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.

Howard Stern revealed to Sirius listeners on Thursday that he’s been approached by terrestrial radio about a possible return.

Stern is in the final year of a five-year, $500 million contract with the satellite radio giant.

In an interview with “Bubba The Love Sponge” – a fellow shock jock who moved to Sirius and has since returned to terrestrial airwaves — Stern said he’s been contacted by several “regular” radio executives, but has not received a “bona fide” offer yet.

“I actually have an offer,” Stern said. “Well, not a bona fide offer, but people have been making them.”

It doesn’t sound like he’s ruling a return to terrestrial radio out, although it might also be pure shock jock posturing in a contract year. Late last year, Sirius chief executive Mel Karmazin said he expected as much from Stern in 2010.

Stern did not reveal which terrestrial radio stations had approached him, but said, “I can’t ever imagine the day where I’d work for Clear Channel.”

The nation’s largest radio conglomerate once dropped Stern’s terrestrial radio broadcast in six markets because of “indecency.”