Hello all.

I'm sure this question has been asked (and answered) before, but as someone totally brand new to Spacial/SAM I need some advice please.

I have secured a live slot on an Internet station and having done quite a lot of research I know I'm going to use a version of SAM. What I'm finding difficult to understand is which version do I need?

It's not my own station, I'm just going to be presenting one 2-hour show per week. So under these circumstances do I need Broadcaster Pro or will SAM DJ be sufficient? I've been offered a slot on another station too, so will be broadcasting to two separate stations (on different days) make a difference to my requirements?

Final thing; I've looked at a couple of tutorials on YouTube and in each case the guy also has a physical 6 channel mixer hooked up to his PC. Is a separate mixer essential too or can everything run off of the software if you have your media on computer?

My radio presenting has always been at the station's studio with a physical desk, where I know exactly what I need to do. When it comes to internet radio I'm really struggling.

Thanks to all and apologies if these are 'stupid' questions.

Ian

There's several things:

There's SAM Broadcaster Live DJ and there's SAM DJ. Neither is of any use for you.

Live DJ only works in combination with a subscription for SAM Broadcaster Cloud (but is included for free with that).
SAM DJ doesn't have any encoders and thus is of no use for Radio broadcasting.

If the station you work for is not running on Spacial services, you will need SAM Broadcaster Pro or Studio versions.
How many stations you want to use in SAM doesn't matter for which version to choose. The only difference in the versions of SAM is which services it can connect to. (Pro/Studio include everything, Lite/Plus can only connect to SpacialNet and CheapestStream, Live DJ can only connect to SAM Cloud)

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Running a physical mixer together with SAM is not something I would recommend for beginners with the software.

SAM is first and foremost an automation system with only limited capabilities for Live DJing.

SAM is designed to do most things on it's own and everything you do manually is supposed to be done by clicking in the UI with a mouse.


So yeah, you don't need any external hardware and I wouldn't recommend using any unless you're comfortable with the inner workings of SAM's Audio Pipeline.

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Without a physical mixer, you will find that plugging a mic directly to PC for live voice can be problematic, due to echo & delay. If you really want to do live voice...Sam Broadcaster PRO with physical mixer is the way to go. Sam Broadcaster PRO is a powerful program, with a lot of capability.
IMO if you buy something less expensive, at some point you may wish you had spent the extra for Sam Broadcaster PRO.

That said, It is not easy to learn. The PAL scripting capability and the built in audio processing in the audio pipeline make it worth the money, however, they take time to learn! Be prepared to invest that time to learn, and have patience with yourself & others who have experience - and in the end, I think you will be very happy you did invest the time & money.

I have included copy/paste from another post on the subject of microphone delay (latency) from another sam/spacial forum member below.



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Once upon a time - I was frustrated by this too.... The only "real" fix i found for this was to use an outboard sound mixer & MIC

Here's how this works:

1: get a basic stereo sound mixing board at radioshack. (45-100 dollars)

2: connect the mixer as follows

PC LINE OUT (SAM OUTPUT) > LINE 1 INPUT ON MIXER

REC OUT JACKS ON MIXER TO LINE IN JACK ON PC SOUNDCARD

connect a standard analog microphone to the mixer. Set sam encoder "source" to "soundcard".

This passes audio from sam through the mixer..(on line 1)..You can now "mix" in your voice by speaking in to the mic on the mixer (not the PC)

The "final" audio (with your voice) is passed back to the sam encoder via the soundcard LINE-IN (or MIC jack.... if your soundcard has no line-in) - Connect a standard headet to the mixer - NOT THE PC.... and listen to the mixer output (master output) in your headset.

*** The reason this removes the "delay" is because now you can monitor the "final" audio & your voice - with no delay - by connecting a headset to the outboard mixer. Because the "final" audio in the headset connected to the mixer (not the PC) is analog & in "real-time" (no processing delay) so, you can speak normally.

Hope that helps.

_________________
~Steve
http://www.SongsInime.Online