Thanks for the mention

The correct listen link is

http://tunein.com/radio/Rewind45--Soft-R...Oldies-s210813/

Or http://www.rewind45.com/listen.pls

With new hardware, new software and another new location, it's definitely the all new Rewind45. Now Streaming from Romsey, Southampton....

Cheers,
Alan

So, Zara is a product that is on my list to check out. I currently own licenses for Ots, Station playlist and Sam. They each have their limitations but having already coughed up money for adequate products, I would need a good reason to buy one more. I'll take a listen to your stream later today to check it out. The broadband is currently occupied uploading music for R45 at the moment.
Alan

You jay have noticed the limited playlist on Rewind45. At the moment there are just 300 tracks but mire are being added all the time. I have 5000 mp3s that I could throw at the software but im trying to sort and sift out the dross and that takes time. Slowly slowly catchie monkey! Now, that's an odd saying. I have been working on the audio during the last few days. Any comments gratefully received. Good or bad, I can take it!

..and thanks coastie for the private chats about Zara, that has helped a lot.

Thanks for the kind words Alec

Hi Alan, welcome aboard. Good to hear RW45 is back.

Re. Zara, I've used the free version since before my stint on RW45 and can reccommend it. I've tried many other apps, but always come back to Zara, because of it's simplicity in managing. like any app, it has it's limitations and deficiencies. It's great for live playout and general automation. Straightforward, reliable and doesn't hammer the CPU. Not the tool if you're looking to do a lot of Voice-Tracking though.

Thanks Cookie. I've been streaming for the last 3 months using either Sam or Station Playlist. Yesterday I finally consigned Sam to the recycle bin after realising just how bad it was at picking songs to play. So, I swapped to Station Playlist at 3am this morning. It's better but I do have issues with the crossfade. OTS is the best at cross fading but is woefully lacking in other areas. I thought I'd take a look at Zara to see what it can do. I have installed on a laptop and am planning to fire it up later today.

Crossfade on Zara is a bit basic, but works well in most cases. For generating playlists for Zara, see if you can find a copy of IMS (intellegent Music Scheduler), by Bleu Cannard. It's free, but I'm not sure if it's available to download anymore. Quite sophisticated and works well, but there's no help and it can be a bit complex to get your head round.

Thanks Ian. I did spent a couple of days checking out Zara and have decided it's not for me. For anyone that's interested, Station Playlist was the software of choice last week. The crossfade is pretty good on auto but through a wobbly about 10% of the time. Last night I switched to OTSAV which does lack some features, like the ability to stream song titles natively. It does however crossfade perfectly almost 100% of the time. I'll be looking at the titles later today. I've also switched the audio processing to use Breakaway.

Rewind45 will be moving onto a new server later today. The listen links will remain the same but some reorganisation is necessary to make room for a 2nd station. Soft Rock Classics will begin testing over the weekend at www.softrockclassics.net. I'll update the website with listen links as soon as the stream goes on air.

Used Zara for years. Found it very stable and reliable. Have been trialing Rivendell. Very good and not that difficult to understand. Runing it on Xubuntu 12.04. The only problem is I have several thousand tracks that need conversion to .wav. Rivendell wont play mp3. A big long job. So will stay with Zara a bit longer 'till the jobs done.

I'm rather wary of StationPlaylist and it's ilk. I installed the trial version then uninstalled it as the trial was far too crippled, After uninstalling it I have been running both CCleaner and ACleaner about once a week. A year later I happened to install Zone Alarm and to my horror found StationPlaylist was attempting to get on the internet. It must have been doing this for a year. There was no sign of it on my computer at all including hidden files. I did a manual search through the registry and found reference to StationPlaylist. I deleated these which fixed the problem of it trying to access the internet. I don't think software peddlars have any right to install hidden files on ones computer which are capable of calling out.

IMS music scheduler has been gone for some years. I have a copy if you want it. It's a hell of a thing to get your head around.