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WHat do you expect in SAM5?


James

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In all actuality, there has never been an official release date for SAM5, so you can't really say it was "supposed to be out already."

 

If you want to base this off of rumors... even with Vista going away, there will STILL be VISTA users using SAM, so Vista support WILL be needed. Rumor has it that SAM 5 is a complete new rewrite, so THAT takes time.

 

The official FEATURE REQUEST forum for this is here: http://support.spacialaudio.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=24

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Something that works properly!!!!

 

I have never been happy with SAM, tends to have a strange approach to the outside world that software!

I think it boils down to either a rush job, or a lack of understanding what the end user wants.

Coupled with Station Playlist Creator- no probz.... on its own- a big thumbs down I am afraid

If I have helped you with a Freebie- please be kind enough to add a link from your own site or blog to mine- thanks! http://arthurburton.net

 

Thank You!

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Something that works properly!!!!

 

I have never been happy with SAM, tends to have a strange approach to the outside world that software!

I think it boils down to either a rush job, or a lack of understanding what the end user wants.

Coupled with Station Playlist Creator- no probz.... on its own- a big thumbs down I am afraid

 

100% agreed. I don't want to be afraid to touch anything like I am now where I try not to touch it because any minor change could screw the database up and make me need to do a reinstall.

 

It also completely sucks up resources. I talked to a friend who uses Station Playlist and he is running it on a 5 year old P4 that is barley 1.1ghz and has like 256mb of ram. He said it works fine with no problems whatsoever. Out of curiosity, I tried that with an old P4 I had except with Sam, and Sam would barely even run. It froze up every time I clicked something and on song crossfades the song would skip and stutter.

 

Don't get me wrong though, Sam is a great program. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be using it. Main feature that keeps me on it though is the flexibility of the now playing output. More advanced than any other automation software out there (excluding the $50,000 pro ones ;))

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I find the crossfading EXCELLENT! Having said that, it isn't as good as Raduga with the batch processing tool. Adding new tracks to the playlist is a pain- you have to remove everything then add everything, or you get stupid duplications.

 

The weighting system,well that is truly a farce.... same songs in the same order get repeated eventually. Then it goes crazy.... repeating the same song within an hour!!! You cure this by resetting the weighting, then it behaves for some days, then freaks out again!

If somebody can produce something with the capabilites of station playlist creator built in- ie: you can do proper clockwheel formats and not the tedious PAL script version in sam then it would be great. Besides, the event scheduler in sam is far too limited for a real station.

Another failing is its inability to auto start a dsp processor after a power down...

 

SAM may be ok for people who want to spend half their life trying to get things to work properly, like many, many hours a day- me, I just want to spruce up the station sound within 20 mins or so a day.

 

Its single biggest failing is reliability, you simply can't trust it!

If I have helped you with a Freebie- please be kind enough to add a link from your own site or blog to mine- thanks! http://arthurburton.net

 

Thank You!

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sam rules, when you use proper written pal scripts, and do not mess up your clockwork...

AKA you KNOW what you are doing with it (RTFM)

sam 4 is playing very smooth over here on my 3.2GIG dualcore with win XP, only 8% processor usage with an 2500+playlist, several palscripts running and requests up and running and it ftp's after every track some data to my site, next track, top 10 etc etc...

what's the problem?

what to have in sam5: for all i care.. more stuff is more ways to go wrong.. maybe a better looking skin?

sam is how you like it to be, with PROPER pal scripts...

sam5 probably will have some of those baked in, that's fine..

 

it has been running 6 weeks in a row here now, without any problems.. 24/7

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Hi Arthur,

 

Looks that you have bad experiences with SAM

My experience is that a lot depends on the way the general settings are made.

Into the config > clockwheel a user can choose to set up the way the station formats has to run

however during a visit to some websites it looks to Me that most of the broadcasters are just loading their tracks into the music all section without making any changes of their meta data

I give every track an album type - for example 70 or 80 or pop etc etc

This way each genre is played by the clockwheel (loaded by category [70] + control less or most or weight played etc etc).

