The main reason this is happening could be your connection to Loudcaster. If you cannot send the data fast enough your DJ Bot will kick in. You can do a few things to help pinpoint the problem and they are listed below:

1) We need your IP address. You can get it from http://www.whatismyip.com/ by opening that page form any computer on the network you are broadcasting from.

2) Download winmtr and configure it to analyze your Internet connection to whatever DJBot server they are broadcasting to. You need to run this for 90 minutes and then mail us the report, and it has to be run form the computer that is doing the broadcasting.

http://winmtr.net/download-winmtr/

Do these two steps and hopefully we can find something there.

What about that Google DNS trick? This was a huge problem for my station and even cost me listeners. I even changed I"SP's and what helped was the google DNS trick or you can use a VPN like Hotspot Shield. This changes the hops and with that you may avoid the bad one between you and Loudcaster. Problem with Hotspot Shield is being its FREE it sometimes disconnects. A few better ones are:

Cyberghost,BT Guard, Hidemyasspro,itshidden.com Not only will this help your station but may also keep prying eyes away from your IP address especially if you use Chat services (aka Yahoo,Skype,Paltalk). Yahoo has lots of hackers and the like in their chat rooms so it doesn't hurt to have anonymous Internet connections.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, Reaper. I'll do the reports.

TheLegacy -- what is the google dns trick?

Switching your DNS Server to Google's Public DNS. Their primary DNS is 8.8.8.8 and their alternative is 8.8.4.4.
How to change your DNS server can be found here:
http://www.mediacollege.com/computer/network/dns.html

Leave the obtain my IP address automatically checked.

Having the same problem right now and find it frustrating when the techs tell me I'm the only one having this problem. DJ Bot overrides my Megaseg broadcast making my station sound chaotic and unprofessional.

I have had the same problem forever, but I am told it's just me so I gave up live broadcasting as an option. I am hoping ver 2 will either fix that or vastly improve the playlist function.

I too have had it from time to time. One day I had almost 30 listeners and it done it and I lost a lot of them. I guess I'll monitor the Loudcaster side more heavily. I've noticed sharp listener drops and peaks suggesting something is not right. It seems to do this when I'm not always in the room. I also suggest every broadcaster get the fastest upload speed your ISP provides or that you can afford. I have Road Runner EXTREME!! With 5MB up and 30 down there should be no problem.

I still think Loudcaster should have a studio software using DTMF tones and the bot have a DTMF decoder. This is used in many commercial Radio simulcasts to cue the station to go back to original programming. The DTMF signal should have a 7-10 number and when a dj goes to turn off the broadcast the software blasts these 10 digits activating the DJ Bot. When you want to go live the same 10 digits are blasted and DJ Bot goes to sleep. If your stream is cut off for say 5 min the DJ Bot should kick in. Otherwise you get this chaos IMHO.

If you haven't done this before, run test #2 and send in the results or post them here.

1) We need your IP address. You can get it from http://www.whatismyip.com/ by opening that page form any computer on the network you are broadcasting from.

2) Download winmtr and configure it to analyze your Internet connection to whatever DJBot server they are broadcasting to. You need to run this for 90 minutes and then mail us the report, and it has to be run form the computer that is doing the broadcasting.

http://winmtr.net/download-winmtr/

If there is a bad hop between you and Loudcaster, then this is what will happen. If a bad hop is found you can notify your ISP and they can get to fixing it.

And not only this but I'll have to go DJ Bot. I really need to wipe most of my stuff from the bot as I've went more 70's up till 1983 and took out some songs that were overplayed on regular Radio from my Live programming.

Here is another suggestion: Allow for Beta test purposes a broadcaster to broadcast without the DJ Bot activated at all straight to the Shoutcast servers 32K AAC+ and the 64K Mp3 and the one for TuneIn. If no hickups then we know its the transcoder DJ Bot. I'm on Live365 as a backup and its humming right along. I done this cuz of audiophiles complaining that my station is too unstable for them. But again if we can do a straight broadcast then we can see.

If its the DJ Bot we'll have to iron the bugs out of it and then re release it. The concept is great don't get me wrong.

If you use a router/switch, read the documentation and get familiar with it. I know I can set mine to give priority bandwidth to certain programs.

@Rage, sorry for being so predictable ;-P. LOL

I did download that program and it could be a bad hop from what I saw I sent it into Brandon. FYI I had the Shoutcast server for my aac+ scream go down as I checked the log and it said "Source Disconnected" I did this when the listeners went from 15-0 in a second. I knew then something was weird.

I'm waiting to see what comes of this from there but I'll keep a look out.

