cloud, Myriad Remote Edit Server forms an outbound secure tunnel which allows the Anywhere Cloud servers to access the Remote Edit Server.

The Remote Edit Server does not need ANY firewall ports opening for this to work. Some highly secured networks make need to add *.myriadanywhere.com to their white-lists if the outbound tunnel is blocked, but this is very rarely needed.

Every step of the connection path is fully encrypted and highly secure. The Myriad Anywhere Tunnel service that is installed on the Remote Edit Server ONLY allows connection from the cloud to the specified instance of Remote Edit Server. No other network traffic is allowed.

Broadcast Radio STRONGLY recommends that Myriad users use strong passwords to prevent security breaches. By default Myriad Remote Edit Server is set to reject logins from any users with blank passwords or where the username and password are set to the same - for example login name "Bob" and password "Bob".

There is a special User Summary Report available in Myriad Playout that will highlight any users that will be blocked by this security precaution.

Myriad Anywhere Self Hosted (v5 only)

Usage

Myriad Anywhere Self Hosted is a special version of Myriad Anywhere Cloud that you install and maintain on your own on-premise servers. It can be complex to setup in some scenarios, and for ideal use will require a static IP address for your internet connection as well as DNS names and SSL secure certificates to be obtained from a 3rd party SSL issuer such as LetsEncrypt or Verisign etc.

Myriad Anywhere Self Hosted is usually installed on the same PC as Remote Edit Server.

The feature set is the same for Myriad Anywhere Cloud (see above), but the software cannot be automatically updated so has to be manually updated when new releases of Myriad Anywhere are made available.

Connection method and security precautions:

Users connect via a web browser to your radio station's firewall which must be configured to forward that https request onto the Remote Edit Server on port 443.

For a more secure configuration, configure a VPN server instead, and then users will need to connect to the VPN first, then access the local hosted Anywhere instance via the local name or IP address of the computer running Anywhere - for example https://192.168.1.56/

Myriad Remote Voice Tracking (v4 and v5)

Usage

Myriad Remote Voice Tracking ("RVT") is a Windows desktop based application that connects to the Myriad Remote Edit Server ("RES") running at the radio station. It offers very powerful log editing capabilities including full log editing and recording of new Voice Links, but can only be used on PC's running Windows 7 or higher. We recommend using Windows 10.

Note: Myriad RVT v5 has a significant number of improvements over the older Myriad RVT v4 product, but you must use the version that matches your Myriad Playout version - i.e. Myriad RVT v5 for Myriad Playout v5, and Myriad RVT v4 for Myriad Playout v4 systems.

RVT v5 is now largely superseded by Myriad Anywhere so it's worth considering that as an alternative due to it's ease of use via a web browser.

Myriad 5 RVT Desktop

Myriad v4 RVT Desktop

Connection method and security precautions:

Myriad RVT connects to the Myriad RES via TCP connections, see the v4 and v5 settings windows respectively for the TCP ports that are used.

Connecting Myriad RVT v5 to Myriad RES v5 via opened/forwarded ports on a firewall is supported, however we do recommend using a VPN connection for better security.

Important: Myriad RES/RVT v4 is ONLY supported being used over a VPN connection and we strongly recommend you do NOT open the Remote Edit Server v4 TCP ports to a publicly accessibly internet connection.

For a more secure configuration, consider using a VPN instead of opening the media and data ports publicly.

Myriad Monitor (v4 only)

Usage

Myriad Monitor v4 allows you to remotely connect to one or more PC's running Myriad Playout v4 or Myriad Network v4 to monitor current Log playback status. It does not allow remote control of the PC and is primarily designed for monitoring your infrastructure.

Connection method and security precautions:

Myriad Monitor v4 connects via the single TCP "Command" port which must be enabled in the Myriad Playout v4 Settings.

The TCP port must NOT be exposed to the public internet under any circumstances. If you need to monitor your systems remotely you should use a dedicated VPN connection to the broadcast network.

Other 3rd party Remote Control Products

There are many 3rd party products that are regularly used with Myriad Playout depending on the needs. Although we cannot endorse any particular product or service, some of the most commonly used products are:

TeamViewer : Ideal for full remote control of studio systems as you are remote controlling the actual Windows system directly. Used with secure passwords this can be a very powerful tool.
Logmein : Ideal for full remote control of studio systems as you are remote controlling the actual Windows system directly. Used with secure passwords this can be a very powerful tool.
Dameware : Ideal for full remote control of studios, but does require a VPN connection to be setup first. Does offer a useful variety of security options.
VNC : Suitable for basic remote control of studios, but requires a VPN connection to be setup, and can cause significant CPU usage with some versions.

Realtime Audio Products

As well as remote controlling your studio environment, you may need to transit audio from a remote location - for example if you are working from a home studio you might use a combination of Myriad Playout Remote to control the studio, with Myriad Anywhere for log editing, and therefore need to send audio in realtime from your local mixer to the studio.

Some options that are available are:

ipDTL - web based realtime audio contribution.
Cleanfeed - web based realtime audio contribtion
Skype - even trusty old Skype can give very high audio quality if used over a high speed network connection, but does need special configuration to remove connecting "beeps" and chimes and can be configured to "auto answer"

How Broadcast Radio has prepared for Covid-19 (and other scenarios!)

peterj@broadcastradio.com (Peter Jarrett) — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 15:14:32 GMT

We've been preparing for "remote working" for some time, just in case.

At Broadcast Radio, we work very hard to make sure that our products and services stay running whenever the office is closed, and a couple of years ago we started a rolling project to make sure that we could carry on even if we couldn't make it into the office.

TL;DR: We are ready for Covid-19 and for our people to work from home.

To save you reading the rest of this article (unless you want to!), every single person who works for Broadcast Radio has been trained on how to access all the normal office documents, the phone systems, email, Instant Messaging, Technical Support Resources and CRM systems so that they can carry on as normal, if and when they need to work remotely.

Wherever needed we've provided PC's, laptops, screens, comms headsets and other devices to any of our people that need them, and in the event that the office has to be physically closed, we will just carry on with a "virtual" office with business as usual on all the usual phone numbers and email addresses.

Our main priority has been to make sure our people are safe and well first, and only after that, to make sure we can provide the tools they need to help our customers do the same.

As the vast majority of our customers are radio stations, it's essential they can stay operating for as long possible, and part of that is making sure we are there to back them up, so making sure our people can answer the phones and email as normally as possible remains our goal for as long as this outbreak lasts.

A bit more background

The Broadcast Radio office is based on an office park that sits on the banks of the Humber Estuary - which is one of the largest waterways in the UK - and on a good day gives an amazing view out of the office window - the picture above of the Humber Bridge was taken just now from the offfice car park to prove the point!

With the great scenery comes a risk though - water not staying where it should. The office itself sits very high up so is in no risk of flooding, but 5 years ago the river overflowed after very several days of very heavy rain, and one of the roads nearby was impassible for a day, meaning that about 20% of our people couldn't easily make it to the office. Because we had already planned for this eventuality, the actual impact was minimal - our people just switched to working remotely, and business carried on as usual.

Although it has a tongue-in-cheek in name, we started our planning under the name "Project Zombocalypse" many years ago when we wanted to make sure that as many aspects of running the company could be carried out remotely should the need ever arise. This light-hearted look at scenarios starts with the premise that we can't leave our homes due to that most infamous of all movie genres, the Zombie outbreak, so we need to carry on on the assumption that getting to the office is out of the question.

We started by breaking down the task into 2 parts - People and Infrastructure - and like everything we do here, people are first.

A) People first!

To start with, we needed to work out who could do their work from home - and with the exception of our actual studio build engineers, the vast majority of our team could indeed work remotely. Sales, Admin, Technical Support and the R&D teams can all carry out 95% of their jobs without needing to be in the building for quite a long period.

Ok, great, but HOW will they actually do that?

This really is where you have to think quite carefully, so we broke that down into sub-sections, and then worked out answers for each one:

PC's: An obvious one really, people need to be able to access the resources in the office remotely in the same way that they use them when they are in the building - users don't like "friction", so wherever possible, resources, documents, software etc. should all be accessible in familiar ways.

The answer is actually remarkably simple for normal office use - "Remote Desktop" is built into Windows and is ideal for the job. To access their desktop PC's we made sure that each user knows how to VPN in to the office network from their home PC's, and what their desktop PC is called, that way they can just pick up where they left off.

Interestingly, several users don't have a home PC at all, having switched to tablets and phones for home web browsing etc, so we made sure we have a stock of company laptops ready to go and these are issued out to anyone who needs them.
Phones: Most of our people talk to customers every single day on the phone, so we needed to make sure you can still dial the office numbers and get through to the right people. Over the years we've worked our way through various different solutions to this, but a couple of years ago we switched to using a 3CX phone system and everyone now has the 3CX app on their mobile phones that can be set to mirror their desktop phone with 2 taps. So if they do need to work remotely, they just open the app, "activate" the account and straight away calls will flow to them over their broadband connection. This means it's totally free for them to use - no fear of accidentally running up big personal phone bills when calling customers as the call is routed to the office and then onward from there to our normal phone lines.

In fact, we love 3CX so much that we are now a certified and accredited re-seller of 3CX products to the industry.
Inter-person/office communication: Phones are great, but actually a huge amount of our inter-person communication is text based - either emails or Instant Messaging ("IM") - so we needed to make sure that we keep that all running as well. In fact, when users are physically separated it becomes essential to keep good communication flowing .

For both email and IM we turned to Microsoft - for years we had been running Microsoft Exchange and Skype for Business on servers at the office, but 4 years ago we switched to Office 365 and then IM to Microsoft Teams, so both of those are now hosted and run for us by Microsoft for little to no cost.

MS Outlook and MS Teams are available as desktop applications, mobile apps (for both iOS and Android) and also via web browsers, so again, we made sure that everyone knows how to access email and IM from their mobiles as well as using the regular tools they are used to on their office PC's.
Internet Connectivity: all of the above only works if we can guarantee internet access to the office so users can VPN in (for PC's) and access the phone system. To make sure we stay connected, we have 3 dedicated fibre circuits into the building, each of which can handle all of the data needed to keep us running. We also have a fallback wireless circuit from a different telco which can be enabled should the need ever arise.

Once you've identified the areas above, next you have to make sure that people can actually use those - do people have a good enough broadband connection at home? Do they have a PC? Do they have a suitable workspace that they will be comfortable to work in for the duration of a working day - for example, one of our people has a home pc, but it's plugged into their TV for use as a gaming system and home theatre system. If they ever have to work from home for an extended period, their kids will likely want to use that TV for Netflix, so we made sure that we sent home a dedicated monitor for them to use on their home-office desk instead. Small things, but easy to miss when you are "blue sky thinking" about how to handle these scenarios.

B) Infrastructure

This itself breaks down into quite a few different areas, so i'll only touch lightly on each:

Office files and servers : The core of any business, your data is your second most important asset, so you should protect them wherever possible. We run a minimum of 2 live copies of all data here in the office, as well as 2 separate backup solutions, and 2 different off site backup technologies. That's everything from spreadsheets and word documents, to product test data and source code. In fact our source code actually lives in 2 separate places on TOP of those above, that's how critical it is!
Customer support servers: We have a number of servers that exist to make sure that our customers keep going - for example Product License Activation servers and Technical Support. These run on 2 separate systems so should one fail the other can take over. We can also manually generate licenses and handle support via email alone should the need arise.
Hosting services: We also provide streaming for hundreds of different radio stations all over the world, as well an increasing number of "Radio In the Cloud" customers where we host the infrastructure for stations for them. These streaming and hosting servers are located in commercial data centres around the UK so enjoy all the benefits of huge backup generators and redundant architecture. A number of the Radio in the Cloud services are also hosted at the Broadcast Radio Offices, so these also get additional facilities to make sure they stay up and running.

Interestingly, when you come to look at supporting remote working, it's actually only item 1 above (office files) that you have make sure are available for that part of the business, and as we've already made sure people can remote in and access their content, this is already covered!

In the last few years we've also started a big change to moving more and more of our office files into cloud provided services like Microsoft Sharepoint and Dropbox as this reduces the requirement for office infrastructure even more. We're also hosting more and more of our proprietary data in private Microsoft Azure spaces as well.

So in summary, we have now activated our plans ready for whatever comes next:

Everyone here has checked and confirmed they can make and receive calls via the normal numbers from wherever they need to.
Everyone here has checked and confirmed they can access their office PCs remotely. This includes making sure the PC is left switched on, or remotely "wakeable", should the need arise
Everyone knows how to access email and instant messaging via web browsers etc.
Everyone has the right equipment already at their homes to allow remote working.
We have checked that all our physical IT infrastructure is working and that backup services are ready.
We have turned off the coffee machine.

For now, thats all that's needed. Of course, the situation is rapidly evolving, and over the coming days there will be all manner of surprises and twists to come, and of course we will face our own challenges as it's likely that some of our people will need to rest and recuperate, but we are happy that we have planned for the most likely outcomes, and have the flexibility to adapt should we need to.

Why Myriad instead of a system from another vendor?

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 14:04:48 GMT

AKA: What did Broadcast Radio do for us in 2019?

One of the questions that we get asked regularly, and also often see being asked on social media, is why should someone buy a radio software product from one company vs another, especially if there is a price difference. In our case of course, this is "Why should I buy Myriad or SmartSign from you, vs a different product from Company XYZ"?

This is a pretty important question that we should all ask whenever we are planning any expenditure that might dramatically affect our lives - if we're choosing a car, WHY pay more for Brand A, when Brand B seems to do broadly the same thing, looks roughly similar, but costs half the price etc.

So I thought i'd take a few moments to answer "Why Broadcast Radio?" , and then show how that related to what we delivered in 2019, just in the Myriad products alone, to try and explain why WE are a bit different from other radio software companies you might have dealt with.

Why Broadcast Radio software ?

We develop all our products in house - Myriad v5 (Playout/Logging/AutoTrack etc.) as well as SmartSign v1 and all our other products are all developed right here at Broadcast Radio. All of our broadcast software developers are full time, and have been here for years, so know the products incredibly well.

