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We need some files to begin with. You can use either MP3 or WAV files.
At its most basic Robot automation consists of songs, Station ID's and advertisements. Robot defines these in the following terms:
"AD" A sound file that is an advertisement for one of your clients.
"ID" A sound file that is a station Break or Announcement that quotes your station name, frequency, what the station is for or about etc.
"SONG" A sound file that is a musical number.
PREPARATION
Getting the audio onto your computer
You need the following organized first:
- At this stage you have the computer in front of you switched on. The Robot software should not be running. The computer must have a CDROM drive.
- You will need either a microphone that plugs into your computers MIC input on your computers sound card (not highly recommended as the sound quality is usually terrible) or an audio mixer with a microphone that is patched into the LINE input on your computers sound card. Most small audio mixers have a "line-out" on the back. You need a cable that plugs into one of these (most often RCA or "donut" connectors) and then into your sound card (most often a "mini-jack"). Such cables and mixers can be obtained from Dick Smith and Tandy electronics.
- "Ripping" is the preferred method of storing song sound files on your com
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puter as it is quick, easy and there is less sound quality loss in the recording process. "Ripping" CD's is perfectly legal providing you have the usual permissions to use the music for your station. If you are going to Rip audio you need to install an audio ripping program. We highly recommend CDEX which is freely downloadable over the internet http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/downloads.php
- A waveform editor. In order to record audio other than songs onto your computer you will need a program that stores the audio from the soundcard. If you are going to use MP3's it is important that the program you choose can save recorded files as MP3's. You have a wide choice of paid and free waveform editors over the Internet. The best completely free one is currently Audacity which can be downloaded from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
- The person or "voicer" who is going to be your main announcer for Robot.
Purchasers of Robot will find the tools mentioned above for download in the "Freeware" folder on the Robot install CD.
Step 1: First you must choose which audio format you want to use WAV or MP3
Audio files on a computer are commonly stored as either wave files (.WAV) or MP3's (.MP3). When Robot was first developed MP3 licensing was so expensive that most smaller stations used WAV files, now in these enlightened times MP3's can also be used.
WAV files are large, each second can take up to 10 megabytes to store, so a three minute song can take up 30 or 40 megabytes on your
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computers hard drive. WAV files are of a better sound quality however.
MP3 files compress the sound file more closely and are much smaller whilst providing almost the sound quality of WAV files. These days most smaller Radio stations use MP3's as they can fit more songs on their computer hard drive
The choice is yours entirely and it is always better to start off the way you intend to go in the long term. If you have a lot of hard drive space you might like to use WAV files, otherwise choose MP3's.
If you are going to use MP3's you must decide a standard and stick to it Robot is designed for professional radio. It is designed to use a standard of audio across its airtime. MP3's can be encoded at various different rates depending upon your requirements. If you decide to use near CD quality 128k MP3's (our recommendation) you must stick to this standard. If you later import MP3's that are for example 192k they will play incorrectly. If you wish to use 192k or 320k MP3's as your standard then substitute this value for "128" in the following steps.
Step 2: SONGS
Download and install CDEX (these instructions are for it).
Insert an audio CD from which you want to "rip" songs in your CDROM drive.
If windows attempts to play, or automatically plays the CD click cancel or close the CD player.
Run the CDEX program.
First Time Setup
On the top file menu select Options > Settings.
Select the "encoder" tab at the top if it does not open first.
Using the drop down menu change the "Bit rate Min" field to "128".
Select the "General" Tab from the
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