You will need to have the "Real Player" plug-in, Music Match Jukebox or Win Amp to listen. You are given the chance
to rate my station. We currently hold a 5 star rating! WinAmp will only show the song playing but gives you the equalizer
(I recommend this player). If you are asked to "save to disk" or "Open from current location", choose the later! You want
to open it. WinAmp and Real Player are both free downloads and you should have them anyway!
Karl's Space Dock Radio (referred to from now on as KSDR) is a web page (www.live365.com)
that allows you to upload MP3 music files. Once uploaded, the site automatically plays them
for you 24 hours a day 7 days per week. You have the option of selecting a target bit rate for
the files. People on slower 33.6 modems would have a problem listening to MP3's coded at say 56mhz
because the file requires a faster stream then the modem supports at it's fastest speed. This
would end up causing the song to skip or constantly re-buffer. I originally setup KSDR to work
with 56k modems or higher. My MP3's were coded at 32mhz so most anyone with a descent 56k connection
would not have a problem streaming the music. However, the lower the coding, the worse the quality
of the audio. After several tests at differant coded rates, I determined that 32mhz wasn't to bad
and sounded descent enough to listen to. CD quality for MP3's is 128mhz (in case you were wondering).
After listening to my own songs from the original .WAV files, and comparing them to the coded MP3's
at 32mhz online, they just didn't cut it. Music highs just didn't sound right and parts of music with
a lot of bass sounded distorted. Because of this, as of 4/23/2000, I have deleted and re-encoded all
128 of my MP3's to 56mhz. This means you must have at least a modem capable of sustaining at least that
bit rate to listen. Since most 56k modems don't achieve this (they usually average around 42k if your
lucky), you will need to have either a Cable modem, DSL, T1 or ISDN line to listen. I realize this
limits the amount of people that can listen, but it was the only thing I could do to get acceptable
audio quality.
...KSDR Dance is currently playing club dance/freestyle and disco with a little new wave
thrown in from around late 70's to mid 90's. I have about 4 crates of extended singles from when I
used to DJ and I am currently in the process of converting them over to CD before the vinyl degrades
any more then it already has. Most all of my singles are in really good shape with a minimal of scratches
or wear. Thanks to the software I am using to record them, I am able to digitally reduce some of the
hiss and scratches that do exist in the records. The process takes quite a bit of time. Here are the
basic steps I must go through to go from the vinyl to the MP3 you hear online.
1) Sample parts of the record from the turntable to see if scratch and hiss filters are required and how
much filtering to use.
2) Record the record from the turntable to the computer as a .WAV file. These files are approximately 10
meg per minute of music. A song approximately 6 minutes would be around 63 meg.
3) Convert the .WAV file from .WAV format to .MP3 format at the correct bit rate (which is 56mhz for our use).
To convert a 6 minute song takes about 2 minutes. MP3 file size is about 3.8 meg at 56k.
The average extended single is approximately 6 - 8 minutes. Some are 8 - 10 minutes!
4) Sample the completed MP3 to make sure enough or not to much scratch filtering was used and to check
quality of the MP3.
5) Upload the MP3 (send the file to the live365 site).
6) Add the newly uploaded file or files to a playlist or create a new playlist so Live365 knows what to
play and in what order.
Once this is all done. You get to hear it... This may not seem like a lot of work, but it is very time
consuming. I try to do about 30 songs every two weeks until I finish all the singles. I can store up to
365meg worth of MP3's to live365's site. So once I reach that limit, I will need to delete and upload
songs if I want to add new songs later.
I hope this file explains a little bit about how the process works and why I changed to a higher bit rate
for my music. Club music is very demanding on a system since it has everything from very high highs to very
low lows (tons of bass). To do this music justice and to make it worth listening to I had no choice but to
move up to the higher 56mhz files.
Update!!!
I added Karl's Space Dock Rock Radio to the radio lineup! This station is coded as mentioned above and is all rock. Soft, heavy whatever... Check it out!