Question with connecting your Transmitter to the PC sound

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Rob
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Question with connecting your Transmitter to the PC sound

Post by Rob »

Seeing as you connect your Transmitter to the PC sound plug that would mean you have no sound going into your headphones or Speckers right?

So I would not be able to hear if the song or the mic is working unless I had an FM radio beside me? Is this true ???

To fix this problem would I need some kind of Double Plug hole connection into the PC sound slot, one plug hole for the transmitter and one for the Headphones ??

Cheers,
Rob
Sir Nigel
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Post by Sir Nigel »

Except the PCI Max, that has an audio pass-through so you don't lose your output.

Just remember if you split the audio going to your transmitter that sometimes connecting and disconnecting something can cause the audio level feeding the transmitter to change! I would recommend just using a small FM radio for monitoring.
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Rob
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Post by Rob »

Cheers Sir,

I'd perfer to look into a double plug thing to be honest (if there out there), it would be messy using a radio beside me in a way.
anon
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Post by anon »

I use a double plug - one connection going to my speakers and one to my transmitter - but it does noticabley lower the volume to both. I just ordered a new soundcard that has multiple line-out plugs so that I no longer have to use a double plug and I'll also then be able to control the volume of each connection separately from the computer's mixer. Sound cards are cheap now anyway, mine cost US$24 but I've seen them for as cheap as US$10.
Rob
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Post by Rob »

Thanks anon,
I'll do the same myself then...loss of sound no way :x
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radioboy
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Monitoring off air

Post by radioboy »

Just to toss in my 2-cents worth,
I prefer to monitor off air. The advantage is, you can get a much better sense of how your modulation is and set the level from your sound source more appropriatly.

With walkmans and cd-players that have fm built in pretty much standard now a days, it behooves me to think anybody would find having a small, portable fm receiver to be cumbersome.

Since I tend to pre-record my broadcasts and in fact burn them to cd, and run my program content off cd, I have my standard output level pretty much set, and use the first few minutes of my beacon-sounder to make any adjustments to the volume before the show actually begins.

True, you will notice some loss in fidelity by monitoring your off air signal, hey- that's just the nature of FM, BUT- you will get a more accurate feel for how your on air signal sounds, and this is also something I highly recomend when it comes to adjusting eq and compression. Just because it may sound good on your pc's sound card or whatever amplification system you are monitoring off of, doesn't mean it will sound good off the fm-audio chain. Overmodulation and distortion, or lack of proper modulation will lead to listener fatigue or listeners tuning away from the station, the goal is to have a solid, bold, clean signal going out.

Thankfully, the PCS transmitters are quite capable of achieving that, if you pay attention to your audio chain, but if you feed the transmitter a crap signal, you're going to air a crappy signal.

((Radioboy))
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Art is a lie that tells the truth." -- Pablo Picasso
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revspalding
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Stand Alone TX

Post by revspalding »

If you have a stand alone transmitter, (not the PCI MAX), then all you have is left and right channel audio inputs... It would seem to me that you could really add some serious capability if you took your line audio from the computer and fed it to a mixer.. Then you could have other sources also feeding the transmitter, ie; a delayed phone patch, a sound room to stage your own 'war of the worlds' production, a live music hour!, also your mixer could give you a separate mike to talk into the production room, and earphone feed for everyone... The sky is the limit! Up till about ten years ago we still had a 'live feed' broadcast station here in NW Colorado. It was sooo different than all the canned stations that we get now... The kids from the high school helped out and there would be times when everyone in the county was listening to two minutes of silence!, because the dj flipped the wrong switch... What flavor! and now it's so slick that we hardly take the time to remember when it felt more like a community experience..... What ever happened to the blues? It died a slow death as the juke joints folded... In today's world we download our individual music and listen on ipods... No more communal gut thumping in smoke filled basement coffee houses, or bars... New Orleans is bemoaning the loss of a lot of Jazz artists, because there is no work for them.... the older bars won't open back up, the musicians may or may not come back, but it's up to us to recreate the communal experience... Even computerized radio, through satellites, is not a communal experience... We need to get back to the REAL experience of live music... Of not only seeing the sweat of the drummer, but smelling it.... And you can't ever get the adrenaline of live performances from an dont need one.... The technology will allow us to open up new venues for live music being broadcast to the community.... Joe Fish's Garage Jug Band Radio Station.... With remotes using Studio to Transmitter links, WiFi networks and more, we can take our laptops to the local restaurant and host a program from the salad bar and pull in customers to a live show, on the air! These ideas are the wave of the future... Decentralized from the huge networks, radio may become a thing of neighborhoods rather than multistate megawatt stations.... Tribal radio..... from the south side barrios.
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