The adjustements who can be made into the config > rotation are also most important .. a simple reason is for example the album settings .. when these don't fix with the clockwheel ... the format is lost

 

An easy way to not upload twice the same song are those album meta tags. I created into music all different directories similar to the album types .. so when I load a "pop" song it goes into the "pop" directory

Anyway into SAM there is also a "search" tool .. by using this its very easy to see at once if any mistakes has been made. To delete 1 track you don't have to "delete from all" into your music all section ... the fasted way to do this is by using the "search" tool .. simply click on the track who has to be deleted "from all" or "from harddrive" .. by refreshing the music all section and by generating the content to your website .. its fixed in a very fast way

 

The past years I have visited lots of websites who offering streaming software ... ok I agree some are maybe better in the using of it or they are using lesser CPU or they have a better skin ..

however not that much streaming software is offering an "all in 1 package" as SAM does

Several other types of software has to be connected from the basic broadcast software to a playlist add in, to a request add in, to an encoder add in etc etc

I'm pretty sure that SAM has all of these into 1 package

 

I'm always saying : using SAM is learning every day .. sometimes things can be set in a new and better way .. however users have to take also their time to discover the correct working of the event sheduler and many other tools .. PAL scripts are most important in the using of SAM .. however it can take a while to write or to fix them in a right way .. examples can be the ipTop and ipBottom, the Enforcerules or Norules, etc etc

When all these elements are coming together a broadcaster can make a real good product ...

 

OK .. I have 1 minus to SAM .. the DSP section sucks - it gives a lesser quality than an old transitor radio .. I disabled all channels ... and I use my own dsp plugins who are loaded at the "mixer" channel .. and these are giving a very nice result

 

ps : this complete reply wasn't meant to Arthur only .. I was just writing down my impressions about SAM :)

 

So about SAM5 :) .. I wish a reliable DSP section and if possible some lesser CPU use

 

 

The weighting system,well that is truly a farce.... same songs in the same order get repeated eventually. Then it goes crazy.... repeating the same song within an hour!!! You cure this by resetting the weighting, then it behaves for some days, then freaks out again!

If somebody can produce something with the capabilites of station playlist creator built in- ie: you can do proper clockwheel formats and not the tedious PAL script version in sam

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I find the crossfading EXCELLENT! Having said that, it isn't as good as Raduga with the batch processing tool. Adding new tracks to the playlist is a pain- you have to remove everything then add everything, or you get stupid duplications.

 

The weighting system,well that is truly a farce.... same songs in the same order get repeated eventually. Then it goes crazy.... repeating the same song within an hour!!! You cure this by resetting the weighting, then it behaves for some days, then freaks out again!

If somebody can produce something with the capabilites of station playlist creator built in- ie: you can do proper clockwheel formats and not the tedious PAL script version in sam then it would be great. Besides, the event scheduler in sam is far too limited for a real station.

Another failing is its inability to auto start a dsp processor after a power down...

 

SAM may be ok for people who want to spend half their life trying to get things to work properly, like many, many hours a day- me, I just want to spruce up the station sound within 20 mins or so a day.

 

Its single biggest failing is reliability, you simply can't trust it!

 

And that's why i uninstalled SAM and purchsed the Digilink-Xtreme automation software, you can easily set up crossfades WITH NO PROBLEMS, you can insert songs into the playlist WITHOUT IT LOCKING UP, OR HAVING TO REMOVE ANYTHING. You can create the whole day's playlist in about 2 minutes and insert up to 12 hours of programmng in less than 10 minutes, you don't have to worry about any crappy DSP plugins all you need is Winamp and the SHOUTcast DSP and you are ready to roll, The software is so easy install that it leaves maybe a 3 meg footprint on your hardrive for all the DLL files and fonts it has to place in there. Very small program, but very versatile, works great with advertisers, phoners, and on air, and if you have their nice little 10 channel console ($2000) then it makes it that much better, get a hybrid hooked up to your landline then hook that to your console on channel 10 and BOOM!!! Phoners are ready to go, channel 9 controls the on air and of course channels 3-8 are for other nifty things like CD/DAT/MiniDisc players, and 1/2 are for mikes.