It has been a long time since I attempted live. I gave up on it months ago, but I tried it again today. There has been a major improvement. I don't know what changed. I was actually able to stay live for an hour before the bot went crazy. It flipped back and forth between live and bot for around 5 minutes, but only stayed connected to one or the other for a few seconds. After about 5 minutes it would stay connected for about another 20 minutes then go haywire again. After about 2 hours it became hopeless and I quit.

I can play around with it because all the listeners prefer the playtheradio.com version of my station and the loudcaster version has 0 listeners. Probably because I can easily program PTR and can't on LC. I also have access to their shared music library.

I ran the WinMTR program and the results are below, but I don't know what any of it means.


|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| 10.62.192.1 - 2 | 1316 | 1294 | 4 | 667 | 1329 | 1133 |
| 76.167.11.141 - 2 | 1307 | 1283 | 4 | 659 | 1493 | 943 |
| 72.129.26.162 - 2 | 1317 | 1297 | 18 | 684 | 1366 | 1161 |
| agg24.lsanca4-cr01.socal.rr.com - 2 | 1329 | 1312 | 18 | 685 | 1380 | 1128 |
| 107.14.19.32 - 2 | 1307 | 1284 | 0 | 676 | 1356 | 1125 |
| ae-0-0.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com - 2 | 1336 | 1320 | 0 | 683 | 1458 | 1125 |
| TenGigabitEthernet4-2.ar4.LAX1.gblx.net - 2 | 1312 | 1292 | 0 | 692 | 1488 | 1129 |
| gblx.ash02-mls-dc-bdr-a.latisys.net - 2 | 1300 | 1283 | 0 | 748 | 1435 | 1132 |
| v909.ash01-mls-dc-dist-b.latisys.net - 2 | 1319 | 1305 | 77 | 742 | 1409 | 1200 |
| v944.ash01-mls-dc-dist-b.latisys.net - 2 | 1288 | 1267 | 0 | 738 | 1447 | 1122 |
| FASTSERV-GW-2.CX.PTPTECH.NET - 2 | 1309 | 1294 | 0 | 750 | 1539 | 1236 |
| 208.85.241.179 - 2 | 1305 | 1289 | 0 | 749 | 1598 | 1216 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

I have business internet and the up and down speeds are the same. Seems that if I can listen, I should be able to broadcast.

When the columns are lined up it is easier to understand:

WinMTR statistics
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
| 10.62.192.1 - 2 | 1316 | 1294 | 4 | 667 | 1329 | 1133 |
| 76.167.11.141 - 2 | 1307 | 1283 | 4 | 659 | 1493 | 943 |
| 72.129.26.162 - 2 | 1317 | 1297 | 18 | 684 | 1366 | 1161 |
| agg24.lsanca4-cr01.socal.rr.com - 2 | 1329 | 1312 | 18 | 685 | 1380 | 1128 |
| 107.14.19.32 - 2 | 1307 | 1284 | 0 | 676 | 1356 | 1125 |
| ae-0-0.pr0.lax00.tbone.rr.com - 2 | 1336 | 1320 | 0 | 683 | 1458 | 1125 |
TenGigabitEthernet4-2.ar4.LAX1.gblx.net 2 | 1312 | 1292 | 0 | 692 | 1488 | 1129 |
| gblx.ash02-mls-dc-bdr-a.latisys.net - 2 | 1300 | 1283 | 0 | 748 | 1435 | 1132 |
| v909.ash01-mls-dc-dist-b.latisys.net - 2 | 1319 | 1305 | 77 | 742 | 1409 | 1200 |
| v944.ash01-mls-dc-dist-b.latisys.net - 2 | 1288 | 1267 | 0 | 738 | 1447 | 1122 |
| FASTSERV-GW-2.CX.PTPTECH.NET - 2 | 1309 | 1294 | 0 | 750 | 1539 | 1236 |
| 208.85.241.179 - 2 | 1305 | 1289 | 0 | 749 | 1598 | 1216 |

This tells us you have 2% packet loss. The columns that say "Average" "Worst" "Best" are your transfer times in ms. The lower the number the better.

I ran the program from my laptop and you will see a huge difference in ping times. Packet loss is skewed because I only ran the test for 10 minutes.