The support team are all full time engineers , and they know the products inside out, and have done for years. On top of that, our Development team takes an active part in providing Support, so they know just what sort of features customers are looking for, and what sort of issues come up, so are often the first to come up with new solutions and fantastic new ideas to keep product innovation going.

Our Support Team is also one of the primary groups of internal QA testers and all take part in testing new releases long before they leave the building. Not only does this mean much higher product quality, but also that they KNOW the new features in and out, as they helped shape them right from the start, as well as testing the results - yes, sometimes to destruction! But that's a good thing - we break it here, so we can fix it long before it ever gets to an "On-Air" radio station.

In a lot of modern IT companies you will hear the term " DevOps " as being the latest new thing - basically, you put all your developers, the training teams, the deployment engineers, your QA team, AND the support engineers all into one team, allowing a full loop, so support and training can tell developers when something needs fixing or talk about great new ideas, QA can work with Training, and the Developers can bounce new ideas off of those teams in return, making sure the product is the best it can be.

Devops is not new to us , we've been doing just that since the day we started the company. In fact, our support team sits less than 8 meters away from the Development Team office. I measured it.

So when you have a question or a problem, the support team doesn't have to log it, write an email to the developer team across an ocean (in America, or Canada, or Australia etc.), then wait for a reply that is usually "Hmmm... no we can't help, that doesn't really happen to customers here" before coming back to you. Instead, they can walk in and have a chat with the dev team in under 10 seconds. And hopefully get a much better answer in only a few minutes. Surely that's a better way of doing things?

Also, because our team is all full time, you aren't waiting for a developer to come check their email when they get in from a day job, have a meal, then get to looking at the issue at the end of a long day, then spend some time at the weekend fixing it. Our dev team can look at the question immediately, identify what code needs to be examined, and start work on an update to get that new feature or fix done in the shortest time possible.

This brings us neatly onto what much bigger companies call " release cadence ". i.e. "How long do we have to wait for a fix if it needs code writing?"

We know from speaking to customers who've made the switch from other products to Broadcast Radio, that the big "we have offices worldwide" software companies often take weeks or even months before they can even get a confirmation that an issue has been identified and resolved, and that's before it then goes to testing, then build, then finally shipping. The same also applies to support - yes, some companies offer 24 help desks, but all too often the answer is "Yes sure, I see, let me contact your local in-country support team as they are best placed to answer that for your market, and they will get back to you as soon as possible". Not ideal when it's a bit of software that you need to stay on air.

Equally, we've heard from people upgrading from smaller products that yes, sometimes they can indeed get a fix in a day, but that more often than not it breaks more than it fixes.

So we've tried to strike a happy medium - we don't want you to wait for long, but also we don't want to break anything when we do ship a new update, feature, or fix.

Of course, if its a broadcast critical emergency, then we are also flexible enough to be able to pull out all the stops and pull in every team member we need to get it fixed - and fixed fast.

Public Beta Releases:

Another big difference is our policy on Beta Releases. We believe that once we decide that a new release of our software has hit the high quality standards we set, that we should make it available for all our users to test against as well.

There is no point doing what some other companies do, and keeping it tightly underwraps, then only revealing it as a "Full release", only to find out that for a large number of stations, it's broken, and was always going to be broken.

Instead, once we're ready and it's been signed off by our QA team and our private test groups, we make it available on the website for everyone to take part and see the new features as soon as possible.

We've heard from many station engineering teams that this is essential for them, so they can review these new builds in their

test environments and make sure that it is going to work reliably for them, at their site, on their hardware, before they then roll it out when it becomes a "Full Release". We've heard many horror stories of customers using other systems where they were told that they will be fine using this new version because it's "not a beta" so no problem at all, only to find out that it doesn't work on their operating system version, or with that soundcard etc.

By keeping our Beta Release programme public, we get the benefit of all those beta testers out there on real-world systems making sure we're doing the best possible work, not just shipping software that "works fine here" !

User communication:

Just like with Beta Releases, we believe that an open conversation with our users is a 100% non-negotiable requirement in today's world. That's why there is a thriving Facebook Community Group that anyone can join and take part in the conversation. This has hundreds of members from all over the planet, all helping and contributing 24 hours a day. Our support team is also in there to lend a hand with expert advice whenever needed, but 9 times out of 10, any request for advice is answered by other real world users long before we get there!

Anyway, back to the subject of why our software process is different from some others - lets talk about some real world examples - How often did we ship updates during 2019?

Software Releases during 2019

The first number is an easy one: in the last 12 months we released 10 significant new releases across the Myriad family (e.g. Myriad Playout v5 , Myriad Logging v5 and also to the Myriad SE products i.e. AutoTrack/OCP/Network etc.) - for example Myriad Playout v5.16, v5.17 etc.

That is an average of a full product release every 5-6 weeks!

Each one of these releases added significant new features, and in the case of Myriad Playout, were also accompanied by matching updates to Remote Edit Server, Remote Voice Tracking, AutoImporter, Playout Remote and AutoPlayer.

All in all, these releases totalled well over 60 individual "Installers" that were all tested and analysed on a variety of physical and virtual PC's, before even being uploaded to the website as Beta versions. We make sure these installers work, as we know the moment they are released as betas they will be installed in dozens of eager sites, and then ultimately across hundreds of stations and thousands of PC's. Later on we'll talk a little about the hidden team of testers too.

"Ok great, so you've done lots of Releases, what does that actually do for me and my Station?"

This is where it matters - each one of the new releases added new features and improved existing features, and yes, we are happy to admit, fixed the odd little niggle that escaped our testing here!

In the last 12 months alone, some of the headline new features we have delivered are:

Myriad Playout:

Myriad Schedule: All new integrated scheduling - see below
Multi Station Playback: Myriad can now play multiple stations all from a single PC, making automated services incredibly easy to setup and maintain.
Clock AutoPlay: Myriad will automatically play the a top of hour jingle, correctly backtimed to hit the news, just by dragging it onto the clock - ideal for presenters who don't run from the Scheduled Log,
Copyright Reporting: Full copyright reports are now available with build in templates for many main international copyright bodies.
New reports for Security logging, User management, and play logs review.
Deep multitrack editor integration with Hindenburg: This integration makes working on production items seamless - you can open a Myriad Media Item and click straight through to the original Hindenburg multitrack session to make changes, which are automatically updated into Myriad when you do the mixdown.
Publish to Mixcloud: Publish your show recordings direct to Mixcloud for royalty paid on demand listeners.
Native support for Encoding to Icecase streaming services: Myriad Playout has built in support for the Broadcast Radio Encoder which means you can easily stream to Icecast servers with full Now Playing information being sent, just by ticking a single box.
Automatic Notifications: Myriad can alert you whenever things go wrong, or when a user does something naughty like dropping an advert, or even just a confidence notification to let you know things like Schedule are working just fine.
Mixer connections: We've added support for most of the D&R range directly in Myriad so you get the tightest possible feature interaction, whilst being incredibly simple to configure.
Automatic housekeeping: Myriad now automatically removes old deleted items for you, freeing up disk space.
New data import options: It's now easier than every before to migrate from Myriad Playout or AutoTrack v4, as well as from selected other playout systems.
New keyboard support: We added the K600 and the K300 keyboards making it easier than ever to control myriad without having to take your eyes off your studio, just to look at the screen.
Security: New security permissions making it easier to make sure only the right people can use sensitive features.
Layouts and Tiles: We've added several new Tiles like the QuickPlay tile , as well as adding dozens of new features to existing tiles like new modes for the Clock View and more customisations to SmartDisplay, MIxerView, QuickRecorder and SegueEditor, just to name a few.
Commands/Hardware: Dozens of new Macro language commands and hardware connections, including support for new hardware devices, as well as more remote control options than ever before.

Myriad Schedule:

Myriad Schedule is an IMMENSE new feature that we've added and brings dozens of new features and improvements - and it's included as standard at NO extra cost for all Myriad Playout Admin licenses and higher.
Simple Clocks are a fast but clever way of getting up and running, and for stations that don't need a fully rigid complicated Clock structure have saved hundreds of hours of user time already at dozens of stations.
Advanced Clocks build on simple clocks and allow you to choose between dynamically created hours, or pre defined clock layouts so you can make sure those important program elements like news, traffic and travel, presenter live reads etc. are always ready in the right place in the log.
Full Clock Assignment Grid
Schedule Reporting to easily see what hours have been scheduled and what (if any) work is left to do on them.
Automatic notification and self-scheduling : If you accidentally forget to schedule, Myriad will automatically do it for you at the last second, making sure you are never again taken off-air just because the log ran out. And it can even notify you to say it did, so you have the confidence that everything is OK.

Web based Voice tracking with Myriad Anywhere:

Not to blow our own trumpets too much, but we firmly believe that Anywhere RVT is very possibly the best web based voice tracking available from any software producer available in the market today.

It's fully browser based, so works on Apple Mac, Windows, Linux and even Chromebooks. It has a fully featured SegueEditor, exactly the same as you get in the full Studio version of Myriad - including envelope points - not one that only shows what points the system will apply at playout, you can add edit and alter every one of them to your hearts content, giving you total control over every segue.

You can also voice track into any position in the log - so your program controller doesn't have to pre-define slots in every single clock for you to "fill in the blanks", instead they can rely on you to make the best judgement of where a link should go, based on the stations format. And of course, they can also re-position them later if they need to.

Myriad Remote Voice Tracking and Playout Remote:

RVT: It's been a big year for these as well with dozens of new features and improvements including significant improvements to the Segue editor, the addition of the Pad to RVT, you can now easily see station "Scripts" right from inside RVT and it even has new cleaner layouts.

Playout Remote: Remote has also received a lot of work this year with additions like Audio Monitor Display to show you the current station audio levels, a new Clock showing the time at the station - incredibly useful if you happen to be doing a remote from another timezone! - as well as adding support for connecting to Myriad Network, and Myriad Playout v4 as well. We also added multiple connections, so you can now monitor dozens of playout systems all from a single screen - and we use this ourselves here at BR towers to monitor all of our Radio in the Cloud customers where we host the entire radio station infrastructure for them.

Myriad Logging:

It was a busy year for Myriad Logging as well, with Listen Again creator now included as standard, as well as the addition of automatic publishing of shows to MixCloud. Logging Recorder has also had updates that improve performance, particularly as more and more stations are logging multiple services simultaneously.

In Summary?

That is dozens of new significant features, with hundreds of other smaller improvements or fixes, delivered to stations in every sector of the broadcast industry.

So it was a busy year!

What about 2020?

We're not planning on slowing down at all - we are already very close to our first major release of the year, and this is bringing some VERY exciting new features - no, I can't talk about those - YET - but we will be able to VERY soon.

This year we are also investing heavily in Myriad Schedule v5 to add in some major new features that you would normally only see in products like AutoTrack - things like Styles/Tags/Soundcodes, multiple Categorisation etc.

We are also working hard on Myriad Anywhere so you will be able to use even more of Myriad on the move - starting with our new Myriad Anywhere Service where we take on looking after the web hosting infrastructure for you so you don't have to do any network reconfiguration, and then Myriad Anywhere Playout Remote so you will be able to control more and more of your live studio via almost any web browser from Anywhere.

Myriad News v5 is also well underway, and this is a big new product that builds on the strong base of Myriad News v4, but fully re-written to integrate tightly with the other Myriad v5 products, as well as being able to capture from more news locations than every before.

And that's just the plan as it stands 3 weeks into January - you can imagine there will be a LOT more to come over this year.

P.S. That hidden testing team I spoke about earlier

One final thing I wanted to talk about is our private software testing team, which is made up of genuine real-world radio stations in various countries across the globe, who are confident enough in our development processes to test software, live on-air, long before anyone else does.

As part of the development process we work extremely closely with this incredible group of stations who run these new test releases weeks - sometimes even months - before they are then sent out as public "Beta" releases. These are often VERY early in the design and testing phase and are used for everything from testing a concept for an idea, through proof of concept to final design, then onto initial internal builds where that feature works, but maybe doesn't yet have any configuration, all the way up to pre-testing Beta releases before we put them up for Public Beta on our website.

We typically release these private pre-release every week to 10 days (depending on what features each user is testing) so on top of those release above, we should add another 40 to 50 builds as well - these releases ship as raw files, with no installers built, and they are hand installed at each site by the teams at the station.

These are the unsung heroes of our user base, as they take these builds knowing full well that they have only had limited testing here, and that they are on the front line of testing new ideas that are often extremely raw.

The advantages to being on the bleeding edge is these users often get to directly affect the end user experience more than you might expect - many times we've had feedback saying "this new feature is AWESOME! But the nickname stinks, or the configuration is too hard to use".

So to those users in particular, I'd like to say a heartfelt THANK YOU from every one here at Broadcast Radio Towers - and as always, the next time we meet, the drinks are on us!

Disaster Recover & Remote Studio Sync

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 16:31:03 GMT

Make sure your content is protected!

In this blog post we will briefly look at two related scenarios involving copying your Myriad 5 data for backup or synchronisation purposes.

The scenarios are:

Disaster Recovery - Ensure you have all the data you need to reinstate your system should the worst happen!
Synchronise A Remote Studio - Ensure your remote studio is up to date with your main site!

We will not be going into the deep technical details in this blog post as it can very quickly get very complex, and most solutions will be unique to your individual setup but this guide should help you to decide what method will work best for your station.

Scenario 1 - Disaster Recovery

Aim: To ensure all vital information is copied to a backup medium to allow you to recover your full system and get back ‘on air’ as soon as possible in the event that something really bad happens.

At a minimum, you should be backing up all your important data to a second location on the same site but ideally you should be backing up data to an off site location just in case the ‘disaster’ is something that can affect everything at your primary site (like a fire or computer virus).

Good practice would be to have a couple of large USB drives that are kept ‘off site’ and rotated so that you always have a couple of options.

Backing up to a fixed external site is also a great option if you can, but cloud backup can be expensive for the amount of data a typical Myriad 5 Playout system would generate. The other consideration with a fixed ‘off site’ backup (cloud or another site) is the recovery time. You can set your backup to only copy incremental changes but should you need to use it to recover, it might take some time to download all your data back from a remote or cloud based solution.

