Recording Howard Stern

[mahogany]

I am away at work when Howard Stern is on. Will I be able to program this product to record Howard Stern, when I am away, so I can download it into my Ipod and listen to it the next day?

 

[PhuckNut]

I am away at work when Howard Stern is on. Will I be able to program this product to record Howard Stern, when I am away, so I can download it into my Ipod and listen to it the next day?

I am currently doing this on XM for Opie and Anthony. I set the TT software to record the channel for the original Air time and I also record their replay of that days show (just incase there was a glitch or poor sat signal) and then when I get home, I delete the commercials/breaks that I do not need and grab the content and add it to my MP3 player and I am set for the next days commute.

I see no reason why there would be any difference for the Sirius/Stern situation. I currently have TT to split the tracks - so that when the display changes, the tracks get split up and this helps with getting rid of commercials/random bits/announcements. (the commercials are like 4 to 30 second peices so the file sizes are easy to pick out against a 20-40 minutes show break.)

Sometimes, if I notice a specific commercial gets played over and over, I place it into the KILL list, when this feature is turned on, the KILL list tells TimeTrax to NOT RECORD that peice when the display has certain keywords you set in it. So you can place the text from the commercials into this and not have to record them either.

Hope this helps. Maybe some stern fans that curently have this running can tell you what his channel does now so that this either works or not works. Its soo simple I cannot see what it would not be work.

 

[dkieffer]

Ditto everything from PN. We are also working on releasing a special Howard Stern config file that will help you set-up a standard set of parameters to get the show. I don't have an ETA on it, but it is in process now.

David K.
Time Trax

 

[willh3]

Ditto everything from PN. We are also working on releasing a special Howard Stern config file that will help you set-up a standard set of parameters to get the show. I don't have an ETA on it, but it is in process now.
David K.
Time Trax

Hi David,

Is there any news on the Howard Stern config file?

Thanks.

 

[dkieffer]

We are still waiting on some details about times and format. We are not going to have something out as originally planned by the 9th.

I hope that people can start posting settings that they are going to use here so that we can all compare notes, etc.

David K.

 

[wtrfrdbob]

it seems to me that a simple method of rejecting commercials is to go into config. and set tt to not record anything less than one minute or so...i do that with regular xm song recording and it works fine

 

[toenut]

With Sal working the Artist/Track info, I don't see a reliable way to cut out the commercials. He is just changing the info randomly most of the time. I woke up this morning to 50 different tracks . I think I'm going to not split the tracks as long as Sal is in charge of the track info.

 

[cmaier]

what are you guys using for bit rate/format? i recorded the first 2 days at 128 stereo mp3 and am hearing quite a bit of echo. though it may be in the feed (given my relatively poor satellite reception) and not the encoding.

Tonight i'll probably try higher bit rate.

Also want to set up windows scheduler to launch timetrax just before the show and to send a taskkill /IM timetrax.exe after the show, but i'm a little nervous about start-up - sometimes it fails to see the radio, though i think taskkill will solve it - when it doesn't see the radio it seems to be because when i exit the normal way it sometimes leaves the process hanging around, and the next time i start the old process interferes with the new one.

 

[ChuckNoblett]

96Kbps Stereo mp3.

Turn off perfect track, split track and that crap. That just introduces reliability problems, I've found.

One thing they badly need is a file splice option. E.g., I want to record 5 hours of Stern's show, but I'd like each file broken into 30 minute segments.

As far as I can tell, it can't do that now.

 

[cmaier]

yeah, i turned all that stuff off. i get one 5.5 hour file (i record long since on the radio he sometimes went over.)

 

[ChuckNoblett]

I just need the thing to be able to do a simple splice of the long recording into either 20 minute or 30 minute files. I do this easily right now with the free recording software I used for FM radio stuff.

That way, I could take the sections of the Stern show that have aleady recorded with me to work in the morning.

It also makes fast forward and rewind easier on mp3 players with shorter files.

 

[cmaier]

ff/rw seem to work great on an ipod, fwiw. I wrote a cgi script to package it up into a podcast (on my internal server) so itunes automatically finds it, marks it as "resume from stop," and copies it into the library and onto my ipod in the morning. I'm lucky - i leave the house after 8 so it's ready to go when i leave.

Main advantage of small chunks to me is that tt is so unstable that the chances of it dying 4 hours into the show and me losing the whole thing seem pretty high. Luckily the show is on several times a day...

