Over the past two weeks, we’ve been developing and testing a new broadcast server configuration, and we’re currently in the process of transitioning the station to use the new system. For more details, read on!
The new system has been put together as a replacement for the current Azuracast-based system which has been running in a degraded state for more than a month. We first wrote about issues with dropped listeners, unexplained song skipping during playback, and other oddities back in mid-February. We encourage folks to read that article for more details, but to sum it up, we suspect an unclean update to Azuracast caused the issues we saw. Azuracast itself is fine software for folks who are looking for a radio automation and library management solution, but for our part, we started looking for ways to customize it to do what we wanted since day one. It was time for a change.
The new (as of yet unnamed) system uses many of the core systems we used before trying Azuracast (some of which are also internally used by Azuracast), and some relatively recent developments and updates have made more things possible. In particular, Moonbase59’s work on Autocue for Liquidsoap adds vastly improved transitions, making them sound more similar to what we used to have with our previous scheduler.
The other missing piece is more advanced query-controlled playlisting which we refined in-house and is now functional. This will allow us to build a system which both optimizes the station for variety while also considering song ratings from current listeners to combine listening preferences with enhanced discoverability, all on a purely Linux-based system.
We’ve still got some legwork to do and a few additional enhancements planned for the near future, so stay tuned and thanks for listening!
[Knowledge #198]