Contents

Developed by Jay Lichtenauer
© 2007-2008 MacinMind Software
Radiologik DJ Manual
Program Icon
Radio Automation and Live Assist Player


Overview

This release of the DJ component of Radiologik can be used as a live assist for radio or podcast creation or for most DJing needs that don't require the club mixing style. It can also be used as the automation player along with Radiologik Scheduler. The DJ portion of Radiologik will always be available as standalone from the scheduler.

Latest version of Radiologik is available here:
http://macinmind.com/Radiologik/Download

Questions, bug reports, and feature suggestions can be emailed to jay@macinmind.com


Requirements

- Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
- Quicktime 7.1 or higher
- Display of 1024x768 or higher
- 466 MHz G4 or better. 800 MHz or better recommended


Design Philosophy

The objective of 1.x versions is to make sure the design foundation is particularly good with fluid, efficient, and obvious operation without a lot of learning about the software itself, particularly if you've already done live radio or DJing. You control the program and the program shouldn't make you conform to it's quirks. The design should lead the user to confidence in use quickly.

I've done a few live radio shows myself and worked with a DJ who has done live radio on and off for decades. The features here and the lack of what we considered superfluous features in other DJ and radio automation programs on all platforms have led us to the current design for the DJ portion of Radiologik. Radiologik is now that other DJ's first choice for DJing radio, school dances, and weddings. It got him to buy his first Mac. But this does not mean that we don't have more ideas yet past the present version nor am I turning away any of your ideas for future versions. Several great ideas continue to come from many of you. I'll just make sure the ideas work without compromising the strengths and without going feature and option happy which eventually leads to confusion for the user and more bugs for the author to fix.

It will be developed for Mac-only particularly because the need is greater on the Mac for a variety of tools like this but also so that I'm not wasting time trying to reproduce features on another platform and risking a lower common denominator of abilities. The Mac is the best platform for audio and although there are plenty of tools for audio creation, it seems that the area of professional radio production software (or really any radio production software) is sparse on the Mac while there are dozens of pretty feature robust radio playout solutions on windows... but they are Windows.

The interface is designed to give precedence to the most important things for radio, in particular large display of remaining time and colored warnings when time is running out. Time calculation is given a lot of importance and so it is calculated for starts and stops of songs into the future through the Program queue. For instance, adjusting the pitch actually adjusts the displayed length of the song and how it affects everything after it instead of just running the seconds faster. You could therefore accurately run your next five songs at a particular pitch to meet the news at the top of the hour perfectly by watching the resulting end times in the queue. You can sort the library by song length or talk time to find a good match for your time constraints. Even multiple selections are added-up to display the total time of the selection.

Holding down the mouse on a menu or moving the window around does not freeze time display for the players as it does in some other more expensive DJing programs. Operations throughout the program are often done in independent threads and given specific time priorities to ensure the best performance overall.  For instance, logging has very low priority and audio playing has top priority. With the exception of Radiologik being unregistered, modal dialogs are used sparingly to ensure you don't have a dialog window, and especially not a dialog with no way out but to wait, getting in the way of operating. Importing the entire iTunes Library is optimized for speed so that I can import 12,000 songs in about 14 seconds on a G5 Quad, or using a search term for Genre, 3,000 songs in 7 seconds, without interfering with the control and play of the rest of the program. Launch to ready to play speed will depend on how much in is the Program Queue but it should usually be pretty fast even with loading 12,000 songs back into the Library. From launch to restored playing is 2-3 seconds on the G5 Quad.

The default resolution for time is 1/10th seconds. Any higher resolution is unreadable while playing and practically inperceptible for radio timing.

Radiologik DJ is meant to be an equally good live DJ and automation player (with the use of Radiologik Scheduler). Why not? I'd personally love to walk into an automation program and just sit down and run it myself for a while and walk out when I feel like it.

What Radiologik is not
Radiologik does not cater to the club mix DJ. It does not examine songs to figure how to overlap them, although one day it might. Audio should be prepped for automatic for the best results or unprepped audio can be played manually by your own trigger. Radiologik is not meant to look like a real-world device like a CD player because that design can be constraining and doesn't always lead to the best interface for the task. Radiologik isn't a cart machine. However, if you have a bunch of shorts to run, throw them in the Program queue and fire them manually or let them roll in Auto. Or use the Spot list to select and play common tracks independent of the program. Radiologik does not do any particular mixer functions. However support is given for mouse wheel faders of all players. MIDI control surfaces are also supported and those that have motorized faders are not only supported but quite fun for certain cats.


