Television and Radio |

What do you need to set up an Internet radio station?

• CD player
• Ripper software (copies audio tracks from a CD onto a computer’s hard drive)
• Assorted recording and editing software
• Microphones
• Audio mixer
• Outboard audio gear (equalizer, compressor, etc.)
• Digital audio card
• Dedicated computer with encoder software
• Streaming media server

Getting audio over the Internet is pretty simple:

1. The audio enters the Internet broadcaster’s encoding computer through a sound card.
2. The encoder system translates the audio from the sound card into streaming format. The encoder samples the incoming audio and compresses the information so it can be sent over the Internet.
3. The compressed audio is sent to the server, which has a high bandwidth connection to the Internet.
4. The server sends the audio data stream over the Internet to the player software or plug-in on the listener’s computer. The plug-in translates the audio data stream from the server and translates it into the sound heard by the listener.

There are two ways to deliver audio over the Internet: downloads or streaming media. In downloads, an audio file is stored on the user’s computer. Compressed formats like MP3 are the most popular form of audio downloads, but any type of audio file can be delivered through a Web or FTP site. Streaming audio is not stored, but only played. It is a continuous broadcast that works through three software packages: the encoder, the server and the player. The encoder converts audio content into a streaming format, the server makes it available over the Internet and the player retrieves the content. For a live broadcast, the encoder and streamer work together in real-time. An audio feed runs to the sound card of a computer running the encoder software at the broadcast location and the stream is uploaded to the streaming server. Since that requires a large amount of computing resources, the streaming server must be a dedicated server.

Some people know what they want and try really hard to get it,” says TV on the Radio multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek. “We’d rather write a song about robots fucking.” This oddball aesthetic is apparent on the band’s debut CD, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, a cool collage of electronic fuzz, jazz skronk, doo-wop vocals and dark pop.

The group’s mishmash of styles can be credited, in part, to singer Tunde Adebimpe’s unusual upbringing. Adebimpe spent several years of his childhood in Nigeria, where his father worked as a social worker. “We’d listen to Fela Kuti, and Indian and Pakistani music,” he says. “I remember getting a copy of the Beach Boys’ Smile and not being able to wrap my head around it. I loved it, but I was just like, ‘Is it music?’ ” After high school, Adebimpe moved to New York to pursue a filmmaking career. He rented a room in Brooklyn with Sitek, who was selling acrylic paintings and producing local bands such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars.

“He was a weird motherfucker,” Sitek says of Adebimpe. “There was no question we were gonna do something together.” The two made some demos, took their name from a friend’s random suggestion and set out gigging after adding Kyp Malone as another noisemaker (the band recently added a drummer and a bassist for its live shows).

TVOTR recorded much of Desperate Youth by improvising for hours, then picking out the best parts. Unable to play an instrument, Adebimpe used a pedal that allowed him to sing over his own beat-boxing. But for its entire chaotic sprawl, the album is still a coherent paean to youthful confusion.

Despite the band’s surprise success, Sitek claims TVOTR don’t plan on getting more professional. “We don’t have the attention span to find the ‘right’ way of doing things,” Sitek says. “And we’re highly susceptible to caffeine.”