[CIMC-work] Live radio

[Ian Bicking]

I asked a few questions on the #radio channel on irc.indymedia.org 
(always a source for quick answers).  Kev answered some of my 
questions:

We need:
* Audio inputs (mics)
* A mixing board.  We have to mix all the inputs into one audio feed 
before we get to the computer.  Well, we could do it at the computer 
level, but that's complicated.  A crappy mixing board would be easier.  
This ain't gonna be hi-fi.
* Maybe a limiter, because volume can be hard to control at this point. 
  (Apparently it's worse for low-bitrate audio, and volume problems can 
really mess things up)
* A computer with a mic input.  Which is any of the computers.
* Software to encode and upload the audio.  The software exists for 
several platforms.  Windows might be the easiest to get set up, but I 
really don't know.  We'll probably be uploading to an icecast2 server, 
so we're looking for software that works with that.  
http://darkice.sf.net is an example (though it's unclear to me if it 
supports anything but Linux)
* A server to upload to.  There's several servers, though berkman is 
the only one I specifically know about.  Berkman has been a recent 
topic of discussion among sysadmins (I think because it hasn't been 
actively administered for a while), though I think that situation may 
have been improved.  It was suggested that we email 
imc-audio at lists.indymedia.org, describing the project, and asking if 
there's someone who can host our stream.

I can write the email, but I'm not going to be very involved in the 
project, so maybe someone else would like to send the mail, or give a 
description of some sort to include in an email.

   Ian