Host	%	Sent	Recv	Best	Avrg	Wrst	Last
192.168.1.1	0	711	711	1	1	126	1
192.168.1.1	6	594	562	7	10	118	9
crr01dlthmn-tge-0-0-0-5.dlth.mn.charter.com	6	590	557	0	10	94	10
crr02stcdmn-tge-0-3-0-3.stcd.mn.charter.com	10	526	478	15	22	43	26
bbr01stcdmn-tge-0-3-0-2.stcd.mn.charter.com	7	567	529	0	19	56	19
bbr02chcgil-tge-0-1-0-10.chcg.il.charter.com	13	482	423	0	33	50	36
prr01chcgil-tge-2-3.chcg.il.charter.com	11	509	457	0	33	73	38
be-10-805-pe01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net	10	515	464	0	28	50	25
pos-2-5-0-0-cr01.350ecermak.il.ibone.comcast.net	8	554	514	0	33	51	33
pos-4-7-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net	20	400	321	0	50	66	61
pos-0-12-0-0-cr01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net	31	324	226	0	55	67	54
pos-0-3-0-0-pe01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net	21	392	311	0	51	200	50
comcast.ash02-mls-dc-bdr-b.latisys.net	16	443	375	0	52	171	48
v910.ash01-mls-dc-dist-a.latisys.net	14	465	401	0	51	104	60
v942.ash01-mls-dc-dist-b.latisys.net	17	434	363	0	53	285	50
FASTSERV-GW-2.CX.PTPTECH.NET	29	335	240	0	52	191	49
208.85.241.179	1	710	708	47	51	118	51

My ping times are averaging 50ms which is pretty good. If you use "Export HTML to Clipboard" the report will use a table and align the report accordingly.

I learned nothing from your response except that my columns don't line up.

Your report displays that your average ping is 700ms, mine is 50ms (I am in Minnesota using Charter Cable Internet). The lower number is the better. That could be where your problem with your live broadcast lies. If you have a high latency, your broadcast will be dropping all the time. I would contact your ISP and mention this to them. Even send them the report for evidence. They can try to fix latency issues if they are made aware of them.

Your ping times are high right from your computer, which makes me ask what type of network set up you are using and if it's set up correctly.

Jack, the first network hop on your report shows 1% of the data was lost. That's the radio between the data that was sent and received. That's enough to kink up a live broadcast. The IP address, 10.62.192.1, is something on your home network, perhaps your router. That data loss issue needs to be addressed if you want to broadcast live. It could be for many reasons. A bad cable, outdated software on the router, problems on your broadcasting computer.

I know Lynksys routers seem to cause problems at least for me. Before I switched to Time Warner's extreme Internet I had to switch my router to a Belkin router and things worked better. I'd suggest switching to something like that. Now for me I'm using Time Warner's Moden/Router combo and it sure makes it nice.

I'm not trying to promote file sharing, but due to the fact that broadcaster's require incoming and out goung TCP/IP connections (incomming if you use stats relays) read p2p forms about which routers work best for p2p and then buy a router they suggest. You'll read issues with Lynksys but they suggest also D-Link or gaming routers. This is because gamers require incoming TCP/IP as well as outgoing TCT/IP connections.

You may have to port forward to your server's port for example:

127.0.0.1:8030 your port your using is 8030 so you need to port forward SAM Broadcaster to 8030. You should demilitarize your broadcast computer. You'll need to go into the admin of your router and find which port your coming in on example 192.168.100.x where x is your computer. Hope this helps.

As I have mentioned in the past, I have no problem streaming to my CentovaCast server.

Loudcaster is a great service and I expect it will be much better after the new version is online, but it has never been ideal for me. Loudcity would be more ideal if it were not full, thanks to Randall Krausse.

I understand that you can't fix my problem and you can't program for every individual so I have to solve it myself and I believe I have found the solution in streamlicensing. With streamlicensing I will be able to move back to the CentovaCast server in November.

No ill feelings on my part, but I have to be pragmatic and go with what works for me.

Thanks for your efforts.

Jack, Loudcity is not closed anymore, and you can sign up there.

Jack, one thing we did in the new system was boost the server side cache a bit. Sometimes that can compensate for a connection with data-loss, but the root of the problem needs to be fixed.

Last I knew Centova cast did not have an automatic switch between a live and auto-dj broadcast. If they did I'd suspect you'd hear the flip-flop between the two modes when data flow at the source stops and re-starts.

Best wishes though. Whatever works, go with it.

@jack if you want to go with your own Shoutcast host which could be tricky if you don't spend time making sure its dedicated you could use http://streamlicensing.com but I did the math and it would cost more than Loudcaster does. They claim to pay SoundEX and others but again this could be an offshoot of swcast.net under an assumed website and name.

@Brandon: I'm interested to know on Loudcaster 2 will your output ip's change as I'm on iTunes and such change would have to be sent to iTunes so I can still be listed. I'm using the 32K AAC+ server for the iTunes listeners.

I bet V2 will be better however we'll just stick around and see.