I am thinking about converting my Podcast into a live radio show. What companies would you recommend to host our stream (whether it be Icecast or Shoutcast). Any suggestions would be great. Thanks!
We use Shoutcast mainly because that's what works best with the station with which we broadcast. It's simple and does what its supposed to. We don't handle any of the server stuff though, so I can't speak to how user friendly setting that up will be. We're just a content provider. So we use Shoutcast in conjunction with a special webpage we have to log into ahead of time.
From what I've read it's a fairly simple process to set up a Shoutcast station and FREE.
The Internet radio station we air on (ErrorFM) handles all of that. I'm not sure what they're using outside of Shoutcast for streaming services. We use the plug-in for Winamp to send our signal to them.
We've just started our show (www.perfbytes.com) on blogtalkradio.com. It's going pretty well - we have about 3000+ listens in just 3 weeks. I must admit - BTR has been a very easiest way to get started and get going with a show. Sure, I can see the concerns with audio quality if you are just on the phone line - but we've been using Skype with our Zoom H2N microphones directly connected and the quality is quite good. I also have a home studio with M-Audio interface and a Shure SM-57 (entry-level dynamic mic).
Another tip I just would give anyone is that it takes almost an entire extra set of hands to moderate live callers on the show - having a "silent producer" or "assistant" who can screen calls in the background and IM you real-time updates, it really helps. Also, it definitely takes some time to get used to live mixing/levels for a live show - you might even have a 3rd person who is mixing levels, so that background music or pre-recorded content is normalized and leveled. Having to stop your talking and broadcast just to change the levels is annoying/hard/amateur.
Even another tip about Skype streams on live programs...have a second machine with Skype and Microphone already running just in case you have to switch. With BTR you can have both sources dialed-in/Skype'd into the show with your 'emergency rig' in muted mode. If you have issues with your primary setup, you just seemlessly flip over to the other machine and keep going. If you're really paranoid, just have a 3rd source (your phone/landline) also dialed into the studio and on-mute. If Murphy's law holds true, you could use both the computers and still be able to continue the show on your phone while you reboot/restart a machine.
I also have accounts on Spreaker and Soundcloud - to share recordings and prepared content or excerpts.
...I just learned one more tip from another friend:
If you have multiple hosts or guests calling in from remote locations...each person talking on the show should capture a local copy of high-quality audio to a file. This can be done with a portable recorder that has both a line-out (into the computer and Skype) and also the onboard SD Card recording. Alternatively, you could use a virtual audio channel routing software (like Virtual Audio Cable) to capture the same audio signal simultaneously out to Skype's Microphone channel and Audacity's input channel (or other local recording software).
After the show - even if Skype was getting all weird or the quality was bad - you take the high-quality audio files and combine all the audio together (Host A.wav, Host B.wav and "live callers" from the show feed) and combine them all together into a sequencer to mixdown to a high-quality version of the show.
In our case, we would just posthumously replace the live show audio with higher-quality edited version of the show at a later date.
It might be a little extra work...but could be well worth it.
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