Things to consider:

How much you need to backup.
How regularly you need to backup.
What mechanism or tools to use.
How long it will take you to recover the data and get back on air!

How Much To Backup

This is at least an easy one to answer. If you want to create a complete backup of your system that you can use to recover after a full system loss you will basically need to backup everything.

So that includes:

Your complete Myriad 5 data folder (including all data files, audio files etc) - The easiest thing is to just backup the entire Myriad folder.
SQL Database - In Myriad 5, almost everything (other than the audio files themselves) is in the main SQL database, this includes all the settings as well as your MediaWall information, Clocks, Rules and any scheduled content in the Log. So even if you have a complete copy of your Myriad data folder, without the Database you will not be able to easily get back on air. Thankfully it is fairly easy to setup a script to generate an 'SQL Backup' file that can be used to 'restore' your data into a new SQL database.

Tip: Not sure what folder you should be backing up? In Myriad Playout, click on the Settings Menu > Applications Settings , look on the Data Locations tab and make a note of the folder listed in the Location of data files field. This folder contains everything Myriad 5 needs (including all your media files) except for the SQL Database.

To backup your SQL Database you will need to run the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) application (if you have not installed it then you need to!). Once you have SSMS running, connect to your SQL server and expand the Databases branch in the left hand 'explorer'. Locate the Database you want to backup (again you can use the Application Settings in Myriad 5 to find out which one), right click on the database , choose Tasks > Backup and follow the instructions. You will find this process is well documented online.

How Regularly You Need To Backup

The temptation is to perform a backup very regularly so that your backup is as up to date as possible but the potential danger is that you stand a good chance of replicating issues to your backup before you know that they are issues.

Let's say you update your backup every hour. If the problem is that someone has deleted all of your Songs, it is possible that this would be replicated to your backup data before you realise they've done it. Performing a backup every few days or even once a week gives you time to find problems before they are replicated to your backup data, but of course means that a small amount of new content may not have been backed up yet.

What Mechanism To Use

Here is where it gets a lot more personal! There are many ways you can replicate the key data to your chosen backup device or location. There are simple tools (like Robocopy) that are built into Windows that can be effective for creating backup data within your network or you can use 3rd party applications like Dropbox or OneDrive to create replicas of your data at remote locations.

Some of the options include:

Robocopy - A simple 'one way' tool that is capable of copying any changed data to different network location or drive. This is simple to setup and manage but only works within a network (or VPN) and is usually only used in a single direction (copies master data to a slave location).
3rd Party Folder Replication Tools (such as Dropbox and One Drive) - Probably the best known tool for replicating content from one site to another is Dropbox (although OneDrive works in a similar way and is built into Windows). It is possible to use DropBox to replicate your entire Myriad folder to a remote location and you could even run Myriad at the remote location 'looking' at the folder being updated.
DFS Replication - The 'enterprise' solution for folder replication is to use Microsoft DFS Replication. This requires each site to have at least one Windows Server. The advantage of DFS replication is that it is truly two way making it possible to have studios in different locations that each run from local data that is synchronised in close to real time.

But the above three options will only get you half way because if you are not replicating your SQL database, you will not have all the data you need to reinstate your Myriad 5 Playout system.

To make sure you have the SQL Database to compliment your data, you also need to implement one of the following:

Backup Your SQL Database To A File - This can be a scripted task that will take a 'snapshot' of the data in your SQL Database that can be used to 'restore' into a remote SQL database when required. The normal process is that you script a task that creates a 'backup file' and then use whichever file replication (outlined above) you prefer to ensure that the backup file is copied to your backup location along with all the other data. If you need to utilise your backup data, you will first need to 'restore' the backup file into the SQL database you want to use. Unfortunately this cannot be done while Myriad is running (as it is access the live database) so this solution is fine for creating a complete data set that you can use if you need to but is not suitable for synchronising a remote Myriad playout system (that is actively running).
SQL Publisher / Subscriber - As with the DFS solution above, this is the 'enterprise' level solution that allows near to 'real-time' replication between SQL Databases at remote sites. To use this method you will need SQL Standard at your Publisher site (SQL Express is ok at the Subscriber sites). The remote sites can be set to be Subscribers of the Publisher site with changes made at any site be replicated in as close to real-time as the network connection will allow. When combined with DFS replication, this provides a virtually real-time synchronisation between sites. When we setup the GMG network in the UK, we used this method to synchronise broadcast centres in Manchester, London, Cardiff, Yorkshire and Glasgow such that any studio in any site could be used to deliver local or network content so that the group could use the site most convenient for the 'on air talent'. Please note that such a setup requires a strong infrastructure and IT knowledge and is not covered by our standard technical support, please contact us for more details on options.

For backup and disaster recovery, the first method should be the one that most stations consider!

How Long Will It Take To Get Back On Air

We often get asked about cloud backup and on the face of it, backing up all your data to the cloud seems like a great plan as it virtually guarantees that you data will be safe as most large provides (AWS, Azure etc) replicate data across many servers and offer a high level of availability.

The main issue is that because Myriad 5 Playout is a complex, real-time playout system, it will normally require data to be accessible on your local network in order to provide an acceptable level of reliability and performance. So if the worst happens and you are relying on backup data to get you back on air, the last thing you want is to spend 24 hours downloading 2TB of data from your cloud service provider!

That said, a fully automated backup in the cloud will provide a safe and secure solution that is virtually guaranteed to be safe.

By contrast, a low cost USB drive offers a great backup solution that has the advantage that you can run Myriad directly from it in an emergency but you need to ensure that is kept up to date and if it is physically in your building, it may be of little use if the reason you need it is because your build has burnt down!

The Recommended Solution For Disaster Recovery

Taking into consideration all of the points above, we would recommend a two tier approach to ensuring your data is adequately backed up for disaster recover.

Use a USB External hard drive to create a local backup. You can use robocopy (or similar) to copy the whole Myriad File Structure onto this drive as well as a scheduled task to export an SQL Database backup using script. Ideally you would have two USB drives in rotation and change them weekly so that one is always stored 'off site'. That way you always have a fairly up to date copy of everything one site but you also have a complete backup 'off site' that is only a week out of date at the most.
Setup an 'off site' backup that could be at a different site or cloud based. You can use a file replication technology such as Dropbox to replicate the Myriad file structure. Remember that you also need to script regular SQL Database backups and ensure these are also replicated to the 'off site' backup along with everything else.

We would recommend every station implement at least step one to ensure that they are covered should the need arise.

Scenario 2 - Synchronising To A Remote Studio

The other closely related scenario we are often asked about is how to go about synchronising the content from a master studio to a satellite studio located at a different site (and therefore a different network).

On the face of it, this looks to be a similar challenge to backing up for disaster recover except for one very important difference!

Backups are for recovery and are used to restore Myriad after some type of disaster and so Myriad is not active when the restoration occurs.

By contrast, synchronising data to a remote studio may well involve updating the data while the system in not only active but may be 'on air' itself. This means a totally different approach is needed.

Rather than replicate the entire file / database, the data must be added or altered in an existing file / database structure.

By taking this approach you can have an 'master' data set at your primary site that updates a totally independent Myriad system at a remote site so the content at the remote site is in sync with the master site.

We need to synchronise two things in order to keep the remote site in sync with the primary studio site:

Audio that has been added or changed in a specified range on the Media Wall.
Log for the next 24 hours (including edits, Voice Tracks etc).

In order to achieve this we can use the Myriad 5 Command Line Processor application which is installed with every Myriad 5 Playout installation.

The job of the Myriad 5 Command Line Processor is to perform common tasks when prompted with the appropriate 'command line' options. It is very nerdy but the big advantage is that you can then use the Schedule Task facility built into Windows to schedule the software to perform specific tasks regularly and with no user interaction.

Specifically, to extract the data you need to update a remote site, you need to setup tasks to perform the following:

Generate 'Transport' files for any Media Items in a given range that have been added or altered since the last time the process ran. Transport files are special files that include both audio from a Media Item along with all associated metadata.
Extract the next 24 hours of schedule from the Log in a format that can be ingested by Myriad at the remote site.

You may want to run the first task every few hours to keep the remote site up to date but the second task should only be run once a day!

You will find the Myriad 5 Command Line Processor application is located in the same folder that the Myriad Playout and you will find the help document which describes the scripting needed under the Myriad 5 Playout menu on your Start bar.

We will not go into the deep technical aspects of setting this up today but consider the following script:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Broadcast Radio\Myriad Playout v5\MyriadUtilityCL5.exe /Action=ExportTransportFiles /ExportPath="C:\Exports\Songs" /StartMediaId=10000 /EndMediaId=20000 /LastModifiedAfterGroup="Songs"

Lets break that down a bit:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Broadcast Radio\Myriad Playout v5\MyriadUtilityCL5.exe - this specifies the location of the Cdmmand Line Processor utility.
/Action=ExportTransportFiles - Tells the Command Line Processor (CLP) that is is going to export some Transport files.
/ExportPath="C:\Exports\Songs" - Tells the CLP where the exported Transport files should be saved.
/StartMediaId=10000 /EndMediaId=20000 - Tells the CLP the range of Media Items it should consider.
/LastModifiedAfterGroup="Songs" - This creates a unique 'ID' for this group within the Myriad Database that is used to store the last time the process was ran so that the CLP can determine what Media Items have changed since then. You can use any reference name you like as long as it is unique compared with other CLP tasks you are running.

You can run the script above manually (paste it into the Run box or CMD window). The first time it runs, nothing will be exported because you have to establish a starting point. On subsequent runs, any Media Items that have changed will be exported as Transport files and saved in the specified folder.

As you can see in the example above, one of the Media Items had changed so was exported as a Transport File to the target folder.

Drop box could be used to automatcially replicate this Transport file in a corresponding folder at the remote end and then the standard Media Wall AutoImporter tool could import the altered content onto the Media Wall.

In order for this to be effective, you would need to start with a carbon copy of the Media Wall at the remote end, then any changes made at the primary end will be replicated to the remote site.

You would setup different CLP tasks to export different ranges on the Media Wall and then use Schedule Task to automatically run them periodically. You would also likely setup some ranges at the Remote Site that are not synchronised with the main site. You could even setup some ranges where the duplication works the same way but in reverse!

What about the Log?

The above CLP task could be used to synchronise changes to Media Items but what about duplicating the Log to the remote site?

What we really want is to automatically export the Log for the next day, to the remote site so that it has a copy of the Log complete with any changes you have made or Voice Tracks you have added. Once again, we can do this with a CLP script that we can schedule to run once a day to export the next days complete Log as a XML file that the Myriad Playout system at the remote end can use to manually or automatically import.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Broadcast Radio\Myriad Playout v5\MyriadUtilityCL5.exe /Action=ExportLog /Start=NowDay+1T00:00:00 /End=NowDay+1T23:59:59 /Filename="C:\Exports\Schedule\Schedule.xml" /StationId=0

Lets take a closer look:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Broadcast Radio\Myriad Playout v5\MyriadUtilityCL5.exe - this specifies the location of the Command Line Processor utility.
/Action=ExportLog - Tells the Command Line Processor (CLP) that is is going to export a section from the Log
/Start=NowDay+1T00:00:00 - Tells the CLP that we are interested in 'today + 1' (tomorrow) starting at 00h 00min 00sec.
/End=NowDay+1T23:59:59 - Tells the CLP that we are interested in 'today + 1' (tomorrow) ending at 23h 59min 59sec.
/Filename="C:\Exports\Schedule\Schedule.xml" - Tells the CLP the location and name of the Log file to create.
/StationId=0 - This tells the CLP which 'Station' to use within your Database. Station 0 will be the first Station in the list with 1 being the second etc.

As before, running this task will result in the Log from tomorrow being exported to the specified folder in XML format. You can then replicate this to the remote site using your chosen method and then setup Myriad Playout at the remote end to import a the Log file from the appropriate location and with the file prefix 'schedule' and no 'filename date format'.

Once configured, Myriad Playout at the remote site will check to import Log content from this folder if it need to fill an hour (or day) in the Log. If no file is found then it will fall back on it's own Myriad Schedule clocks to schedule the content.

Please note that the Log will not be automatically updated with any new Log information as it is only read as part of the import process.

This means that the Myriad Playout at the remote end should only be set to schedule a short way ahead of 'current time'. Alternatively you could export the Log from the primary site more than one day ahead but keep in mind that if you have exported the schedule a week ahead and the remote site has ingested the schedule a week ahead, changes made to the Log at the primary site will be exported to the remote site, but won't be imported unless you remove the hours at the remote sitefirst.

If this level of replication is required then you will need to setup full DFS replication and SQL Publisher / Subscriber as described in section 1.

Please note that Disaster Recover Backup and Remote Site Synchronisation fall outside of the scope of normal technical support. We are happy to offer some general advice as to how best to tackle various scenarios but cannot offer specific assistance and support within the standard technical support contract. Should you require us to configure a variation on any of the scenarios outlined in this post, we will be happy to quote you for some onsite or remote engineering time.

Using The New WMP Manager App To Control External Streams

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 10:48:47 GMT

Learn how to use Commands to control our new WMP Manager app.

The new WMP Manager is a simple media player application that can be controlled directly using Commands within Myriad 5 Playout. This allows you to:

Switch web streams into your live or automated playout.
Pre-load the stream to allow for connection buffer delays.
Gracefully fade in and fade out volume of stream to segue between local and streamed content.
Open and close WMP Manager application as required.

To make life as easy as possible we have created a single ZIP file that includes both the WMP Manager app and a Media Pack that contains the Command Media Items you will need so all you need to do is download the ZIP file, unzip it into the root of your C drive and install the Media Pack in Myriad Playout.

Here is how!

1. Go to https://www.broadcastradio.com/myriad-5-playout-support#Download and click on the Broadcast Radio WMP Manager Pack button to download the ZIP file.

This will download the BroadcastRadioTools.zip file to your downloads folder.

2. Right Click on this file and select Extract All.

3. You need to set the extraction location to the root of your C drive (i.e. c:\) . This is important as the Commands in the Media Pack will be set to use this location. If you want to use a different location, you can , you will just need to adjust the Commands to use the alternate location.

