When searching for that perfect song that you two will dance for the first time together as a newly married couple can be difficult for some. Below are some song suggestions to help you find that perfect song.
Although not a licence to operate, it is good practice for DJs to have Public Liability Insurance (PLI) and regularly test their equipment – you’ll often see this referred to as Portable Appliance Testing (PAT).
Public Liability Insurance is there to protect you in the event of an accident or claim against your business. Several DJ associations offer PLI as part of their membership so it’s foolish not to have PLI in my view; as you can get some for under £50 a year it’s a small price to pay to protect you.
There are a lot of myths around PAT that this has to be done annually. The truth is there is no legal requirement specifying – see the official advice from the Health & Safety Executive:
“The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require that any electrical equipment that has the potential to cause injury is maintained in a safe condition. However, the Regulations do not specify what needs to be done, by whom or how frequently (ie they don’t make inspection or testing of electrical appliances a legal requirement, nor do they make it a legal requirement to undertake this annually).”
Source: http://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/faq-portable-appliance-testing.htm
Now we all agree Mac’s simply are very powerful and very capable of running multiple programs on it’s linux based os x. I had the desire to share all this music I have with others and what better way to do that then use shoutcast to broadcast my internet radio station.
Requirements:
Intel based Mac running OS X
A free account on shoutcast
Download Shoutcast DNAS for Mac (version I’m using is 1-24-2011) and extract it to the root of your user folder (so for example from root it would be /Users/yourusername/sc_serv2
Download Nicecast
iTunes or MegaSeg or Traktor (all will send music to Nicecast)
Installation:
The most complicated part of this process is installing and getting your shoutcast DNAS up and running but I believe we can get this done here.
Open Finder and under PLACES click on your username. On the right you should see that folder sc_serv2 where you extracted the files from the .zip you downloaded.
Find the file labled sc_serv_basic.conf and open that with textedit to edit the configuration inside. (It looks overwhelming but it’s not as bad as it appears)
Once you save the file, Still in Finder, click on Applications – Utilities – Terminal
type the following
./sc_serv sc_serv_basic.conf
Now if you open safari or firefox or whatever other internet browser you are using, type http://localhost:8000/index.html and press enter and you should see a screen showing the server is waiting for a stream which is where Nicecast comes into play. Launch Nicecast and click the menu item Window and select Show Server and fill in the required information. If you did it correctly, when you click on Start Broadcast your iTunes will launch and you just start playing a playlist or a song and this is sent to your server you verified was up and now your server is sending it to shoutcast. Verify by going back to http://localhost:8000/index.html and you will now see Stream #1 which you can click on and you should see the artist and song information.
Business as usual is very easy, setup your mixer, laptop, external drive, bose l1 series II or jbl EON515 speakers and you are pretty much a go.
Now when you are trying to reach everyone in a large area (say a football field or park) then things get difficult because the area is too large for the speakers on the main stage and you really don’t want people to go deaf by walking in front of the speakers trying to reach out the furthest reaches of the area.
So some solutions…
Many people use a wireless guitar pack which they run from the mixer to the wireless guitar pack (so your music is acting like the guitar) which sends the signal/music to the receiver which would normally be connected to the mixer to output the sound but in this case the receiver is plugged into to the speaker.
Downfall is you have to have this setup for each of your speakers which can start costing some serious money. Also you have a MAX range of 200′ (if you are lucky to get that), also the guitar packs you have connected to your mixer run on batteries which will last between 6-12 hours (depending on the model you get).
An alternative solution that I use in a low FM-Transmitter. As long as the transmit power is 3w or less then you are good. This covers more then 200′ (not be a whole lot) and the users could be listening to the radio and just tuning into the frequency you select which is not being used by anyone else. I plug a portable/compact radio into the speakers out in the distance via the headphone jack and now I’m amplifying my signal for everyone. This follows what Drive-In theaters use to get the sound to everyone’s car.
You can order a low powered FM Transmitter as a kit that you have to put together but it will only cost you about $300
If you would rather not build an FM Transmitter then it will run you about $1200 for the least expensive and reliable system I can find.
I suppose, stay tuned for the selection that is made but I am still leaning towards the FM Transmitter idea.. it just sounds cool.
So what do I use?
FM Transmitter in a kit called the (Drive-In Kit) which includes everything I need to broadcast the shows at a low power (so I meet the FCC requirements).
My first use of this was June 12th-13th at Civic Center Park in Madison Heights, Michigan at the Relay for Life Charity Event and it worked great.
