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PostPosted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 9:34 pm 
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RT+ is currently not supported! Are you sure you need the + part? Because you're the first person ever to ask for this.

Maybe it's easier to just try to set up Stereo Tool by itself first. So no other processing, just feed the sound through ST and make that work. If you have a good quality 192 kHz capable sound card (I don't know if SoundMax is good enough, Realtek usually is but so far I haven't heard from anyone using it with a SoundMax), you should normally have it running within minutes.

How:
- Install Stereo Tool
- If your sound card supports ASIO (of if you use the ASIO4ALL driver), set the sample rate in Stereo Tool to either 176.4 or 192 kHz, enable the FM features that you need, setup the input and output sound cards and select a preset.
- This should be enough to get you on air, the modulation level might still be completely wrong (you have to calibrate it).
- If you're not using ASIO, you also need to set the sample rate in Windows, and it must be equal to the one that you use in Stereo Tool (so either 176.4 or 192 kHz).


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 10:03 pm 

Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:12 am
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Yea my external RDS generator doesn't do RDS+ and there are plenty of cars in our market that are equipped.
I've actually got ST running at my FM tower. It's even interfaced with the transmitter on the SCA input but I think I just can't do RDS SCA on the onboard sound card.

The MPX output is also weak. So i think theres an issue with the card. I'll have to see if the laptop we're using has a Realtek card in it. I know it claims to be an HD chip.

Essentially I'd like to populate the artist and album fields in RDS for the newer cars. If i can do that without RT+ that would rock. Not sure if it can be done on my mrds1322 device or not either.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:01 am 
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You need RT+ to tell the car that a specific piece of text is the album name or title. You don't need RT+ to display the album name and title.

Actually it shouldn't be too difficult to add (I would have to add some indicator to mark the start and end of an RT+ item), but as I said, so far no-one has asked for it. And I haven't seen any car radios yet that support it. (My current car doesn't even display the RT text at all because the display is also used for the navigation system and all kinds of car controls, and unfortunately they have only reserved a very small space in the display for the FM stuff).

How would you send the information to Stereo Tool? Do you have something that writes the title, album name and artist to separate files? Because otherwise I don't really know how to make something that automatically indicates what is what.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 2:05 am 
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Edit: I see this could be a way to do it:
http://www.pira.cz/rds/show.asp?art=guide_text_11

Too bad that \R, \T and \+ are already used :(


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 4:44 pm 

Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:12 am
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Yes I have a metadata file that simian outputs. The beauty of this is I can make the template spit out anything. I can build the template to do whatever is needed and pass that info along to RT. My deck has RT+ in the subaru, and im sure it could be up and coming.

I'm also wondering if there could ever be a possible HD Radio mode, where Stereo Tool could generate an HD Radio signal.
That would be worth quite a bit to most every broadcaster out there.

For now yes. The pira unit I have is a MRDS1322, and it cannot do RT+ I do not think.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 4:45 pm 

Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:12 am
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BTW I'm always up for beta testing new features. Our AM could serve as a beta platform since the real bread and butter on our combo is the FM.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 10:16 pm 
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Quote:
I'm also wondering if there could ever be a possible HD Radio mode, where Stereo Tool could generate an HD Radio signal.
That would be worth quite a bit to most every broadcaster out there.
You mean IBOC? Not possible without a special transmitter. Generating it before exciting would require an infinite sample rate. (Of course the signal does not have to be THAT perfect, but 192 kHz is by far not enough).

If you mean just the processing -> it should be possible to use the normal output for that?


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 11:44 pm 

Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:12 am
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Quote:
You mean IBOC? Not possible without a special transmitter. Generating it before exciting would require an infinite sample rate. (Of course the signal does not have to be THAT perfect, but 192 kHz is by far not enough).
Actually the FMExtra guys were able to use the upper portion of the broadcast band for digital and HD radio's are able to pick up the signal. Granted its not full HD radio, but even a digital signal at a lower rate would be something awesome for this market.

In my current market, I'm the only guy with RDS and nobody has digital yet.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2015 1:19 am 
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Hm, it would be a completely different encoding - do HD receivers decode that??? Are you sure that it's not a different type of digital signal?


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PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:54 pm 

Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2014 4:12 am
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My understanding is HD receivers decode whatever codec they're presented with so long as the codec is installed on the device.
In FMExtra, it maintains compatibility in that the HD Radio searches the frequency spectrum above the stereo and RDS for a digital signal. When it finds it (encoded in AAC HE2 for example, it loads the specific codec and decodes it). The digital signal transmission is similar to the digital encoded signal from a file on the computer, the only difference being its being played across the analog base signal to the receiver. I think it could work but I don't know enough about how to program the sound card to send the digital signal.


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