4. Browse to the C drive to make sure the files have extracted to the right location.

5. Now we need to Import the Media Pack . Switch to Myriad 5 Playout and click on File Menu > Install Media Pack > Import Media Pack.

6. Browse to the location of the files you extracted a moment ago (should be c:\BroadcastRadioTools unless you changed it).

7. Myriad will now import five new Media Items into the next empty slots in your default 'Basic Items' range on the Media Wall. they are just Media Items so you can move or copy them as required.

8. Next you need to Edit the 'Launch Media Player (muted) Media Item. Right click and select Edit.

9. This will open the standard Edit Window for the Command Media Item. Location the section that list the stream location ( http://streaming.broadcastradio.com:9110/PG48AAC in this example) and alter that to be the location of the stream you want to open. Once done, save and close the Edit Window.

You can copy this Media Item to create different Commands to open different streams!

10. Test your stream by double clicking on the 'Launch Media Player (Muted) Media Item.

The first time you run WMP Manager, you will be asked to allow it through the Windows Firewall. Click on Allow Access.

11. The WMP Manager will start and automatically connect to the selected stream with the audio muted.

N.B. The WMP Manager will use your PC's default sound device to play the stream so you need to make sure that is connected to your mixing desk with the fader up!

12. Now that the WMP Manager is running and connected, let's look at the other Command Media Items added by the Media Pack.

The options are:

Launch Media Player (Muted) - This will launch the WMP Manager, connect to the specified stream and mute the audio.
Unfade Media Player - This will fade up the volume on the WMP Manager. If you edit this Command Media Item you can adjust the fade duration.
Fade Media Player - This will fade the volume on the WMP Manager to zero over a set time. You can edit the Media Item to adjust this time.
Fade and Close Media Player Manager - This will fade the volume on the WMP Manager to zero, then close the WMP Manager.
Close Media Player Manager - This will immediately close the WMP Manager without fading out the audio first!

You can adjust the parameters of all of these Media Items using the Edit Window but if you are unsure, we would recommend leaving them at the default settings.

Give it a try, double click on 'Unfade Media Player' and the WMP Manager should fade in your stream audio. Try the other options to see how they work!

You now have everything setup to to gracefully swicth Streams on and off using Command Media Items in Myriad Playout.

These can be used:

In the Log (manually or scheduled)
On Favourites (for manually triggering them)
By double clicking on them on the Media Wall (for manual use)
Called from within other Commands

Putting it all together!

Consider the Log Sequence bellow:

This Command will launch the WMP Manager and connect to the set stream with the volume muted. In practice, this will happen instantly and Myriad will move on to the next item in the Log.
Play a standard jingle. This should be long enough to cover any connection time for the WMP Manager.
At the Extro of the jingle, the Command will fire that will fade in the stream.
With the stream playing, Myriad can now wait for the time set in the Absolute time. In this example the Myriad will wait until 11:59 and 54 seconds.
At that time it will fade out the stream, the immediately move on to the next item in the Log.
Finally we play a standard jingle to end the hour.

So this would provide you with an hour in your Log that included a jingle at the beginning and end with an external stream playing for the rest of the hour.

You could manually build a sequence like this but you can also build the same sequence in your Clocks on either Myriad Schedule or AutoTrack (Standard and Pro).

Let us know how you get on with the WMP Manager.

Automatically Import New Songs From iTunes

Tue, 23 Jul 2019 09:04:42 GMT

Using AutoImporter to automatically ingest new content!

What is the MediaWall Auto Importer?

In this blog we will focus on how you can use the Media Wall AutoImporter application (which is free for Myriad 5 Playout users) to monitor one or more folders and automatically import any new content that appears into the appropriate range on your Myriad Wall (complete with all the normal trimming, normalisation and setting extros).

Before we start, let's just recap what AutoImporter can do:

Monitor multiple destination folders for new content.
Automatically import new content into a specific Media ID, next empty Media Item in range or the next Media ID in the default item type range (eg Song etc).
Imported content can use embedded meta-data or use specific information (eg Title, colour etc).
Email alerts can be sent on successful or unsuccessful imports.

What can you use it for?

There are many potential uses for this application. Some examples include:

Automatically import hourly news provided by an external news service (like Radio News Hub).
Automatically import new songs dropped into a folder.
Provide a simple way for presenters to import their content by giving them a folder to drop it into.
Use 3rd party services (like Dropbox) to transfer and synchronise content between sites.
Automatically add new content purchased from an online store.

It is this last task that we will focus on in this blog. In this case we will demonstrate how new songs purchased from iTunes can be automatically imported into Myriad Playout with them being added to your Songs range complete with title information and normalised ready to be played.

Automatically Importing Purchased Songs From iTunes

The video below shows the complete process for automatically importing new content purchased from the iTunes store. Whilst the example shows how it can be done with iTunes, the same process can be applied to any online store or folder structure in your network.

Please note that the following process will work for songs purchased from iTunes NOT for sings downloaded from Apple Music. You do not own the songs you download from Apple Music and they contain copy protection that will prevent Myriad from being able to import them.

Now that you have seen the process for automatically importing Songs from a specific folder, you can apply the same technique to setup as many different AutoImporter Groups as you need.

Mass Changing In Myriad 5 Playout

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 13:59:04 GMT

One of the big advantages of Myriad 5 Playout over previous versions is that all content on the Media Wall is stored within the Station Database rather than the folder structure found in Myriad 4. This is advantage for several reasons including:

All content is displayed on the Media Wall, Library & Replace windows.
Searching and filtering search results is virtually instantaneous.
Songs and Links are immediately available for scheduling by Myriad Schedule.
Changes can be quickly and simply applied.

It is this last feature that we will focus on in this blog post.

What can you do?

The simple answer is that using the tools outlined below, you can change just about any element of a selected range of Media Items. You can also perform a number of additional tasks to help you maintain your Media Wall or export content for archiving. Options include:

Export Content (as standard audio files or transport files)
Copy Media Items - Duplicate the selected Media Items to another location on the Media Wall.
Move Media Items - Move Media Items to another location on the Media Wall (remember you would need to update AutoTrack or 3rd party schedule - but not Myriad Schedule)
Export CSV List - Export a handy list that can be accessed by Excel or other spreadsheet software.
Mass Change - Apply one or more changes to multiple Media Items at the same time.
Mass Delete - You can also delete multiple Media Items if you have appropriate permissions.

So let's get started with with applying some changes to a selection of Media Items.

All the tools we need are located in the Media Reports window which is used to both report details about the Media Items on your Media Wall and also to make changes to those Media Items. Click on the Reports Menu and the Media Reports.

You can use this window to search for the Media Items you want to work with. In the example above we have typed the word 'Love' into the Basic Search window which has resulted in six Media Items.

If you want a more detailed way of searching for the content you want to work with, click on the Advanced Search button to to access more search criteria.

In the screen shot above, we have selected the Advanced Search(1) options then set the criteria to show Songs(2) from the Pop Category that have the Ending:Ends . The results are displayed in the Search Results(3) area.

You can also use the 'tree view' on the left hand side to quickly select Medie Item Types and Categories.

Let's change some stuff!

From here we can select multiple Media Items and do a number of things to those items. First you need to select the items you want to affect by either clicking on them (holding down Shift or Ctrl) or selecting them using the mouse.

Once you have selected the Media Items you want to work with, you can use the buttons on the ribbon to select the action you want to perform.

In this example, we will select a few Media Items and then change their background colour, but you can actually choose any Media Item attribute or combine multiple attribute changes in a single operation.

To mass change the background colours of selected Media Items follow these steps.

Select the Media Items you want to change.
Click on the Mass Change button.
On the Mass Change window, click on the Other Tab .
Click on the Colours option then select Use Custom Colours and select the desired colours.
Click on the Start Mass Changing Media Items button.

Even when you are applying changes to a lot of Media Items, it should only take a few seconds. Once the changes are made, you will see a confirmation window and your changes will have taken effect.

Other things to try!

You can apply the same process to mass change any Media Item attributes. This opens up a whole host of possibilities such as:

Mass change Song Categories.
Apply Hour Restrictions to multiple Media Items.
Reorganise your Media Wall (use Move or Copy instead of Mass Change).
Colour code your content.
Mass export content for long term archive.

Give it a try because you can always use the Mass Changer to change things back if needed!

Introducing Myriad Schedule

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 16:02:53 GMT

Get ready for the new, integrated music and link scheduling system built straight into Myriad 5 Playout.

Over the past few months, our team of software developers have been collaborating with our broadcast professionals and customers to develop the first evolution of a new generation of Music and Link scheduling system fully integrated and built right into Myriad Playout.

We are proud to give you a first look at Myriad Schedule.

Myriad Schedule is a powerful music and link scheduling tool built right into Myriad Playout. It is designed to offer a fully integrated alternative to AutoTrack Standard SE that simplifies the process of building and maintaining your stations scheduled output.

Rather than maintaining two linked databases of content (Media Wall and AutoTrack SE), Myriad Schedule uses the Media Wall directly to build it’s catalogue of schedulable content such as Songs, Links and Promos.

Content added to the Media Wall can be made available for scheduling immediately and changes you make will be reflected in real-time throughout the system. You can choose what content should be considered for scheduling (and mass change them if required) and even decide which hours a Song or Link should be able to be scheduled in!

Myriad Schedule also introduces an innovative approach to designing the sound of your station with the introduction of Simple and Advanced Clocks.

Simple Clocks are designed for shows that need to adhere to a specific mix of music categories and jingles but do not require specific structure to the hours. You simply set some goals for the hour (like play 80% pop and 20% rock), add specific items you want to play at the beginning and end of the show (hour opener, AutoHook Item, News sequence Media Item etc), choose the Hour Mode (Live or Auto) and assign it to the hours of the week that you want the clock to be used.

If you need a bit more control over the exact structure of your Clock or want to add a great variety of Clock Items (like advert breaks, ab times etc) then you can use an Advanced Clock. You can still set overall Song / Link goals for the Clock that will apply to any unspecified Songs or Links but you can also build the exact Clock structure you need using the easy to use clock builder to add in a wide variety of Clock Items (such as Social posts, Media Items, Adverts Breaks, Hardware Events, Absolute/Reset Times, Scripts, Split Events and even other Clocks) as well as specify the Category for any Song or Link in your Clock.

By combining Simple and Advanced Clocks you can create a flexible station output that delivers the sound you are looking for with minimal setup or maintenance.

Once your Clocks are ready, you simply drag them into the Clock Assignment Grid to complete your stations schedule.

Finally, Myriad Schedule introduces a three-tiered approach to applying rules when scheduling. At the basic level you can apply overall Station wide rules to prevent items or Artists from repeating within a certain time frame. These are superseded by the Category level rules which allow you to set a different set of rules for each Song or Link category. Finally, you can specify overriding rules per Category within a Clock. At all levels you can specify whether Rules can be broken if needed!

Myriad Schedule can be used as to schedule your station output in advance or 'on the fly' as required. It is compatible with the existing SE product range which means you can still use Advert Manager SE or even mix locally generated Myriad Schedule content to fill between imported log sections from AutoTrack SE or other 3rd party schedulers.

Myriad Schedule will initially be included with the 5.18 release of Myriad Playout. Further releases will continue to develop the Myriad Schedule platform with additional features, rules and options.

Why not join the Myriad Facebook Group to keep up to date with all the latest Myriad news.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Myriad5/?source_id=1398862860417748

Let's get connected! - Using the BR Hardware Service to control external hardware and audio switchers

Fri, 05 Apr 2019 17:13:50 GMT

Learn how Myriad 5 can connect to the real world via the BR Hardware Service for controlling devices and external audio switchers.

We often get asked how Myriad 5 Playout can interact with real world devices using hardware input / output devices. Once you have a hardware I/O device configured, there are a number of great applications that can be used to automate processes in stations or make controlling the system easier.

Some common applications for Inputs include:

Fader / Channel Starts - You can use hardware triggers provided by your mixing desk to start and stop the Media Players in Myriad.
Big Red Go Button - Similarly you can use a push button to trigger events such as Log Go.
Onair Status - You can use logic from your studio switcher to control the 'On Air Control' in Myriad.
Switch Dynamic Layout - How about some physical buttons to switch between layouts.

In fact there is a wide range of actions that can be assigned to hardware inputs in Myriad 5 Playout giving you many possibilities.

There are also many applications for Outputs including:

Switching External Devices - The most common use for this is switching an external source (such as news) on and off at the top of the hour.
Controlling On Air Switching - You can use the 'On Air Control' in Myriad to drive a suitable 'real world' studio switcher.
Studio Signage - Have your studio signage show status events in Myriad Playout (if you have Smartsign this can all be done with Virtual Hardware Events so no cables needed!)

It is clear that you can do a lot with physical hardware I/O but the same system can also be used to create virtual hardware I/O interactions with supported devices such as Myriad 5 Logging, SmartSign and AEQ Mixers.

In this post we will explore how to initially setup the Hardware Service at your station and use it to control one of our Simple Audio Switcher units.

The Basic Concepts

In previous versions of Myriad, hardware I/O support was built directly into the playout software which meant you were somewhat limited in functionality and required a different device per playout workstation. If you take the case of external news switching, that meant you often needed both a hardware I/O device plus an audio switching device for each studio or automation system that needed to be able to do the switching.

When we designed our fifth generation products (Myriad 5 Playout, Myriad 5 Logging, SmartSign) we had a grander vision for how hardware would work.

Take a look at the diagram above.

The basic premise is that instead of the Playout, Logging and SmartSigns handling hardware internally, we have a central Hardware Service that is responsible for interacting with the real world, and the individual software applications can connect to the Hardware Service (over your network) to either trigger or respond to hardware events using the

This has a number of advantages including:

Centralised setup & admin
Reduce hardware I/O devices (as lines can be shared between multiple studios etc)
Reduced external equipment (no need for a switcher per studio for example)
Easy expansion (add multiple SmartSigns that all subscribe to the same events)
Reduced physical wiring (as most of it is IP)
Share hardware I/O across sites (as it is IP driven, you can link Hardware Services across you group so you could have a central Myriad Logging system logging mic live events across all stations in you group!)

