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Studio and Receiver
NOT Cable consists of two programs, and that is all of it. Studio is the side that broadcasts, Receiver is the side that plays. One space has one Studio, and as many Receivers as there are points to give sound.
Studio#
Studio is the side that runs the broadcast. It runs on a single machine and does the following.
- Drives the playlist and moves from track to track without a break.
- Runs the audio through the broadcast chain before it reaches the network. See Audio processing for detail.
- Produces the shared clock. Studio is the clock master and every receiver follows it.
- Finds the receivers on the network, lists them and gives each one its own settings.
- Can put the audio arriving at the machine's sound card straight on air. See Studio input.
Studio is a broadcast engine, not a music player. Settings change, the track list is edited and receivers come and go without interrupting the broadcast.
Receiver#
Receiver is the side that plays. One is installed at each point and it has a single job: join the broadcast, lock to the shared clock and play each packet when its moment arrives.
A Receiver needs no screen, keyboard or mouse while it runs. On startup it finds the Studio by itself, with no address to type in.
A Receiver holds its lock through all of the following.
- A track change. The new track arrives as a new stream, but the clock is the same one.
- A long silence on air. The clock keeps flowing independently of audio.
- A change in stream format.
Which one goes where#
| Role | Typical hardware | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Studio | The office or back-room computer | Must stay on |
| Receiver | Small board, old laptop, mini PC | Next to the speaker |
Studio does not need to be a powerful machine, but it does need to stay on. It drives the broadcast and it produces the clock.
Load on the receiver side is deliberately low. What goes onto the network is already processed audio, and no further audio processing happens at the receiver. A palm-sized board and a strong computer produce the same sound.
The audio path#
On the Studio side audio is processed at 48 kHz in stereo. Output goes through WASAPI on Windows and through ALSA on Linux and small boards.
For a first install, set the default Windows output device to 48 kHz stereo. A device sitting at a different rate can stay silent on the first attempt.