Bringing Audio into Radiologik DJ

Radiologik DJ accepts mp3, aac normal and protected, Apple Lossless, aiff, and wav sound files. There are three track lists which I'll cover more thoroughly below: Program Queue, Spot, and Library. Program Queue and Spot are used for playing, Library is used for finding and previewing.

Dragging
Tracks can be dragged-in from the Finder or iTunes. When dragging-in multiple tracks, iTunes and the Finder don't usually send the tracks in the same order as displayed in iTunes or the Finder. But if you're dragging tracks into the Library list, it won't matter.

iTunes Library import button
One of the fastest ways to get music into the Library is to use the "iTunes Library" button. If you'd like to restrict which tracks you import, use a search term to the left of the button and press return or hit the "iTune Library" button. It will search for tracks matching that field in the Genre, Artist, Album, Name, and Comment. So you could simply bring in a single Genre by typing that in the field to the left of the iTunes Library button and pressing the button. Everytime you do this you add to what's in the Library instead of replacing it. The Library is maintained between launches.

iTunes Playlists
Every list allows you to import an iTunes playlist. The list of iTunes playlists is created when Radiologik DJ is launched and can be updated to reflect changes in actual iTunes playlists by selecting Refresh Playlist Menus from the File menu.

Radiologik Scheduler
Used for full automation, the scheduler will select tracks from iTunes playlists by a script and Radiologik DJ will import a scheduled list of tracks right after the scheduler creates it.

Radiologik DJ Program and Spot List files
Once you have tracks in with the above 4 methods, you can save Save, Add, and Load the first two lists from the File menu.
The 3 Track Lists

3 Track Lists

1. Program [1 & 2] is a queue of songs that play in the 1st and 2nd players, automatically alternating between the two. You can drag re-order the tracks. Tracks play in order from top to bottom. The times calculated throughout the list take into account overlap timing and pitch shifting. You can select multiple tracks to move or delete using the shift or command (Apple) keys.

2. Spot [3] operates more like a cart machine where the selected audio file is the one cued. You can drag re-order the tracks to match the line numbers 1-9 and then use the 1-9 numeric keys to select them while on any tab.

3. Library is an internal database library which you can use to quickly find songs, preview them, and copy them to either the Program or Spot lists. You can select multiple tracks delete or program using the shift or command (Apple) keys. For Mac OS X 10.4 and up the Search field is a live search and probably faster than iTunes' search.

All 3 lists are maintained between quitting and launching Radiologik DJ.

Radiologik DJ will update play count and last played date in iTunes of played tracks if in the Log is checked in the Preferences for the audio output you use when playing the tracks. This makes smart playlists useful for later selecting tracks based on how recently played, etc. in iTunes Smart Playlists.


Prepping Audio Files

Edit the actual audio files (ideal)
  1. Use your favorite audio editor. (I like Amadeus and Fission)
  2. Normalize. You can also use iVolume to set the loudness levels which might be easier than doing normalization of all of your tracks. See below.
  3. Remove any silence from the beginning
  4. Cold endings should leave silence nearly equal to the overlap time. I would use 1.5 seconds of silence for 1.8 overlap.
  5. Slow fade songs should have the fades accelerated by removing a portion of the ending and fading more quickly from a given point. I like about 3-4 seconds of linear fade from a point where the song has already begun to fade.

Use Radiologik's Track Properties
If you cannot open the track in an audio editor such as above because it is perhaps an iTunes protected song, you can set the start, stop, fade-in and fade-out values by selecting the track anywhere in Radiologik and selecting Track Properties from the Edit menu or clicking the Properties button in the bottom right of the window. This information is saved in the file's resource fork so the information will move from Mac to Mac along with the file. The resource fork will be lost if the file is moved to a non-Mac volume.

When the overlap is set to default, the overlap in the preferences is used. You can also set an overlap from 0 to 10 seconds just for this track. The Time Announce feature from the scheduler makes use of this by setting the overlap to 0 so that no matter what the overlap is in the preferences, the time announce will play completely and meet the next track correctly.