 

I said in the SA forums that when SAM 5 comes out I would download it to see if there was any difference, but sadly I think I have found the automation I will be sticking with for the rest of the stations life....it's that damn good...plus NO DATABASES TO WORRY ABOUT CRASHING....

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Hi GKREurope,

Maybe, maybe my problems were down to the database? I used the Firebird db, maybe I'll try again with mysql. I did it like you, set up an hourly clockwheel, with songs from different categories/folders/genres.... The songs all played in the correct order, and started at the top of the hour with a new clockwheel.

All that was ok, just went unstable after three days and repeated, repeated the same song up to five times in an hour, then would do the same again the following hour with another song!!!!????!!!!!

 

 

As for the other post, the manual is total and utter shite- not worth the paper it's printed on. And as for the spacial forums, well........ do I have to really say anything?

 

Thanks again Phillipe, I'll try again, this time with a different, and better database- I DO NOT trust the Firebird one!

 

Arf' :retard:

If I have helped you with a Freebie- please be kind enough to add a link from your own site or blog to mine- thanks! http://arthurburton.net

 

Thank You!

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Hi GKREurope,

 

 

 

As for the other post, the manual is total and utter shite- not worth the paper it's printed on. And as for the spacial forums, well........ do I have to really say anything?

 

 

I don't get it. They had excellent documentation like a year ago and now it is all gone and replaced with their wiki system which is missing tons of stuff.

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They had excellent documentation like a year ago and now it is all gone and replaced with their wiki system which is missing tons of stuff

 

Wish I knew where it was? The info. I have is pretty poor to say the least!

If I have helped you with a Freebie- please be kind enough to add a link from your own site or blog to mine- thanks! http://arthurburton.net

 

Thank You!

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They had excellent documentation like a year ago and now it is all gone and replaced with their wiki system which is missing tons of stuff

 

Wish I knew where it was? The info. I have is pretty poor to say the least!

 

I am looking and I noted that I used it in October of 2006, but that is the last time I can find record of me using it.

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Hi Arthur

 

Well yes indeed .. its my experience that SAM gives the best operational results with MySql 4 (can be downloaded at any place - see google search)

MySql 5 can be also used however to this type some adjustements has to be made by an IT guy to run SAM in the right way - if used for SAM3

Please notice that before making the install of SAM MySql has to be installed .. otherwise SAM can give errors or a bad untill not-playing behaviour ...

Referring to the details written into my earlier reply .. it never happend to Me - untill now :) that the clockwheel gave a strange behaviour by playing the same songs every hour

 

This small detail can be important:

at the config > playlist rotation : set wait/delay for playtime song higher than that one to the artist

If SAM decides to play the same artist (you never know with SAM .. LOL) than SAM has to take "that" artist but with an other songtitle

 

hope this was usefull

and thanks !

Thanks again Phillipe, I'll try again, this time with a different, and better database- I DO NOT trust the Firebird one!

Arf' :retard:

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  • 1 month later...
Something that is easier to work with than those PAL scripts. I also would like to see some real support, something beyond that "Look it up yourself" BS I always get in the forums.

Thats what we are for here at Broadcasting World ;) haha we will aim to give you better support than the SAM forums.

 

Id love to see a better layout because the one now is quite confusing!

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I haven't upgraded SAM for a while - I think its a good bit of software, however.

 

Not sure if this has already been implemented - I'd love to see a multi soundcard support and also the possibility to have more than 2 decks (players) - most automation systems have 3 (or sometimes allow you to add more) - each one is usually routable through a seperate soundcard.

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  • 3 years later...

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