Getting Started

Now we know what the basic premise is, let's take a look at how to make it happen at your station. In this example we will walk through the process of setting up the Hardware Service to control a very simple audio switcher which could be used for switching on an external source such as news.

The steps we need to complete are:

Install your Hardware Device
Install the Broadcast Radio Hardware Service
Configure the service to use hardware I/O devices
Connect Myriad Playout to the hardware service
Add in an event into the Log to switch on the device.

We will also touch on how to make Myriad 5 Playout react to hardware inputs but as the Simple Audio Switcher we are using in this example only has outputs, we will not be setting any of these up!

1. Install Your Hardware Device

In this walkthough we will be using a Simple Audio Switcher which can be purchased from our website. This is about the simplest device you available. Once the drivers are installed and the device is plugged in, it will appear as 'Serial Device' in the hardware manager. Download Driver Here>

Whichever hardware device you plan to use should be plugged in or installed prior to configuring your Broadcast Radio Hardware Service. Make sure you are on the latest drivers for devices that require them.

2. Install The Broadcast Radio Hardware Service

The first thing to do is download the latest version of the Broadcast Radio Hardware Service for installation on the PC that you want to run the Hardware Service on.

Head to https://www.broadcastradio.com/myriad-5-playout-support#Download

Once downloaded, run the installer and follow the normal setup process.

3. Configuring Your Hardware Service To Use Hardware I/O Devices

The Broadcast Radio Hardware Service (we will just call it the Hardware Service from now on) actually consists of three components.

The Hardware Service - This is a service that runs in the background and does all the hard work.
Hardware Configuration Utility - Used to configure the Hardware Service
Hardware Monitor - Allows you to review and manually switch hardware lines once they are configured

The Hardware Service should already be running now but not configured so the first thing we need to do is use the Hardware Configuration tool to setup the service.

Click on the Start button on the taskbar and type in Hardware Configuration .

Next you need to click on the Configuration button to access the Hardware Service Configuration screen.

This will open the Config window which is used to add in Hardware Devices and configure the individual lines on each device. The Hardware Manager can handle multiple hardware devices simultaneously if required.

Right click on the Serial Port Device node on the left hand tree and select Add RS232 Device.

Next you need to set the options for the device. In this example we are using a Simple Audio Switcher which can be used to switch either two mono sources or one stereo source. We want to switch a stereo source so we have setup the first output line (5) to be the News Left audio channel and the next line (6) to for the right channel.

We have also given it a more obvious name and and checked the COM port is correct.

Other Hardware Devices will have different settings available in this window depending on how they connect and whether they are input/output devices or just output devices.

Click on the OK button to save and close this window.

We are nearly done with this first phase but you pay remember that when we setup the output lines on the Simple Audio Switcher device, we had left and right audio channels controlled by separate hardware lines. We could just switch both of these but it would mean more Hardware events in the Log, instead we can use the Patch Bay feature in the Hardware Service to connect the hardware lines together. Click on the Patch Bay button.

On the Patch Bay window you can add in a source device and hardware line as well as a destination device and hardware line (plus a direction). When the source hardware line changes state, the destination will change state to match so in this case we can set a patch that locks the 'left' and 'right' hardware lines together and then just switch the 'left' one in Myriad Playout.

You can add as many patches as you need to link Hardware lines across devices or even sites!

Your Hardware Service should be setup now and it should pickup all the changes but to be sure, it is worth stopping and restarting the service to ensure it has picked up your new devices.

Checking It Is All Working

At this stage your Hardware Service should be fully configured and running but it is worth checking all is ok. You can easily do this using the Hardware Service Monitoring application.

Click on the Start button on your task bar and type in Hardware Monitor and then click on the application shortcut.

The Hardware Monitor will be displayed. If yours appears empty when you first load it, click on the Refresh icon on the top left to reload the available devices.

In the image above you can see the two Hardware Devices we have looked at so far. Each Hardware Line is represented in the Monitor with a 'tick box' representing the current state of the line. You can also test hardware lines by manually clicking on the appropriate box.

You can use this to test your Hardware Devices.

4. Configure Myriad To Use The Hardware Service

Now that the Hardware Service is setup and running, all we need to do is add the information Myriad Playout to allow it to connect and switch Hardware Lines.

Before you start, make sure you are on the latest version of Myriad Playout (v5.16 or higher).

Click on the Settings Menu > Hardware Setting.

On the Hardware Settings window click on the Add button to add in a new Hardware Service.

Once the Device Connection window appears, set the IP address for the PC that is running the Hardware Service (you can use localhost or 127.0.0.1 if it is on the same PC). You can also set the Port if you have changed the default on the Hardware Service.

The Hardware Device list will initially be empty. Click on the Refresh button to see a full list of available Devices.

Finally add a description and click on OK.

The lower section of this window is used to setup how Myriad will react to hardware inputs. You can use it to trigger all sorts of things in Myriad such as playing Media Players, switching On Air status or triggering Favourites. Click the Add button to explore the options available.

N.B. if you have only just added the Hardware Device in the top section, you will need to close and reopen this window in order for it to be populated.

But in this example we are not planning on adding any Input actions so instead we will focus purely on setting an output to switch the news on and off.

This means that we do not have to add anything to the bottom section at all and we can click on OK to close the window.

5. Adding A Hardware Line To The Log In Myriad Playout

Now all we need to do is add a Hardware Event to the Log in Myraid Playout.

Right click on the Log and select Insert Item > Hardware.

Next set the Hardware Device, Line and State that you want Myriad to set.

As you can see, the above Hardware Event will switch on Output 5 on the Audio Switcher which will turn on the news!

All done!

Nail OB's and spoil your co-host with Myriad Playout Remote

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 17:30:46 GMT

And the best bit is it is free for Myriad 5 Playout customers!

Myriad 5 Playout Remote is a really useful utility that not many people know about. It is a light weight application that can connect to a studio playout system and provide real time information and control over Myriad 5 Playout.

There are two main use cases for Myriad Playout Remote:

Add a second info & control screen in a studio for a co-host or for presenters in a talks studio.
Add real time playout info and control at a remote site (such as an outside broadcast).

Myriad Playout Remote (or just Remote for the rest of this blog!) is a cut down information and control application that connects to and can control a full Myriad Playout system in your studio. It doesn't play any audio itself and doesn't have all the features of Myriad Playout but it does offer a really useful set of features and because it uses a very compact data connection, it can be used to control your studio over fairly low bandwidth data connections.

Remote needs to be connected to an active and fully licensed copy of Myriad in your studio. It also needs to be on the same network which should be no problem for Remotes in your studio but will require a VPN connection for OB's.

So what can you do?

Remote allows you to view what is happening on Playout in real time as well as control certain aspects of the system.

The fey features include:

View & Play Favourites (and switch Sets)
View the a 'mirror' of the studio Smart Info tile
View items coming up on the Log
View the Dashboard (including current item play progress)
Control the Dashboard (Including Go, Dump and Change End Type)
Switch Playout Modes (Live or AutoFade)

How do you set it up?

Setting up Remote is actually very simple and once configured, you can install Remote on as many PC's as you like (but only one can connect at any one time to a single Playout license).

Here is what you need to do.

First you need to download and install the Myriad Playout Remote software.

https://www.broadcastradio.com/myriad-5-playout-support#Download

Click on the link above to go to the Myriad 5 Support page and click on the button to download the latest full release.

This will open a popup window to allow you to select the software you want. Scroll down and click on the Myriad Playout Remote option.

Once downloaded, run the installer and follow the normal process. There are no questions so it should be very straight forward.

Once the install has finished, Myriad Playout Remote is ready to go but we also need to make some changes in Myriad Playout to allow it to connect and control the system (this is off by default!).

In Myriad 5 Playout, go to the Settings Menu and select Application Settings.

Next switch to the Remote Connections tab and tick the Allow HTTP (Web) Connections option. You can leave the port on the default setting (9180) unless you need to have multiple Remotes connecting to different studios on the same network.

Now here is a tricky bit!

You need to allow the Playout and Remote to talk to each other on your network by changing some setting using a few special commands typed into an 'elevated' command prompt.

***Important Step***

Click on the Windows Start button and type CMD on your keyboard. When you see the CMD option, Right Click and select Run As Administrator.

You will probably have to confirm that you want to proceed as an Admin, do so and you should see a black command prompt window.

First paste the following line in and hit <return>

netsh http add urlacl url= http://+:9180/MyriadPlayout5 user=Everyone

Next do the same for this line:

netsh advfirewall firewall delete rule name="Myriad Playout v5 HTTP Connection" dir=in protocol=TCP localport=9180

Finally repeat with this line:

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="Myriad Playout v5 HTTP Connection" dir=in action=allow protocol=TCP localport=9180

In each case change the Port number to match the setting in Myriad Playout if you changed it earlier.

Once you have done, it should look like the image below. Don't worry if you have any that return what appears to be an error as the sequence is designed to clear and reset certain settings that may not always be applicable.

You can access these commands directly by clicking on the ' i ' button on the Remote Connections tab.

With that all done, you need to restart Myriad Playout for the settings to take effect.

Now we can run Myriad Playout Remote.

Initially Remote will look like the shot above because it is not connected to a Myriad Playout system. Click on the Options menu option and select Settings.

You need to add in the Computer Name or IP Address of the PC that is running Playout, then click on OK to close the settings window.

Finally, click on the Connect button on the Options Ribbon.

Your Myriad Remote application should now be connected and ready to rock!

Let us know how you get on.

Myriad 5 Playout: User Security

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 13:17:38 GMT

I hate Kylie Minogue...

... is a phrase that has never been uttered in human history, but if such a hypothetical person did exist, how can you ensure they don't take it upon themselves to delete Kylie's back catalogue from your system?

The answer is to use the User Security features in Myriad 5 Playout to restrict what content certain users can create / edit / delete as well as controlling their access to key parts of the system such as the Settings menus.

The User Security system built into Myriad 5 Playout allows you to control access to the following things on a 'per user' basis:

Applications Settings
Access Application Settings
Edit Station Database Settings & Attributes
Add / Edit / Delete Myriad Schedule Lite Clocks
Open / Close Stations
Directory Settings
Alter User Security Settings
Add / Edit / Delete Users (and change permissions)
View User History
Favourites Settings
Add / Edit Delete Person Favourites
Add / Edit Delete Shared Favourites
Log Permissions
Mass Edit The Schedule Log
Edit Individual Log Items
Edit The 'On Air' Hour
Record Voice Tracks Into Log
MediaWall Permissions
Edit Personal Jump Buttons
Edit Shared Jump Buttons
Edit Local Jump Buttons
Import Media Packs (regardless of Media Range Permissions)
Publish Media Items (to Mixcloud)
Media Range Permissions
Multiple Create / Edit / Delete Ranges
Personal Media Ranges

It is these last two features that we can use to protect our Kylie content!

In the above screen show, we can see a standard MediaWall with full Edit permissions. This means that the user can Edit , Replace or even Delete the item using the right click menu or the tools on the ribbon. This is the default state for Users on the system but it does not offer any protection for your content.

Now let's look at the same situation with a User who does not have permission to Edit the Media Range that the Media Item is in.

This time, certain options on the right click menu are disabled. Basically option relating to editing, altering or deleting the item is disabled.

The story is the same on the Ribbon. All destructive options are now disabled.

You may also notice that the Copy option is still enabled so you can copy the content to a range you can edit. This is possible because the Edit Range Permissions are not absolute so you could setup Users that are not allowed to edit the content in the range where your Songs live but can edit the content in the News area or Jingles area (or both). Plus you can also set 'Personal Rangers' per User but more on this in a minute.

So how do you setup User Permissions?

This vital tool to help protect your content is actually very easy to setup. Let's imagine we have a user that we want to be able to edit everything on our MediaWall except the Songs. Here is how we would do it.

Start by making sure your are logged in to the system with a User with full admin rights so you can edit other Users Permissions (caution, it is possible to remove your own permissions - if you manage to do that you will need to contact us for some assistance).

Access the Settings Menu > User Management > Edit Contacts / Users

Double click on the User you want to edit the Permissions for.

Once the User window has loaded, switch to the Security Settings tab and click on the Edit Permissions button.

Next you will see the General Permissions tab. This tab has a bunch of options relating to general permissions in the system such as whether the user can alter the Settings, edit the Log or switch Stations. These are very useful Permissions and well worth setting on a per User basis but in this example, we just want to protect our Songs so we can skip this and switch straight to the Media Wall tab.

Now we are getting somewhere!

The bit we are interested in is the lower section which shows the Media Item Ranges this User can Create / Edit / Delete. In this example above the User can edit every Media Item from number 1 to number 99999999 (which is just about all of them!).

But we want to allow the User to edit everything except our Songs which in this example happen to be all stored above Media Item number 10,000.

So if we want the user to be able to edit content below 10,000 then we would alter the permissions to look like this:

This will mean that the User can create / edit / delete anything from Media ID number 1 to 9999 but nothing beyond that.

But what about if our Songs were in the middle of some other content?

No problem because you can add as many ranges as you need. So let's say our music ran from 10.000 to 25,000 but then we had some other items above 25,000 that we wanted them to be able to edit. No problem, just add a new range using the ' + ' button.

So you can add as many edit ranges per User as you need.

What About Personal Ranges

I glad you asked!

If you like, you can set a Personal Range for each user on the system. The Personal Range is used to:

Set a default range that will be used when recording or adding content.
Automatically override Media Range Permission to allow Create / Edit / Delete access to the Media Items in the Personal Range
Automatically restrict the amount of content a User can add (when their Personal Range is full they cannot add any new content until they delete some items to make space).

This is most commonly used to set a default area for each User that can be used for their personal content.

Imagine we set the Media Range permission for the user as shown below.

In this case, the User would have no Create / Edit / Delete access to the any Media Items on the system meaning they could only play content, not add, edit or delete anything...accept if we add in a Personal Range for the User they will automatically have full access to the Media Items in that range, so let's do that.

Click on Ok to close the Edit Permissions window and you will see the Personal Media Range option on the Security Settings tab of the User window.

Type in the Range you want to use for the User.

In this example, the User will be able to Add / Edit / Delete anything from Media ID 4001 to 4050 and if they click on the Record button, the system will automatically find the next empty Media Item in that range (and if none exist it will tell the User they cannot record anything unless they delete some of their personal content).

