A look inside CAVEradio
The reaction people have when I tell them I have my own radio show is priceless. Of course, they all think I mean “real” radio and then when I refine my statement to say “it’s on the internet,” they usually retort with an “oh,” as though internet radio is insignificant. But even then they’re always curious and ask about what we talk about, how we run the show, and everything else. I’ve written about the history of CAVEradio before, but it’s a story I like to tell…and this time I’ll take you behind the curtain!
Way Back When
CAVEradio started back around 1998-99 when I was graduating high school and starting college. I worked at a computer store at the time and one of the guys I worked with was hip to all the technology and suggested we do a radio show. I was all for trying it so we cobbled together some equipment and a few computers and we had our radio station up and running. Back then our resources were limited. We tried Live365.com for playing music during the day but for our live show we had to use Shoutcast, which worked great, but meant people had to connect directly to my home internet IP to listen. Looking back, that was not a good idea and didn’t support many listeners. And doing a weekly (somtimes bi-weekly) three hour show, CAVEradio quietly died out as we both got burned out, unhappy, and discouraged.
The next time CAVEradio popped up was after Jen and I were dating. We were still doing the show from my house and it still required a parade of equipment to accomplish, but we had fun and entertained people yet again on a weekly basis. But as life caught up and we moved up to apartments and then to a house CAVEradio suffered once again. It once again quietly faded away some time around 2004/2005. Then late last year when we were driving around one night Jen said, “I think we need to do the radio show again,” and I was happy to give it another go.
Trying it All Over Again
This time around, however, broadcasting proved to me a whole lot easier. In the time we were off air the whole podcast and live streaming business had taken off. With YouTube and iTunes and various live media streaming services out there, getting on the air was even easier than before. I quickly picked UStream and found we didn’t need half the equipment we needed before. All we needed now were the essentials: a microphone, a mixer, and the internet. But I did make one addition to the chain, a Nintendo DS.
A soundboard was something we always lacked. We obviously had access to sound effects just like we did any other MP3, but sound effects need to be ready to go at any time. Futzing around with Winamp to find sounds, toggle windows, and click play is just a hassle. Enter the DS. With it’s fancy touch screen and a few MP3s loaded, I now have quick access to sounds as I need them. We just run the output into our mixer and it’s golden. Right when I thought our operation couldn’t get anymore ghetto and nerdy, the DS is just icing.
With all the bandwidth and streaming problems out of the way, it let us focus on making a better on-air product. Thankfully enough our equipment still worked, two mics and a mixer - RadioShack’s finest. To allow for music and live talking we still need two computers, one with music and one that broadcasts, but we already have those so it was just a matter of running cables from one side of the room to the other.
Nuts and Bolts
But let’s get down and dirty here. All you curious tech folks can appreciate some of this, the rest of you will otherwise quickly realize our whole process is just smoke and mirrors. Hey, it’s radio, it’s not whale biology.
The foundation of our setup is two PCs. One acts as the input center, the other as the output center. I act as producer on the input computer (with Winamp for music) which also takes line input from our mixer. Our mics and the DS feed into the mixer, each with channel volume control. Unfortunately, I have to use the Windows volume control for the music but with my desktop PowerMate knob it’s a sinch.
The other computer takes line input from the other computer and streams it out via UStream. That machine also acts as a passthru to our headphones so we can hear the final mix. Skype runs on the input computer so the caller can hear both myself and Jen rather than just the standard microphone input. We also record every show live, which I then encode down to something upload-safe for our podcast.
Radio Station in a Box
- Two PCs running Windows
- Winamp, for music playback
- Skype, for live call-ins
- Nintendo DS, serves as soundboard
- Two headphones
- Two omni mics w/ stands, RadioShack’s finest
- One 4-channel mixer, also a Tandy special
- Audacity, for recording/editing replays
- One Griffin PowerMate, for easy volume control
- UStream.com, handles live streaming (audio only)
- Mibbit.com applet handles live chat
- Twhirl + HootSuite, for all our our Twittering needs
- WordPress, for the blog
Live is Where It’s At
When we hit the air (again) in December we were surprised to find people are still willing to listen to us. But there is one big difference between now and then, our listeners come back every week. We’re not complaining, not in the slightest, but we can’t help to be amused by people’s interest in our ramblings. However, I like to think of us as merely providing a forum for our listeners to play along at home. With the chat room and live Skype calls the show is now 1000% better than we could have ever expected. It’s what we were missing all those times before. Back then it was literally just us for three hours every week, this time it’s about an hour of us and then an hour of you - and it makes all the difference. Now it’s fun for everyone and something we look forward to each week. It’s not about us, it’s about you.
We broadcast live every week. Our shows are too long to do any sort of post production shy of trimming the start and end of each replay. I mix the music and other inputs live as we go. I’m not the best multitasker so something always suffers, either the production or the personality, but I don’t think I could let someone else produce - just because I’m a control person.
And that’s it. The only other thing required is the ability to gab for two hours once a week, and for us that’s never a problem. In fact, before this latest incarnation of CAVEradio our show no less than three hours, sometimes four. But there’s one thing that hasn’t change after doing this for almost 10 years, and that’s going out to eat after the show. Even back when we started we were either eating, bowling, or both after each weekly show. It’s true that the frequency of the post-show meet-ups has slowed down, but they get more fun every time we go out. If you haven’t joined us yet after our show, you really should, it’s quite the experience.
So there you go, all our deepest CAVEradio secrets. Told you, ghetto.
We’ll see you Thursday night.