 

[liveswithmom]

I had a problem when trying to record Stern with nothing getting recorded. I dropped my Minimum Song Length to: NONE and my Maximum Song Length to: UNLIMITED. This worked, but now when I get my MP3 files the display alphabetically. I had setup the file format to "%n\%g\%c - %t\%a - %s - %d"; however, the track number does not display and the datetimestamp is <blank>.

What settings are people using to record Stern? Mine works, but it is kind of worthless to listen to the show alphabetically...

 

[PhuckNut]

I had a problem when trying to record Stern with nothing getting recorded. I dropped my Minimum Song Length to: NONE and my Maximum Song Length to: UNLIMITED. This worked, but now when I get my MP3 files the display alphabetically. I had setup the file format to "%n\%g\%c - %t\%a - %s - %d"; however, the track number does not display and the datetimestamp is <blank>.
What settings are people using to record Stern? Mine works, but it is kind of worthless to listen to the show alphabetically...

I thought %n was the counter (track counter in order of recordings)? This would create a directory for every track no?

My current settings for O&A are " datestamp-channel\Number - Artist - song " This allows the individual recordings for the channels to be listed in the directory.

when I get home I will check this again and post....

 

[*mad_professor*]

I turned my minimum song lenght to none and maximum to unlimited. (since I made this change, My TT has worked consistantly for 3 days with no Blue Screen problems)

Put the file name format as %d\%n-%a - %s. This will create a new folder with the date/time and then track numbers followed by artist and song titles.

It works perfectly for Howard since they don't follow the artist and song format and they randomly put what they want. The %n keeps everything in order.

 

[hometheaterman]

What time is Howard on can I set it to record those times? I hadn't listened to Howard until tonight I listened to a re-run I hadn't had time before this. I wouldn't mind setting it to record him.

 

[charper1]

M-F
6a-11a ET

 

[cyphonix]

I've been recording O&A on XM since 6/1/05. My settings for Stern are a bit different... I spent the past week tweaking the settings to get everything right...
I schedule the show to record in two 2.5-hour halves (more on that below). With Sal going crazy on the pad data (PDT), "split trax" ended up fracturing the show into 97 pieces on Tuesday. The thing about that was having .1-.5 second drop-outs every time the file & display data changed.

When attempting to record as one big file (Wednesday) (44.1k, stereo, WAV), the file got corrupted (missing header) [CONTENT DELETED BY MODERATOR]

I record it off the connect radio as WAV, touch up the files (imperfect start/end times) with Goldwave, then compress the files as 256k mp3s. After perfecting the levels, etc. The result sounds FANTASTIC.

[MODERATOR COMMENTS]
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[PhuckNut]

I've been recording O&A on XM since 6/1/05. My settings for Stern are a bit different... I spent the past week tweaking the settings to get everything right...
I schedule the show to record in two 2.5-hour halves (more on that below). With Sal going crazy on the pad data (PDT), "split trax" ended up fracturing the show into 97 pieces on Tuesday. The thing about that was having .1-.5 second drop-outs every time the file & display data changed.
When attempting to record as one big file (Wednesday) (44.1k, stereo, WAV), the file got corrupted (missing header) -- Does anyone happen to have Wednesday's show to trade/allow me to download?? So I seemingly hit some sort of 3G spool/file limit. PLEASE private-message me if you'd be willing to give me a copy/trade for O&A or trade for another day of Howard. Thanks!
I record it off the connect radio as WAV, touch up the files (imperfect start/end times) with Goldwave, then compress the files as 256k mp3s. After perfecting the levels, etc. The result sounds FANTASTIC.

This sounds like a whole lotta work to just grab this file... Plus, its mostly talk, you really need the encode to be 256K?? I doubt the stream from Sirius is even close to the 128k ....

As long as you have the COUNTER set to handle the breaks you would have the order, If they are changing the PDT data that much, well, you are gonna end up with drops.

My recommendation would be to ENCODE STRAIGHT from TT to the 192K bit rate inorder to avoid the xGB file size limit - seperate the files later... I HATE fast forwarding. Thank GOD O&A don't do that crazy crap with their data

 

[cyphonix]

Recording O&A is easier, as they typically only change the PDT data when going to commercials.

The reason for going to WAV is that they remain in a lossless, editable format. I actually burn all of the WAVs out to DVD before compressing them. I also cleanup the start/end of the shows, too.

So far, I haven't had any problems with cutting the show in half. Each file is ~1.5Gig.

I know 256k is overkill, but I've standardized my entire library on it... Just in case I want to play any of them back on a large sound system.