Track Properties

Set the Ramp
The Ramp is the time in the beginning of the track when an announcer can speak. For live DJ'ing it is an aid which is displayed as a countdown timer. For automation, the scheduler uses this time to aid it in determining how to fit automatic voice tracking. You can set the Ramp by pressing the Ramp button on any player. Like the track properties above, this information is saved in the file's resource fork so the information will move from Mac to Mac along with the file. The resource fork will be lost if the file is moved to a non-Mac volume.


The Player Displays

With Auto OFF, Radiologik is made sure to be the front application at the 20 second from finish mark of a file. It changes the time box file position to yellow at 20 seconds

20 Seconds

At 15 seconds from finish it changes the file position indicator of the file to blinking red and then solid red at 5 seconds from finish.

15 Seconds

You can adjust the current time position of any audio file by dragging or clicking in the time box of any player. The position is changed when you let go of the mouse button.

Player Time


The Player Controls

The first Button "Cue" resets the player to the beginning of the track and cues it. The Second button plays or pauses the player. The third button "Fade" operates as a fade and finish. In Auto, the next track will start at the overlap time determined in the Preferences. The last button "Ramp" sets the time the announcer can talk into a track and is set to the current track position and recorded in the resource fork. See Set the Ramp above.

Player Controls

Each player has output toggle buttons to determine which sound output to use for the player. The button audio outputs and names can be set in the preferences. This way you can direct each output to a particular mixer channel on a mixer board and control the fades directly there if you want. It is not currently able to pick the different channels from multiple channel devices, but this is something I'd like to do eventually. But you can use this to preview tracks off-the-air in any cued player by just changing the output here.

Output Selection Toggle

Volume can be adjusted manually a few ways. Although you can obviously move the volume slider, you can also use the mouse wheel when over any player. Mousing over any player and using the mouse wheel adjusts the volume for all players if for instance you want to duck all audio to speak. You can also adjust the volume per player by clicking anywhere in the colored portion of the player (green, blue, red). The player will get a blue highlight around it to indicate you are controlling the volume for that player alone with the mouse wheel. Click on the player again to remove the highlight.

Player Display

You can also control volume, pitch, and all of the Functions in the Function menu using a MIDI controller. For instance, the Behringer BCF2000 has motorized sliding faders and works very well. Radiologik works with MIDI controllers in both directions.

Single key shortcuts can be viewed from the Keyboard Reference window and can be set in the preferences.

Keyboard Shortcut Reference

In addition, all of these shortcuts are also available from the Functions menu. You can use the Keyboard item in System Preferences to set key shortcuts for any of these menus such as the F5 key to start program.

When pressing the key to program a track from the Library or Spot list, hold down the Shift Key to place it at the top of the queue.


Auto ON & OFF

Auto plays the next song in queue overlapping by the amount specified in the preferences. By default this is 2.2 seconds. You need to prep your audio to work with the overlaps for auto to sound best. In manual you start each song yourself. With both Auto ON or OFF, you can fire the next song yourself when you want. There is an option in the Preferences to fade the previous song when starting a song which works in both modes.

Auto On

Auto ON resets volume and pitch for each player when a new file is loaded.
Auto OFF leaves player volume and pitch alone for each player as set

Auto ON, cued songs are blue
Auto OFF, cued songs are red


Voiceovers & Ducking

Voiceovers allow you to introduce a track such as by using a voice track over the beginning of a song. The scheduler will make use of this for voice tracking a fully-automated station.

In the program list there is a checkbox in the very right corner named VO. Just to the right of that is the player indicator which shows which player this track will be played in.

Voiceover Checkbox

When this box is checked, the track is loaded into player 3 alongside the preceding track in the program. The track in player 1 or 2 that is cued is set at a ducking volume which can be set in the Preferences. The voiceover in player 3 begins at the overlap point of the previous song and it's overlap triggers the next song in player 1 or 2. When player 3 finishes, player 1 or 2 fades-up by the time value in the Preferences to 100% volume.

A similar function is also done automatically called Triple-segue


Coloring Track Items

Use Finder Color Labels on your files and Radiologik will use that color for those items in your Program Queue and Spot list.

Color Label


Program Track Attributes

Track attributes are only for items in the program queue. Double-click the track in the program list or select it and click the Attributes button. Radilogik Scheduler makes use of all of these attributes.

You can use attributes to set the schedule interrupt time for a track in the program. The track will play at the specified time regardless of everything else. If nothing is playing, it will start the track and if in Auto, it will continue to play subsequent tracks. If something is already playing in queue, it will fade that track and start playing the track with the interrupt time. If the program queue runs out before the interrupt time, the track will not be played until the scheduled time.

