How do you use Backbone Radio?

More than 50 students from nearly every major produce hour-long radio programs weekly for a truly international audience. Listeners regularly tune in not just from the Baltimore metropolitan area, but from as far away as Europe and Australia.

On the night of October 26th, 2006 we did our first "remote" broadcast using an iBook G4 equipped with an M-Audio Moblile PreUSB and an Airport Extreme card to utilize wireless Internet access at the event. David Sanger, White House correspondent for the New York Times gave an on campus lecture describing the difficulties of covering the Bush administration. The broadcast was a success.

Why do you use Backbone Radio?

Backbone Radio Pro keeps us "on-the-air" all day, every day. There is great peace of mind in knowing that regardless of what happens, we will remain broadcasting. The worst thing possible is for someone to tune in for the first time and get dead air. (Though we do have a late-night show titled "Dead Air" and it has quite an audience.) Being able to record all of our live content and easily schedule replays from within one software package is a great advantage. Training students on both OnAirDisplay and OnAirStudio couldn't be easier.

Our server also rebroadcasts the Quicktime stream as an MP3 stream using third party software. In this respect, we use Backbone Radio Pro as a studio-transmitter link. In our experience, it is extremely reliable.

What was your set up before Backbone Radio and why the switch?

To be quite frank, I'm a Macintosh guy at a Windows institution. Seven years ago, Goucher Student Radio started webcasting using software from Real Networks. The college already owned a license for Helix Universal Server, so we purchased the encoding software for our studio-side G4 tower. Real Networks had virtually no Mac support, nor did they give us any indication that they intended to improve their software for the Macintosh platform.

The connection from studio to server was unreliable, often cutting out in the middle of live shows. When our studio went down, our stream dropped as well. Because we produce so much content weekly, technical support is vital. I need to know that if an issue arises with our stream, I can get reliable, timely support. We didn't get that from Real Networks.

When we did manage to get the stream online, bandwidth became a major issue for the college. At that point, we purchased one XServe to be hosted by the Karcher Group, a fast ISP off-campus. Using Quicktime Streaming Server (QTSS) and Quicktime Broadcaster, we were able to get our signal out - but not without major issues. We found that Broadcaster didn't like to stay connected to QTSS for long periods of time.

To achieve a 24/7 presence, we recorded live programs on another machine in-studio as an AIFF file, then played back into our board using iTunes when no DJ was scheuled to be in studio. Whether it was a DJ forgetting to hit record or Broadcaster losing it's connection to the server mid-show, we knew we needed a better solution. Backbone Radio boasted all of the features we wanted and some others we knew we'd want soon. After a brief e-mail exchange with George Capalbo, we were set up with a 30-day trial of Backbone Radio Pro.

How is product support for Backbone Radio?

A few problems did come to light in during the trial period. In one instance, the OnAirStudio application crashed. I sent a crash report to Backbone describing what I'd done just before the software shut down. Ten minutes later, I had an e-mail from George. Twelve mintues after the crash, we were on the phone troubleshooting together. Within the hour, we had a fix. A week later, we had an update that corrected the issue permanently.

Why does Goucher Radio use Backbone Radio? Because it works - and if we do have a problem we KNOW it will be resolved quickly and properly. Backbone is the real deal. This is the best solution I've found for starting up a college internet radio station.

How has Goucher College's Radio Station benefitted from using Backbone Radio?

Backbone Radio has changed Goucher Student Radio. I'm comfortable comparing our purchase of Backbone Radio Pro to the purchase of our studio equipment in terms of what it enables us to do.

More than a year ago, I began researching automation systems for our studio. Goucher Student Radio's studio was built to feed a terrestrial broadcast transmitter. Though we had no plans to acquire a broadcast license, we looked to the future. I found systems used by many commercial and public stations prohibitively expensive. When I came across Backbone Radio Pro, I was pleased to learn that the software can easily be used to accomplish what these more expensive packages do.

The easy to use studio software lets us train new talent quickly. The automation system keeps us on the air all day long - and in control of our programs. I can't tell you how much better I sleep at night knowing that even if the entire campus was to lose power, Goucher Radio would remain on the air.

How do you plan on using Backbone Radio in the future?

The ability to easily set up remote broadcasts will undoubtedly have profound effects on how we do what we do in the future. Using Backbone Radio Pro Goucher Radio will be expanding our coverage of live events both on and off campus.

In November, we will start providing live coverage of Division III basketball games using the same setup used in the David Sanger broadcast along with couple of mics and headphones. At some point, we'd like to hand off a laptop and mic to students as they head abroad to host shows remotely from foreign countries.

What does your set up look like?

Our console is a Pacific Research Systems Impulse from Harris Corporation. Our studio has 6 mic positions with headphones, a dual disc CD deck, a CDR, Minidisc deck, two turntables with DJ mixer and a twelve-line telephone hybrid system. Our software runs on a dual 800 Mhz G4 connected to our campus network by DHCP.