Getting music ready for airplay

2004-06-29T12:23:10Z

One of the things I have to do is get music ready for airplay, which is something I did tonight. This is what I do:

I rip the CD to .wav format (or if I bought the MP3 on eMusic I transcode it to .wav). Then I trim the lead-in and lead-out silence manually. If the music slams to a grinding halt, I add a fade-out otherwise it will slam right into the next song.

Next, I transcode the .wav to the format of my station - 64kbps MP3Pro. The editing is done in .wav format because 1) editors decode to .wav anyhow before editing, 2) I have a reference copy that I can transcode to any future format without losing quality of audio.

Once it's transcoded, I compress the .wav using Monkey's Audio (lossless compression) and archive it in case I ever need it in a different format.

Then I normalize the volume using MP3Gain. I normalize to 91db to reduce (or hopefully eliminate) clipping. The adverts Live365 put on my station are 93db, but I'd rather have non-clipped high quality audio than volume - that's what the volume knob on your speakers are for.

I double-check the tags to make sure they are right so I have ASCAP/BMI reporting compliance, and then it's ready to be played.

Yes, it's a royal pain. I have over 1500 tracks and counting, and I've done this by hand to all of them. It's worth it, though, because the station sounds really tight with no dead air between songs and the volume isn't jumping all over.

MP3Gain is a great program -- and it's free!! I recommend it for everyone so all your MP3s play at the same relative level - no more jumping to adjust the volume. You can get it on sourceforge here

I'll talk about how I select music next time.

My first entry - about this journal

2004-06-28T08:14:59Z

I thought it would be kind of fun to record what's going on with my new (six month old) hobby.

I am a huge fan of horror books, movies, etc., and also of heavy metal (as well as other kinds of music). One day I was surfing, and I came across Live365 which is an internet radio site. They have thousands of stations, and anyone can start their own just by paying a streaming fee.

I started thinking it would be cool to do a radio station with a horror theme. There are a few other people doing stations with a horror theme, so I e-mailed one of them: Spooky who does Cobwebs In The Closet. She was really cool. Her station is more goth / industrial, but she thought a heavy metal horror station would be pretty interesting.

So, I did it!

I've been doing it for about six months now. Sometimes I get really frustrated at the details or a dry spell with few listeners. Other times, things come together and it all works out really well.

I'm really tired and have work tomorrow, so I'll post some of the details of what it's like to do this kind of thing and where I want my hobby to go later. I have plenty of hare-brained ideas. It will be interesting to look back on this journal and see how many of them actually work out.

Sleeping In R'lyeh

Getting music ready for airplay

My first entry - about this journal