Because we didn't have any other Ranges set in the Edit Permissions window, it would mean that the User would not be able to add / edit / delete anything outside of their Personal Range.

Any Exceptions

Actually yes.

If you have set a Media Range to be used for Voice Track and the User has Permission to add Voice Tracks to the Log then the system will allow their Voice Tracks to be added to the specified range.

So I Need A User For Everyone Using The System?

Ideally yes as this allows you to specify a Personal Range and Permissions for everyone using your system but there are some practical reasons why this might not be ideal including:

You have a lot of Users that come and go.
You don't want to force Users to log in and out.
You want to system to automatically login when it starts (like when in automation).

In these scenarios you might find it more practical to have a few different user levels for example:

Admin User - all permissions and full edit rights to the MediaWall
Presenter User - restricted permissions with sections of the MediaWall protected

That way you can have the system automatically login as the Presenter User and only use the Admin User when you need to add or edit protected content.

Learn More

User Security is allows you to do a lot more than just protect Kylie's hits and it is well worth taking the time to ensure that only people with appropriate training and trust levels have full access to your system. There are a number of additional videos you can watch if you would like to learn more, but for now, at least we know how to protect your stations most valuable assets...and the Kylie tracks as well!

View more videos...

Show your system a bit of Love this Valentines Day!

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 18:04:51 GMT

OK, so it's a BLOG about general system health, but we got all caught up in the romance!

Your broadcast IT systems are important, but you know that! You spend ages getting your system working well, it's nice and stable, reliable, fast! It's working well, and you know what they say "If it aint broke, don't fix it!"

Which is OK to a certain point, but the thing about computers is, they don't stay this way.

They are constantly writing information back to the hard drives (system logs), the SQL database is also getting bigger with similar logfiles.

If you are on Windows 10, the drives should be being managed by themselves (Optimising - the new name for defragmentation), but you should really check to see if they are.

While we are talking storage space, are you running out of space on your C:\ drive (normally where Windows is stored)? You can run a "Disk CleanUp", and this can include old Windows Update files you no longer need. This could free up some valuable space, needed for the dreaded Windows Updates!

Have you been putting off those pesky updates? You know you really should do them!

You can use the Broadcast Radio Facebook Group or Forums to see if a recent update has caused anyone else any problems. So you might not want to update immediatly they come out, but you don't want to leave it too long either.

This could make your system vunerable to security attacks.

Virus scanning! Yes you might have the "Quick Scan" happening each week, but if you have lots of users importing files from "who knows where", you should probably perform the "Full Scan" periodically.

Plan, and prepare your maintenance schedule. Don't put it off, show your system some LOVE!!

Bett 2019 - Review

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 12:01:59 GMT

We were at BETT last week, it's the largest Educational Resource Exhibition in UK.If you didn't manage to get to the show, find out what we did, with our show report:

As the dust settles on BETT 2019, we look back at one of most exciting shows ever!

The main focus of our stand at the BETT show this year was showcasing our two band new studio packages, the SR1 and SR2.

The SR1 is a small, self-contained studio package ideal for schools looking to make School Radio programs or present level shows.post

The package consists of:

Webstation 6 Channel Mixer
Myriad Playout PC
Myriad LT Software
AutoPlayer Software
22" Touchscreen
22" Standard Screen (for clock & VU's)
Dual Monitor Arm
2 x Condenser Microphones*
2 x Studio Headphones*
2 x Articulated Mic Arms*
2 x Speakers*
Half Moon Studio Furniture
12 Months Streaming & School Radio Player
12 Months Office Hour Support
Lifetime Accesss To School Radio Resources
* Upgraded compared to 2018 Starter Plus

For more information, check out the SR1 Package page .

The SR2 builds on the SR1 with a bigger, more flexible mixer and an additional mic position built around a substantial 'round table' studio furniture.

The package consists of:

Airlite 8 Channel Mixer
Myriad Playout PC
Myriad LT Software
AutoPlayer Software
22" Touchscreen
12" Mini Screen (for clock & VU's)
3 x Condenser Microphones*
3 x Studio Headphones*
3 x Articulated Mic Arms*
1 x Tower LED 'Mic Live' Light
2 x Speakers (on stands)*
Round Table Studio Furniture
12 Months Streaming & School Radio Player
12 Months Office Hour Support
Lifetime Accesss To School Radio Resources

* Upgraded compared to 2018 Starter Plus

For more information, check out the SR2 Package page .

In addition to the new SR1 and SR2, we also launched a new resource which is available now for all School Radio customers.

The 'How To Make School Radio Show' book guide you through the entire process from start to finish as well as adding additional show ideas and example resources.

All customers can download the PDF version from the Resources section today.
Also all new 2019 Studio packages come with a glossy, full colour printed copy of the book!

Adding redundancy to your Automated Playout

Fri, 11 Jan 2019 12:30:58 GMT

A guest BLOG from Craig Arthur of Radio Royal Falkirk

One day it’s going to happen, your primary Automation system will fail and hopefully your plan B (you do have a plan B don’t you?) will kick in and take over your station output, providing some branded output until you can fix whatever fault caused everything to fall over.

At Radio Royal we have a lot of pre-recorded content for when we are not live. Whilst we have relied on an Elan Audio REP-01 twinned with a Sonifex silence detector, that only gives us some basic song-song-jingle style backup. Now whilst that’s better than nothing, we also have some redundancies in our systems: we have primary and backup servers for our audio and SQL databases and have tools to keep them synchronised.

Audio is synchronised between the servers using Windows DFS (“Distributed File System”). For the Myriad SQL Databases, the primary server is set up as a “Publisher”, whilst the backup server is set up as a “Subscriber”. Any changes made on 1 server are written over to the other server in effectively real-time.

We already had the infrastructure to enable an entirely separate Automation systems running on the primary and backup servers. Our primary automation already ran on a virtualised server with Axia livewire used for the audio, although of course this could be any AES67 based AoIP solution which saves the need for hardware audio cards.

Given we have 2 Citrix XenServer boxes, we set up a backup ‘virtual’ Myriad playout instance on the second server. That instance of Myriad is set to use a child “Station” of the primary on air station all within the same Myriad Database. Every hour it will pull down the running order from its parent station which is the primary Station for the main automation instance. By doing it this way any voice tracks are also pulled over from the primary systems. As we are using SQL merge publication it’s not possible to use the main “station” in the database as it would be simultaneously in use with the primary Myriad playout instance and they would conflict with each other. This way, each Playout get’s it’s own copy of the log to work with.

Next task is to swap over to the backup instance if the primary playout fails. We use Axia Pathfinder at Radio Royal for all our studio and transmission management. Pathfinder can monitor any Livewire audio source for silence or clipping. We have some stack events in Pathfinder monitor the audio levels on the primary audio feeds, should that be silent for 15 seconds then it will switch the Automation feed to the backup playout as well as send out an email alert. Once audio returns it is swapped back to the primary system automatically.

And of course, if it all goes pear shaped and somehow both systems go down, then the Elan Audio and Sonifex boxes live to fight another day!

Stations & Databases...What does it all mean!

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 10:35:50 GMT

We demystify how Myriad 5 Playout is structured and how it can work for you!

We tend to throw the word 'database' around a lot in Myriad 5 Playout and depending on the context, we might mean something very different!

But technically, there is usually only one database (per site) and all your various data lives within it. In this post we will explore the elements within the database, the correct terminology to use and why you might want to think about what will work best for you.

Consider the diagram below

This diagram represents a simplified view of the structures used to store data in a Myriad 5 Playout installation.

Lets look at them one at a time.

Microsoft SQL

Microsoft SQL (MS SQL) is the fundamental technology and platform used to organise and store all the data used by Myriad 5 Playout. There are various versions of MS SQL available but most installations will be using MS SQL Express 2016 which is available for free from Microsoft.

MS SQL is much more than just a data storage system, the SQL Server software manages all the data, optimises the content and also performs tasks (such as searches) on the behalf of client software such as Myriad 5 Playout. This means that when your search for a Media Item on the MediaWall, Myriad actually asks SQL to do the search internally and return the results to be displayed to the user. This has several advantages including:

Optimised 'fast' searching
Cached data for common tasks
Scalable data storage
Myriad 5 Playout never directly access your data
Can be expanded to include enterprise level protection (such as clustered servers)

For more instances, we don't need to worry about how clever SQL is and can just enjoy the benefits!

You will normally only have a single SQL instance running at each site. Even if you want (or need) to run multiple Databases then you would normally host them all within a single SQL instance.

Database

The Database should be considered the overall 'container' for all of your Myriad 5 Playout related data within your SQL instance. In the vast majority of cases, you will only have a single Database at each site but there are exceptions (see MediaWall below).

Each Database contains a single MediaWall as well as one or more Stations.

If you do need to use more than one Database then you will need to use Myriad Profiles so load Myriad 5 Playout with different Data Locations settings to 'point' to the different Databases.

MediaWall

Now we start to get into the more recognisable parts of Myriad 5 Playout. The MediaWall part of the Database is used to store all the information about the content stored within your MediaWall.

The key thing to keep in mind with the MediaWall is that only one can exist within a Database. This means that if you have multiple Stations at your site (see below) then they will all need to share a common MediaWall. This may involve content spread out with different areas specifically used by certain stations (like Jingles and Adverts) combined with shared resources (such as Songs).

You can make the MeidaWall as large as your like (within reason) so it is easy to separate content on a shared MediaWall.

If you absolutely have to have separate MediaWalls for Stations on a single site then you will need to have multiple Databases (within a single SQL instance) with each containing a totally independent MediaWall. As previously mentioned, you could then use Profiles to allow a single workstation to select which Database to work with at startup.

Stations

In Myriad 5 Playout, the term Station can be considered to refer to an individual 'Log' along with all the corresponding settings for that Log. The Log is a 'playlist' of content that can be played in Live or AutoFade. The Log can be generated by a scheduling system (like AutoTrack Pro), manually created or by Myriad itself (using InstantTrack Presets - see https://www.broadcastradio.com/let-s-talk-about-scheduling ).

Many stations will only ever need a single Station but unlike the MediaWall, you can actually have multiple Stations within a single Database...but why would you need them?

Why so complex?

The majority of stations will probably only ever use one Database, one MediaWall and one Station but there are good reasons why you might need more than one Station.

Consider these scenarios:

Multiple services running from your site (e.g. Hot FM and Hot Gold).
Automated 'sustain' service that runs 24/7 and is 'faded' up when needed.
A training facility that you can teach on without effecting 'on air'.

In each of these scenarios, having multiple Stations is the best answer to achieve the end result! Let's take a closer look.

Multiple Services From A Single Site

This is probably the most obvious use for multiple Stations. In this case Hot FM and Hot Gold share a single MediaWall which is divided into different areas to contain the station specific content (like jingles etc). Songs are in a common area although some Songs are only scheduled on one or the other service (and some are scheduled on both).

There are two Stations setup and AutoTrack Pro is used to schedule unique content to each.

In the Hot FM studio, the Hot FM Station is loaded by default and used for all live and automated programming. Obviously, the Hot Gold Station is loaded by default in the Hot Gold studio or by the Hot Gold automation PC.

Any Myriad 5 Playout workstation in the building can switch between the Stations as required using the Station options on the File Menu.

Automation 'Sustain' Service

This is a very similar scenario to the Multiple Service scenario but instead of it being two separate services, this is often the same service but a separate automated output that is always running and always ready to use.

You cannot have two workstation running the same Station in Live / Automation at the same time so the answer is to have two Stations, one that is always running and one that you can use in the studio whenever you like.

They could be using the same content (i.e. AutoTrack Pro has sent the same 'Log' to each Station), have totally different content (e.g. you could just let InstantTrack pick your automation output) or have a more complex 'Parent / Child' relationship.

Hold on, a Parent / Child what?

Here is where it starts to get a little more complex, Stations can exist as their own entities or as a Child of another Station. If a Station is a Child of another Station then it will look to the parent to provide content if none exists.

In the context of an Automation Sustain Service, the Automation Station might be the Parent and the Studio Station is the Child. In this case, if you only sent the Log output from AutoTrack to Automation Station then the Log in the Studio would appear empty but if you clicked on the Fill This Hour option on an empty Hour, rather than fill the hour using a log file (from your scheduling system) or using InstantTrack, it would instead copy the hour from the Automation Station.

This type of configuration would be great if you wanted your studio presenters to have the choice between using pre-scheduled content (eg copy the content from the Automation Station using the Fill This Hour option), manually build an hour by dragging content into the Log or ignore the Log altogether and just drag Media Items into Players.

Now lets reveres that relationship so now the Studio is the Parent and the Automation Station is the Child. In this case, if you only scheduled content into the Studio Station (the Parent) but leave the Automation Station running 24/7, as the Automation Station gets to the end of each hour it will copy the next hour from the Parent (the Studio) including all the latest edits and Voice Tracks added to the system.

This configuration is perfect if you normally run from the studio in Live and also use the studio for editing the log and adding Voice Tracks but also want to have a 24 hour automated service that the presenters can just fade up at the end of the day!

And the Training Station scenario?

Now that we have taken a look at Child / Parent relationship, creating a Training Station becomes a lot easier to implement. You would simply create a Station that is a Child of your main Station and use that for Training. The presenters could click on the Fill This Hour option for any hour in the Log that they wanted to practice with and it would copy the hour from the Parent Station, but because it is a totally separate Station, nothing they did would effect your main output.

But wait, there is more....

You can also tag a Child Station as being specifically for training in which case the following special rules apply:

Training Stations are always ignored by OCP (regardless of whether they are 'On air')
Training Stations can never trigger Split Advert Breaks or Sprit Cart Groups in Myriad Network SE
Training Stations do not execute Commands in the Log
Training Stations do not action Hardware events in the Log

These simple precautions mean you can train your presenters on all aspects of using Myriad 5 Playout for live playout without the risk of effecting your actual station output.

Caution: Remember that your are still using the same MediaWall so editing Media Items will still impact your main output!

But what about On-air Control and OCP?

Good question!