Program Track Attributes

You can also set the Station ID flag to tell the Station ID button that the station has ID'd for the hour when this track is played.

And you each program track can also be set to change the preference set. The actual preference set is not changed until that track begins playing and is applied to it and all following tracks without affecting preceding tracks such as a fading track that might still be playing.


Triple-segue

The third player is automatically assigned a track when Auto is ON and the combined overlaps won't get us to play the next track in time. In other words, it is done when a track is shorter than the 2 overlaps and a 3rd player is needed to play a triple-segue. An extra 1 second safety is given in the decision to use the 3rd player to account for cue loading times to make sure tracks are played at the right time.

Triple Segue

In this case players 2 and 3 are cued and you'll see the player assignment something like this:

Player Assignment


   Preferences

You can open preferences from the Radiologik menu.

Preference Sets
All settings in preferences can be kept in different sets which you can name. These different preferences are stored in separate files in the Finder which you can rename or delete. This can be useful if for instance you would like a different overlap setting for each format on your station which the scheduler can then change at the appropriate time, or if different DJs like different keyboard settings.

General
Here you can set the various timings. The effect of these settings are various and described elsewhere in this document.

Auto on at startup puts Radiologik mode on regardless of whether it was on when it was last quit. Restore playing at startup puts Radiologik back to playing exactly what was playing in program when it was last quit.

Automatically check for updates checks for new versions of Radilogik DJ no more than once a day.

Register played tracks with iTunes when logging the player output will increment the play count and update the last played date in iTunes if log is turned on for the outut used on the Audio I/O preference tab. It does so by doing a quick search on matching genre, artist, and track name for songs with ID3 data and just for track name for other files.

Preferences-General

Audio I/O
Here you can set the devices and names for the audio outputs that are selectable above each player as well as choose a Library player output.

Log and Publish Nicecast can be toggled per output. Log will log to the Log tab and to

    ~/Library/Logs/Radiologik/Play Logs/.

In order to register the songs played with iTunes, you'll need Log on for that output. Publish for Nicecast will write to

    ~/Library/Application Support/Nicecast/Now Playing.txt

for Nicecast to read. Publish needs to be on for the track to show in the top of the Radiologik window and for iChat if selected on the General tab.

Preferences - Audio IO

The next three tabs allow you to set keyboard shortcuts and setup MIDI controllers.


Adjusting Loudness with iVolume

iVolume is basically an enhanced loudness equalizer similar to iTunes Sound Check but much better. Radiologik can use these gain values stored in any file that contains tags such as .mp3 and m4a files. It allows you to adjust on a per-song basis or by entire album. You can tell Radiologik DJ to use these values by checking the "Use iVolume/iTunes Sound Check loudness adjustment" on the Audio tab of the preferences.

Publishing Exceptions

If you have artists, titles, or genres you don't want published to Nicecast and to iChat such as internal production audio, you can add them to the Publishing Exceptions window found in the Window menu. Click OK for changes to take effect.

Publishing Exceptions
Other Interface Parts

The TOTH area is Top of the Hour and displays time in relation to the top of the hour.

Top of the Hour

The Station ID button is intended as a reminder for on-the-air stations to ID near the top of the hour. It blinks between 5 before and 5 after the hour until it is pressed or the key (default i) is pressed. It is also ticked by the Station ID Track Attribute when that track plays.

 Station ID button



Recording & Internet Broadcasting

Rogue Amoeba's Nicecast allows you to broadcast your station to the internet via streaming mp3.

Nicecast

Nicecast will capture the audio from Radiologik. To use the microphone, try Nicecast's voiceover plugin.

Rogue Amoeba also sells Audio Hijack Pro which you can use to live record a show you do in Radiologik to later publish as a podcast. Both Audio HiJack Pro and Nicecast allow you to apply audio effects and processing to audio playing in Radiologik DJ.


Tips
If you need your Mac to be exactly on time. See Apple's support article on Network Time clients lose synchronization

In order to avoid problems, don't let iTunes do automatic checks for updates. It leaves a dialog up that prevents Radiologik from communicating with iTunes. This option is at the bottom of the iTunes preferences window on the General pane.

