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PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:51 pm 
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Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2008 1:40 am
Posts: 11185
Is switching to another playout system an option? I might know one that I think can handle this (I know if can have remote playouts that will automatically stay synchronized so they can keep playing for a while if the connection drops out, I would expect that they can also synchronize in time - I can ask the person who makes it if you want).

http://www.audisi.nl/en/gml/


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PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 10:56 pm 

Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:24 am
Posts: 83
Thanks for that.

I thought that ST FM Sync may have the ability to buffer audio and look for markers to line up that content when playing.

Now that would be a great feature :)

I have some ideas about timed events in the playout system so maybe I can create some markers early in the morning which align all the playouts so they stay closer in sync during the day.

Thanks for your help.


BeDazzler.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 5:58 pm 

Joined: Wed Aug 31, 2011 1:25 am
Posts: 100
As far as I know, there's no way you can accomplish what you're doing, as long as you have separate playout systems running with no sort of reference. The closest you could get would be to use exactly the same play list, as you say you're doing, use identical hardware and software at each location (computer, sound card, playout software), synch the computers' clocks with an npt source, then (at minimum) fire off each hour's programming, based on real time, just after the computer clocks are synchronized. Even that might not make things exact, but it should be within a second or 4.... surely not the minutes you now experience.

Otherwise, you need ONE playout system and a time-stable link between your transmitters.

Once you have some sort of stable and predictable time function between your content and the transmitters, you should be able to trim the Stereo Tool buffers to sync things up reasonably close.

None of this would likely work well with synchronized, on-channel transmitters, as you'd need more "stuff" to get the sync as close as you'd need. If you're just worried about delay between frequencies, some of this should help.


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PostPosted: Mon Mar 28, 2016 9:44 pm 

Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:24 am
Posts: 83
Hi RodeoJack,

Thanks for the reply.

All the playout systems and hardware are pretty much the same, running the same dynamic playlists, so what we ended up doing is creating a sync marker for audio at 4am daily.

This is where all playout systems will line up an ad break, weather, etc starting at 4am so within that hour a certain event plays at an exact time on all nodes, which brings them all in sync with each other before 5am.

Then when you are travelling throughout the region during the day and listen across all our frequencies, they are all pretty much the same give or take a few seconds.

BeDazzler.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 12:25 am 
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But is "give or take a few seconds" acceptable if you have RDS AF switching? With the synchronization method in Stereo Tool I don't hear anything anymore, but that means that synchronization has to be exact within at most a few milliseconds.


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PostPosted: Tue Mar 29, 2016 12:41 am 

Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:24 am
Posts: 83
Hi Hvz,

Yes it's not too bad... RDS based switching is not very seemless because the mountains are huge.

When you move between some areas there can be a loss of 6-10dB even after switching to the closest repeater which is a challenge.

It's usually only out by 1 or 2 seconds which is tolerable.

We've tried throwing more watts at it with trials but even at 50% more power the outcome is about the same.

From North to South the region is approx. 200klms which we could do with 2 FM transmission sites, however mountains are everywhere, surrounding pretty much every town.

At this stage I have not come across any other viable solution.

BeDazzler.


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 11:59 am 

Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2016 11:22 am
Posts: 7
200km is way to much! If you are talking about a radius of 200km..... that is huge!!!!
You would need at least 4-6 points in the mountain to cover an area like that.
Chears!


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 25, 2016 4:40 am 

Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:24 am
Posts: 83
Not at all.

The radius is 200klms... transmit locations are inside the radius.

You can easily cover that space using multiple elevated transmit sites. We also use the same locations as STL TX/RX sites.

For towns right behind rocks/mountains, we use low powered repeaters, everything else is high powered.


BeDazzler.


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