And one that will probably get it's own blog in the near future but the short answer is that each Station can maintain On-air Control of itself but OCP (the thing that drives your website with what is playing etc) will only listen to one Station at a time.

So in the case where you have a Studio Station and a Automation Station, both have could have On-Air control (of themselves) but only one would be listened to by OCP. So you could set up OCP so that if the Studio Station is running, then always 'listen' to that. If the Studio Station is not running then 'listen' to the Automation Station. That way when stop using the studio, OCP will default back to the Automation Station which has been happily running in the background and tell OCP what is playing only now OCP will listen!

And the future?

We are busy working on a future release of Myriad 5 Playout that will take this concept to it's natural conclusion, multiple Stations being played simultaneously on the same physical PC. This will allow you to run a handful of automated Stations from a single automation box (subject to licensing of course!).

Well there you have it....

A quick overview of the various parts that makeup the 'database' in Myriad as well as some practical scenarios to explain just why it is some complex! In a future post we will delve more into to Myriad 5 Playout works with OCP and how it can be used to drive many digital platforms from studio signage to twitter.

It's all change......or is it???

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 11:35:44 GMT

It really is that "time of year" when you have to think about time!

If you are in the UK (and certain other parts of the world) we are about to take part in the return to GMT. Otherwise known as the "Clock Change". At our headquarters in the UK we travel back in time 1 hour from BST (British Summer Time) to GMT / UTC (Greenwich Mean Time). So how will your station cope?

Myriad Playout 5 Suite - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
SmartSign Lite - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
Myriad Logging 5 - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
Myriad Playout 4 Suite - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
Myriad News 4 - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
PowerLog 4 - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
Myriad v3 - See forum post
PowerLog v3 - Nothing for you to do, handled automatically.
Myriad v2 - See forum post - (seriously, isn't it time you talked to us about an upgrade??)

It happens each year at the End of October, remember to plan in advance, live in a country where this is not a problem, or get yourself onto our latest generation of products.

Let's talk about scheduling...

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 16:00:44 GMT

It's not as scary as you think!It's not as scary as you think!

Most stations we talk to get playout!

They understand what it does, how it works and how to use it to get the most for their station.

But when we move the topic on to scheduling, that is usually when things start to get a little more fuzzy. Don't get me wrong, we have worked with hundreds of highly talented program controllers who fully understand the subtle nuances of radio programming and how to use their scheduling system to achieve their goals, but there are also many stations that view scheduling as something of a 'mystic art' that once working, should be left alone.

Some stations need tightly ruled music rotations, complex clocks and in-depth reporting whilst others really just want a good mix of music that follows their stations published schedule.

With our 5th generation products we wanted to offer a range of scheduling solutions that would allow stations to choose the correct tool to achieve the sound they want and at a level with any arcane incantations!

Level 1 - Instant TrackLevel 1 - Instant Track

InstantTrack is the new 'entry level' scheduling system built directly into Myriad 5 Playout. It is designed to offer quick, simple music and link scheduling that will follow your stations hourly music.

InstantTrack is the right choice for you if:

You want to control the music that is included in each live or automated hour.
You want to set a general template for the generated shows but don't need full control.
You want to easily change the sound of your station without having to do a lot of work.
You are new to scheduling and just want to get things working.

The key elements in InstantTrack are the InstantTrack Preset and the Preset Assignment Grid .

InstantTrack Presets

Think of an InstantTrack Preset as a simple set of rules that the system should use to fill an hour with content. You can specify what mode the hour should be, whether to play a 'top of hour' jingle or sequence, an AutoHook item or even a 'end of hour' jingle or sequence. The you choose the Categories of music you want to include in the hour. Each Category has a slider and the more to the right the slider is, the more music from that Category is included. Finally you can decide how often to play a Link (jingle) and what Link Categories to use. You can save Presets for using many times in a week.

Preset Assignment Grid

Once you have setup some InstantTrack Presets, you can use the Preset Assignment Grid to assign Presets to hours of the week.

So by creating a range of simple InstantTrack Presets and assigning them to the appropriate hours of the week in the Assignment Grid, you can rapid build the framework for your stations scheduled output.

Once you have assigned a Preset for each hour of the day in the Assignment Grid, Myriad 5 Playout will automatically use that to generate content for any hour in the Log that does not have content at the time it needs to play. Alternatively you can fill hours with content using the Fill Hour' option on empty Log hours.

Need a little more power? To to move on to....

Level 2 - AutoTrack SE Standard

AutoTrack SE Standard is our mid-level scheduling solution and is the sweet-spot for most radio stations that need more control over their scheduled output but don't need too many deep rules, options and reports.

AutoTrack Standard has been in use by radio stations around the world for more than 15 years and the latest SE version has been developed to work with Myriad 5 Playout.

The key difference between AutoTrack SE Standard and InstantTrack is that whilst InstantTrack deals with generalisations, AutoTrack SE Standard allows you to dive right in and control exactly what should be scheduled in every slot, in every hour (if you wish).

You should consider AutoTrack SE Standard if you:

You need or want to control the Song Category positions in each hour (called a Clock).
You need to have more complex sequences in your scheduled output (like for example switching an external news source).
You want to have more control of the time between songs or songs being played by the same artist, appear in your schedule.
You like tinkering with your station output.

AutoTrack SE Standard is covered in more detail on our website . It runs as a separate application that links to Myriad 5 Playout to import Media Items and export schedule to the Log.

But maybe you want to delve into the mystic art of scheduling, tinker with the very fabric of your station sound and craft every facet if your schedule? In that case you need...

Level 3 (Boss Level) - AutoTrack Pro

If you really want control over every aspect of your station schedule, add in customer Rules, mass manipulate content and get reports on everything then you need AutoTrack SE Pro.

Like AutoTrack SE Standard, AutoTrack SE Pro (ATP) has been used in commercial stations around the world for many years to craft unique, natural sounding station output that perfectly matches the stations vision for their sound. ATP takes everything that InstantTrack and AutoTrack Standard does and dials it up to '10'.

From customised Rules to detailed Clock building, the tools that ATP offers an experienced station programmer allow them to control just about everything in the schedule...but ATP is also about making your like easier with in-depth reports, mass manipulation tools and funk ways to re-cycle content to make the most of the music on your system.

You should consider AutoTrack SE Pro if:

You just got to have control.
If you are a highly specialised station (like a Classic Music station) that requires deeping scheduling tools.
If you are scheduling for multiple stations in a group.
You are just a bad ass scheduling wizard!

AutoTrack SE Pro is designed to work with Myriad 5 Playout but can be used with most professional radio Playout systems. For more information on ATP please take a look at the dedicated page on our website .

Any other options?

Of course you can.

Our own music scheduling solutions are designed to work with Myriad 5 Playout and because of that they usually offer a far more integrated solution than using a 3rd party scheduler. But Myriad 5 Playout plays nicely with most professional music scheduling systems such as:

RCS Selector & G-Selector
Music 1
Powergold
Music Master

Most of these systems have output for Myriad built directly in so whatever you preferred aspect of the Mystic Art (of scheduling) we have you covered.

It's not as glam as it appears!

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 08:58:50 GMT

OK, well it's a little bit cool!

The start of IBC is just around the corner. https://show.ibc.org/

If you are not aware, it is a massive Exhibition and Conference in Amsterdam, dedicated to the world of Broadcasting.
Yes most of the exhibitors are from the world of TV, and we can only drool over the kit and the budgets they have.

To help maintain our position at the forefront of the technology that powers radio stations, we are able to pick and choose products from various manufacturers from around the world.

It's a great time to see new tech, and meet with old friends (from equipment manufacturers, other systems integrators and some of our customers),

Just to give you a scale of the task, the Blue Dot above indicates the AEQ stand. We shall be meeting up with them to have a chat about the equipment we represent for them in the UK.

We will be meeting with Sonifex, Glensound, Audinate and we have meetings arranged with some Radio Visualisation providers, to see if we can find a solution that doesn't cost double the price of your entire audio build.

With our offices in East Yorkshire, we could get the overnight ferry, that would make a nce trip (if you like boats).

However, we shall be flying from Doncaster to Amsterdam on Saturday evening and squeezing the visit into just the Sunday, flying back late that night. Ready (bright eyed) for work on Monday!

Keep watching our social media feeds and this BLOG where we will let you know about anything we find that might be of interest to you!

Squeeeeze

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 08:48:01 GMT

Oh no!! Here we go with another post about maintenance!

Yes - sorry, I know we keep banging on about maintenance, and how you should schedule a time each month to do it, to keep everything in "tip, top" shape!

But hang on, isn't that just common sense?

When you buy a car, you don't just run it forever, without replacement tyres, an oil change, new wiper blades? Do you?????

So the title of the BLOG is wrong, Squeeeeze was used for comedy effect. Really the BLOG should be called "Shrink" (but I couldn't find a suitable picture for that!).

Myriad v4 and Myriad 5 Playout use Microsoft (TM) SQL as their database engine. [Nerdy note: The database engine, is where lots of important information is stored and accessed really quickly. When you look at the "Log", we are asking the SQL for lots of information, displaying it on screen, and then telling SQL when you move / delete / play / etc an item.

I was looking at a customers' system the other day, helping them with some issues, and as an aside note they mentioned that things were "running a bit slow". Now this could have many, many causes! The one I go to, before anything else is the size of the SQL Database.
When you are running day in, day out, there are massive amounts of information stored to the SQL database, and this can grow in size. If left then the SQL Engine has to do a lot of hard work reading information from this large file (keeping some in memory), but this will have an effect on the speed it can deliver the information (and receive it) from Myriad / Autotrack / Myriad News.

So, let's get maintaining (ing, ing, ing).

The first thing you can do (and you don't have to be that technical) is read one of the first message boxes you see when you launch Autotrack:

Every time you schedule the Log, we are adding information into the SQL database. The history, is plain and simply where this item / artist was scheduled to be played. So, when you run the reports to see why a particular song seems to be coming around quite often, it uses this history.

That station I was telling you about, had ignored this message every time they opened and used Autotrack. This meant that they had 4 years' worth of histories for each item!

FANTASTIC, yes you can see over that period how many times it was scheduled, work out its rotations, see how the database has developed, etc.

BUT, as soon as you open a song or link card, it has to read that 4 year period - and display it on the history tab. In that stations case, 208 of these weekly grids need to be read from the database, and then drawn onto the song card, just in case you look at the history.

So, if we go back and read the first message box again........

Do you want scheduling histories and logs up to and including {Insert date} removed?
If you say "YES", then the history grid will have less information to calculate the Play Count and Average Interval - these might be important to you, but do you really need 4 years' worth?
Note: You can have this done automatically by turning this prompt off in the Settings window.
So no more annoying message box, it'll just keep performing this for you.

As you can see, if you tick the box, you'll get the message! If you don't, you won't!
You can also decide how long to keep those histories for, so if you have a particular need to look further back for your statistical analysis, you can!

Ok, good.....we're finished.....right?

Well, no, sorry.

As well as the "Autotrack Histories", the SQL Database also looks after the "Log", the "User Security History", amongst other items.

You can "Shrink" the main SQL databases, that the Broadcast Radio products use. This is a safe process, but as mentioned before, you should perform a backup before you start this. You can also perform this while the station is on air! Something that you could never do with the old "Access Database" used by earlier generation products!

To do this you will need to download and install Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio (which you can do using the link in the 3rd party section on this page ). Once you have it installed, simply connect to the SQL instance and you can 'shrink' the database using the tools as pictured above.

TIP: You can also backup and restore your database from this tool!

If you are not comfortable with this aspect of your maintenance routine, please consult with your engineer, or Broadcast Radio directly.

Everyone feels good after a nice squeeze :-)

A "Pad" is not just for scribbling on!

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 10:10:33 GMT

"The Pad" in Myriad - a brief history.

The history of "The Pad" goes all the way back to the early days of Myriad v2 - where we needed a way to play a list of items automatically. But hang on wasn't "Q-NXT" designed for that?? Well yes, but in those days you needed a separate PC, connected via serial to run "Q-NXT". So if you just had MyriadLive, you needed "The Pad"!

As you can see from the above history; "The Pad" evolved over the years, from just a simple playlist player, to a fully featured production tool!

The core features of "The Pad" include:
Drag and drop audio from the Mediawall, Favourites, Library and Scheduled Log.
Alter the order of the items.
Delete Items.
Add a "Pause" to stop the playpack, until you started the next item in the player.
See the total length of the playlist.

We then added:
Save "Pad Runs" (v2.6 - click on the "Ring Binder").
Load saved "Pad Runs", also, add the save items together into one longer playlist.
Loop the playback, (great for emergency playlists you don't want to stop)
Only Play the "Hooks" of items.

Then you could:
Add the playlist to play from a single player.
"Mix Down" the audio onto a single cart.
Shuffle the items.
Send the items into a blank hour in "The Log".

The latest generation of "The Pad" (like other elements) can be added to your custom layout. Like the rest of the application, "The Ribbon" is now the home for selecting the options. You can still drag and drop onto "The Pad", and if it is not the top tab (with the orange outline), you can drag you audio over the tab to move it to the front.

You can now also export all of the items in the list to individual "Transport Files" - but that's another BLOG!
Also you can send the list to "Myriad AutoPlayer", another tool in the suite of software. Again we shall leave the explanation of that one to a future BLOG!

Building The StreamBox

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 13:02:38 GMT

From Side Project To Final Product

Like SmartSign before it, our new StreamBox started out life as a 'Friday afternoon' project to investigate a low cost and reliable way of encoding audio and sending it to web streaming hosts such as our Broadcast Player service.

There are of course many options available but the broadly fall into two categories:

Software Solutions
Hardware Devices

Using a software solutions is the most common method and there are many good options available including free products (such as BUTT encoder) and paid for solutions (like Sam Broadcaster). The main drawback is that you either have to dedicate a PC to do the job or you run your encoding on a PC that is used for other tasks (such as your Facebook/Email PC in a studio) which always carries the risk of someone accidentally shutting the software and taking you 'off air'.

Hardware devices provide a good alternative as they usually do not usually require any type of user interaction to do their job. The downside is that some hardware solutions can expensive.

The challenge was whether we could come up with a hardware device that would avoid the potential pitfalls of a software solution, but in a format and a cost point that would make it accessible to as many broadcasters as possible.

