David Klann Talks About Using Open Source Software in Broadcast Radio (Video)

Tim Lord: David, what is community radio and how did you first get involved with that?

David Klann: Yeah, thats a great question. There are lots of different kinds of radio stations out there, the most common of course is the commercial radio station where they sell time. It is kind of like with Google the product is not the Gmail the product is youthe user. In radio, the product is the listener. And then theres public radio. In my home state, we have Wisconsin Public Radio, theres National Public Radio. And then theres community radio. Community radio stations are typically independent. They are typically run almost completely by volunteers. Ours has three part-time paid staff members, and the rest of the station is run by volunteers.

Tim: Tell everyone the name and the frequency of your community radio.

David: Oh sure. The radio station that I am associated with is WDRT. It is in the Driftless region of Wisconsin and we are on 91.9 FM and wdrt.org.

Tim: How big a radio does that actually take in?

David: Compared to some it is a small station. We are 480 watts and we cover about a 25-mile radius around the tower. So it is a pretty small geographic footprint but we like to think that we are making a huge impact in the community.

Tim: Running a radio station is a lot different from people doing person-to-person communication, as in HAM radio.

David: Yeah, right.

Tim: What are some of the complications? What are some of the equipment that you use for instance? How do you get a signal from soup to nuts, how do you actually put a signal out on an FM station?

David: Sure. I think the main thing is that the FCC is heavily involved. I think it is partly because these things are such high powered. Even at 500 watts we are far more powerful than a lot of HAM radio outfits and certainly more powerful than the old CB radios, more powerful than the cell network, individual radios on the cell network, I think partly because of the large power output and also because of the limited spectrum that was originally allocated for FM radio. Radio stations, unlike other over-the-air wireless communications, radio stations first of all, they are one way. It is all being sent out from a source. So at our stationand this is pretty typical of radio stationswe have all the input devices, microphones, turntables, tape players, CD players, computers, iPods, whatever people bring to the station, all that gets funneled through what we call the audio chain. At some point, right before it leaves the station, we digitize it, and we send it to two places: We send one half, not really half, but we send one copy of it up to the transmitter. We use a leased Ethernet line for that. And then we send another copy of it out to the stream on the internet. And so our internet stream, and our FM broadcast are identical. In the chain from the studio to the transmitter, youve have got an encoded piece of audio that gets sent up over the Ethernet. At the other end, at the transmitter end, it gets decodedit turns back into analog audio and then is sent to the transmitter just via coaxial cable.

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David Klann Talks About Using Open Source Software in Broadcast Radio (Video)