Tracks with accents or a full quote mark in their title or artist cannot be updated in iTunes for last played and play count. Workaround: Change accents such as umlats to non-accented characters. Search and replace applescripts are available at Doug's Applescripts for iTunes

When working with mp3 tags, Radiologik makes a considerable effort to read all ID3 tag versions from 1.0 to 2.4. If you find certain information missing still, try selecting the affected tracks in iTunes and select Convert ID3 Tags... from the Advanced menu to convert them to v2.4.
Advanced Options
Network mounted iTunes library

Keeping your audio files on the same computer as Radiologik will give the best and most reliable performance. However, in some cases you may use a network connected volume for your iTunes library where the iTunes library is maintained by a computer that has a different relative path to the files than what the Radiologik computer sees.

First, use aliases to your normal iTunes folder location. For instance, make an alias of the iTunes folder in Music from the network volume to your own ~/Music/iTunes/ or just alias the from the network volume to iTunes Music Library.xml~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml

To have Radiologik get the path corrected, open your Radiologik preferences file--either ~/Library/Preferences/Radiologik/Radiologik DJ Preferences or ~/Library/Preferences/Radiologik/Preferences/DJ Set (or whatever you named your preference set) in TextEdit. Add a line using the syntax

LibraryPathReplace=search replace

For example, to get

file://localhost/Users/jaylicht/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Bizet/Carmen.mp3

to properly be

file://Volumes/jaylicht/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Bizet/Carmen.mp3

use the following line added to the preferences:

LibraryPathReplace=/localhost/Users/ /Volumes/

Now you can successfully import your iTunes library into Radiologik DJ's libary using the "iTunes Library" button.

Scheduled playlist loading

Document here.

Radilogik File Locations

Files for Radiologik DJ are stored in the following locations:

Preferences
 ~/Library/Preferences/Radiologik/
Database & Saved States
 ~/Documents/Radiologik/
Logs
 ~/Library/Logs/Radiologik/


Version Notes

Known Issues
Known Differences
Future Possibilities
Changes to 1.3 (2008-12-20)
Changes to 1.2.12 (2008-12-05)
Changes to 1.2.11 (2008-10-06)
Changes to 1.2.10 (2008-09-19)
Changes to 1.2.9 (2008-08-28)
Changes to 1.2.8 (2008-07-14)
Changes to 1.2.7 (2008-06-27)
Changes to 1.2.6 (2008-05-23)
Changes to 1.2.5 (2008-05-14)
Changes to 1.2.4 (2008-03-06)
Changes to 1.2.3 (2007-12-20)
Changes to 1.2.2 (2007-11-06)
Changes to 1.2.1 (2007-10-19)
Changes to 1.2 (2007-08-03)
Changes to 1.1.1 (2007-07-13)

Changes to 1.1 (2007-07-08)
Changes to 1.0 (2007-07-02)
Changes to 1.0b15 (2007-06-16)
Changes to 1.0b14 (2007-05-16)
Changes to 1.0b12 (2007-04-12)
Changes to 1.0b11 (2007-03-19)
Changes to 1.0b10 (2007-03-07)
Changes to 1.0b9 (2007-02-28)
Changes to 1.0b8 (2007-02-28)
Changes to 1.0b7 (2007-02-21)


Legal
Radiologik DJ is shareware. If you use it regularly, please register and pay the shareware fee.

You can make copies of this software and distribute them as long as the software is not modified in any way and the registration information does not accompany the software.

You may not sell copies of this software. You may not rent, lease, or distribute this software as part of a shareware sampling package without the permission of the author. You may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer, copy, or create a derivative work from this software.

You are permitted to make a backup copy of this software.  You may make archival copies of the software for each License obtained under this Agreement. You may make copies of the written documentation which accompanies the software in support of your authorized use of the software.

Limited Warranty/Limitation of Liability:

This software is licensed as is with the removal of shareware reminders. Shareware allows you to "try before you buy" and I operate on the understanding that you are satisfied with the software before you register.

This warranty is in lieu of any other warranties, express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. In no event will the author be liable to you for damages, including any loss of profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising out of your use of or inability to use the software.

Customer Support:

I will attempt to answer technical support requests from registered users, but this service is offered on a reasonable efforts basis only, and I may not be able to resolve every support request. I can support the software only if it is used under conditions and on operating systems for which it is designed.

General:

If any provision of this Agreement is found to be unlawful, void, or unenforceable, then that provision shall be severed from this Agreement and will not affect the validity and enforceability of any of the remaining provisions. This Agreement shall be governed by the laws of the State of Illinois.