Having worked with the Raspberry Pi for SmartSign Lite, we were confident that this would provide the processing power needed to run a hardware encoder at a reasonable cost but that left some serious issues to overcome.

Sound Input: The built in sound device in a stock Raspberry Pi is not really up to the task. The Pi is primarily intended to be used with an HDMI screen which will often include speakers. When using HDMI, the sound is sent digitally to the screen and it is the screen that decodes the audio. The built in audio chip on the Pi is not great quality and whilst it does have a 'microphone input' it is only accessible using a combined 4 pole mini jack which is a very unusual connector in radio. You could use an external USB sound device but this introduces a potential point of failure (the USB cable connecting them) and would not be a simple solution. Instead we sourced specialist sound device 'hat' for the Pi which offers high quality audio input and outputs as well as physical volume controls for both (and on common phono connectors). Solving the audio issue unfortunately led directly to the second issue.

Enclosure: As you can see from the pictures above, the addition of the external sound device changes the size and shape of the Pi dramatically such that no 'off the shelf' Raspberry Pi enclosures would work. But we wanted to device that was simple to use and friendly to the end user. We also wanted to keep the price a s low as possible so fitting everything into a rack case and then extending all the connections out to external sockets was also not viable because of the martial and labour impact on the end cost. The answer was to custom design an enclosure that would incorporate all of necessary connections. Once the design was finalised, we decided that we would have them 3D printed to allow us to do smaller production runs and tweak the design if needed. To reduce 3D printing costs, enclosure was designed as a series of flat panels that fit together like a jigsaw to create the full case. Early models were printed in white and then sprayed purple but later versions had the colour added at time of print.

Software: Once all of the physical challenges were addressed, we were able get back to our comfort zone and turn our attention to the software needed to make it all work. The StreamBox run a Linux core with all the necessary streaming services set to automatically start which means once it is configured, you can simply plug it in and it will start encoding and sending the stream to your service provider. We wanted the system to be as easy to setup as possible so our team developed a simple user interface for configuring the StreamBox and checking status as required. If you plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse, you will see the StreamBox interface which allows you to alter the steam quality and format as well as add in your providers connection details.

So there you have it.

A simple 'Friday afternoon' project turned into a viable, cost effective solution. Full credit goes to John-Michael Sugden who has handled just about every element of this project.

The StreamBoox is available now, check our the StreamBox webpage for more details.

You can change if you want to!

Mon, 11 Jun 2018 10:49:19 GMT

Don't like it, try a different way.....

The K500, K1000 and K1500 - have for years been one of the most popular accessories for your Myriad software.

These we have always been referred to as "Programmable Keyboard". We've had quite a few different designs over the years, and sadly the design with the ‘qwerty’ keys have been harder and harder to come by recently.

There are two different ways you can communicate with Myriad:
1: Keyboard Mapping
2: Serial

1: Keyboard Mapping is where the button presses a standard keyboard key, such as "F1", "Spacebar", "Delete", etc.
These keyboards have always relied on Myriad being "In Focus". This is where you click inside an application and mouse and keyboard actions now influence that application. You can tell if you have "focus" as the application window changes. In Win10 this is quite subtle, with the "Full Screen, Minimise and Close" buttons greying out.
If you use this method and Myriad v4 has focus, "F1" will start any audio loaded in Player 1. If Google Chrome has focus, it will open another tab displaying the help information.

2: Serial Keyboards have an RS232 connection (via a COM Port) directly into Myriad and the two communicate by a series of commands. This method means that you don't suffer from the "focus" problems.
You will need to make sure that you have what is known as a "serial" port, most modern motherboards no longer contain this feature, however you can get USB to Serial convertors. Also check to make sure any KVM extenders you use are able to work with these connections.

The hardware is different between these two types of keyboard, and you may need specific cables.

Did you know that you can also re-programme and design your own version?

And here's how:

You'll need to make sure you know what type of keyboard you have (see above)!
Download an application from the keyboard manufacturer, to connect to the keyboard and change what the keys do.
Check out the documentation for the Broadcast Radio software, so you can design what you want.
Create your own button legends (this can be done in the application you have downloaded), cut them out and put them on the keycaps.

Contact Broadcast Radio to purchase additional keycaps, there are several different types available:

If you'd like something specific, pre-designed, tested and shipped with your system, contact us and we'll see what we can come up with for you!

Oh and look out for something exciting we hope you have for you soon........ :-)

Need a little more help?

Download our K500 Upgrade Guide here>

Let's Talk About Anti-Virus

Tue, 29 May 2018 16:58:56 GMT

Anti-Virus Is Essential - Here Is What You Need To Know!

Picking a solution

Myriad 5 Playout introduces a range of new and exciting features but some of them do require your system to be connected to the internet. So with mission critical technology connected to the web, how can you be sure your have the right protection in place to ensure you don't catch anything nasty?

We asked Broadcast Radio Technical Director, Peter Jarrett to offer some advice that everyone should follow (even if your system is not on the web as you can still get viruses in other ways). Here is what he had to say -

The first thing you will need is an established anti-virus solution from a recognised provider. We have tested some of the best known solutions such as Symantec Corporate Edition which work fine but if you are running Windows 10 then there is anti-virus built right into the operating system in the form of Virus & Threat Protection . In the majority of cases, the anti-virus built into Windows will be just fine. If you do want to use a third party solution, make sure it allows you to add Exclusions (e.g. don't scan files with specific extensions). Many of the 'free' versions from 3rd parties do not offer this feature so you may end up needing to upgrade your 'free' version to a more fully featured option.

For this blog we will assume you are sticking with the anti-virus built into Windows. It is what we use on all our development, office and supplied PC's by default.

Setting it up

When running anti-virus, it's very important that you set it up well so it doesn't interfere with the regular operation of Myriad Playout / Myriad News / AutoTrack or Myriad Logging. We recommend the following:

Run AV on all machines including servers .
Disable any Scheduled Scans on any OnAir computers - otherwise when it comes to do its periodic scan it could cause audio to stutter. Instead, manually run a full scan as part of your regular maintenance procedure when you can take the computer out of service
Exclude all folders that contain Myriad/AutoTrack etc. files - this will reduce the load on the computer as Myriad opens hundreds of files per hour as they checks the Audiowall, play audio, works down the log/edit scripts etc.
Exclude certain file extensions - inf, lst, ls3, cm3, wav, wma, mp3, mp2, ogg, mdb, OAC, ppk, log . Some AV packages don't allow exclusions (for instance some editions of AVG Free) and these MUST NOT BE USED.

To add these exclusions, click on the Start button on type in Virus & Threat Protection to open the control console.

Now you need to click on the Virus & Threat Protection Settings option to access the settings the follow these steps:

Make sure Realtime Protection is On .
Scroll down to the Exclusions section and click on Add or Remove Exclusions.
Click on Add An Exclusion and select File Type from the menu that appears.
Type in the extension you want to exclude (from the list above) then click on Add.
You will be asked to confirm by Windows, just click Yes
Repeat until all the extensions listed above have bee added to the exclusion list.
You will need to do this on all your Myriad PC's

Once you have have added all the exclusions and confirmed that realtime protection is on then you should be covered.

The process should be similar in other anti-virus software but you will need to check the documentation for the exact steps involved.

Your computers now should be protected and still be happy running Myriad Playout.

New Tech - The AEQ Capitol IP

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Tue, 29 May 2018 15:48:04 GMT

We take a look at AEQ's small format digital mixer

As the AEQ reseller in the UK we have access to the full range of AEQ's broadcast technology but probably one of the most exciting aspects is their range of digital radio mixing desk including the Capitol IP and it's bigger brother the Forum IP.

In this post we take a quick look at the baby of the range, the Capitol IP.

The Console

The Capitol IP if a fixed format, eight fader channel mixer but like most digital consoles, the sources assigned to each fader can be easily changed either manually or by switching to an alternative 'snap shot' to suit your requirements.

In a traditional analogue mixer, you usually needed more faders because each fader could only have a couple of things plugged into it. This meant that in general, you needed to have one fader for every two sources plugged into the mixer regardless of how often you used the sources or how many you would realistically use at the same time.

Digital consoles such as the Capitol IP (and the Axia range) work differently because all of the sources are plugged into a central 'engine' and sources can then be assigned to faders as required.

This means that the question of how many faders you need on your console becomes

"How many sources do I need to use simultaneously?"

Couple this with the reduction of sources in general in a modern studio (when was the last time you used a Mini disc or even CD player) and all of a sudden, a small format mixer that would have been unimaginable in a studio 10 years ago is a possibility today!

The Capitol IP is fixed at 8 faders so is still going to be too few for some situations (the Forum IP remedies this restriction) but for many modern studios, a compact 8 channel console is actually a very good solution after all, when was the last time you had eight faders up at the same time?

A lot of bang for your buck!

One of the reasons we are excited about the Capitol IP is that it offers a lot of advanced features that are normally only found on more expensive solutions, at a cost effective price (for a digital desk at least).

Just take a quick look at the features list and you will see that there is a lot to like with the console:

8 x Assignable Fader Channels
2 x Assignable Output Busses (for PGM and Record)
20 x Programmable User Buttons (which we can use for switching snap-shots, triggering events in Myriad 5 Playout etc)
Configurable Audio Processing - Apply processing or gating to microphone channels
User Security System - You can setup users and only allow access to console features you think they need
Studio / Control Room Speaker & Headphone - Obviously, but unlike some solutions, these do not use up valuable analogue outputs
Talkback - You can talkback to TBU's, codecs or other consoles
DANTE Enabled - The IP part of the Capitol IP (this is optional, if you don't need it you don't have to pay for it!)
Myriad 5 Interaction - Myriad 5 Playout can talk to the Capitol IP natively over IP
Separate Capitol Engine - DSP based 'engine' with a wide range of audio and logic inputs and outputs.

The Capitol IP Engine

The 'brain' of the Capitol IP is it's 'engine' or 'Capitol IP Digital Mixer Core Unit' as it is officially known!

This 2u until comes fully equipped with a wide range of analogue and digital inputs and outputs which will cover the vast majority of studio applications. AEQ have thought carefully to anticipate the requirements of most radio studios that are likely to consider the Capitol IP and the result is an I/O loadout that we think is perfect for most small radio studios. Full details can be found here but in brief, the engine includes:

4 x Mic Inputs
2 x USB (soundcard) Input / Outputs - sadly not enough for most Myriad applications
6 x Stereo Analogue Inputs
4 x AES/EBU Inputs/Outputs
4 x Stereo Analogue Outputs
Studio & Control Room Speaker & Headphone Outputs
8 x GPIO + 4 x Relays

Looking at the above list, this is ample for most small or medium studios but the Capitol IP can also be expanded with some additional modules. These include:

8 x Stereo DANTE Input / Output Module
MADI Digital Channel Module (cannot be fitted alongside the DANTE module)
Dual Digital TBU Module
Redundant PSU

All of these additional modules can be specified when ordering a Capitol IP or fitted at a later date meaning that you can expand the Capitol IP to meet your needs, but that is just the tip of the iceberg!

The DANTE Difference

So far the AEQ Capitol IP looks like a good solution for most small studios and it is competitively prices against similar solution from Axia or Studio but...

The 'ace' in the Capitol IP's hand is the optional DANTE module. If you are not familiar with DANTE then you can read all about it on the Audinate website, we will also be looking at DANTE in a future post but sufficed to say that making the Capitol IP compatible with DANTE makes it extremely expandable.

Firstly, the DANTE Virtual Soundcard drivers are very competitively priced, a 64 channel driver costs just $30 meaning that your Myriad Playout system can connect to the Capitol IP via Dante at a fraction of the cost of a multi-channel soundcard.

DANTE is also supported by more than 1000 products from over 150 manufacturers, all of which can interconnect freely over your standard network.

Lets say that you have a small analogue studio that you want to connect to your Capitol IP. All you need is a network connection and a £225+vat box from Monacor and you are ready to go.

Multiple studios can also be connected over DANTE and a number of manufacturers make I/O solutions to allow you to add sources to your DANTE network or output DANTE channels as analogue or digital audio. The key thing is that the entire ecosystem is east to setup and administer making it ideal for many modern radio stations.

The Verdict

Having worked with a lot of digital consoles over the past few years, we think the Capitol IP is a great solution for any small radio studio or production facility. The inclusion of DANTE technology coupled with native Myriad 5 support make it a great choice with lots of scope for connectivity.

The fixed format means it is not ideal for everyone and if you require more than eight faders then the Capitol IP is not for you (but take a look at the Forum IP - it's big brother).

Of course, not everyone needs digital technology and even the Capitol IP is still expensive compared to an equivalent analogue mixer (such as the SRM ) but if you are in the market for a cost effective digital console that will not lock you into one manufacturers eco-system then the Capitol IP is well worth a look.

Would you like to see the Capitol IP in action?

We have a Capitol IP studio setup at our Yorkshire HQ which you are welcome to come and have a play with. Alternatively, we can arrange an onsite demo next time we are in your area. Just let our team know and they will be happy to help.

Welcome to the Broadcast Radio Blog

liamb@broadcastradio.com (Liam Burke) — Tue, 29 May 2018 14:21:53 GMT

Your insight into what's going on inside Broadcast Radio

Welcome to the Broadcast Radio blog.

We often get asked questions about where Broadcast Radio came from, who is in the team and what we have planned for the future. We also have some support related questions that regularly crop up so we thought that we would address both with a new Blog section on our website with contributions from across the entire Broadcast Radio team.

Over the coming weeks and months we will add posts from from all departments and on a wide variety of topics including:

Myriad 5 Playout - Tips, tricks and latest the news about our flagship playout system
Latest Hardware - Both Broadcast Radio hardware and other exciting technology from around the industry
Support Gems - Some common questions answered or interesting challenges we have encountered
Software Development News - Hear about the latest projects from our development team
Guest Blogs - We will also invite valued customers to contribute their experiences

We will also replicate some important articles from our Forum to provide quick and simple access directly from our website.

So remember to check back regularly or subscribe to our RSS feed.

If you have any ideas you would like us to cover in a future Blog post then just let us know .