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General feedback/questions about Parades (and Music)

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Cairyn:

--- Quote from: Cubitus on 07.09.2014, 10:36:26 ---True, but this is all well regulated by law and not as expensive as we may think.
--- End quote ---

Uh, wouldn't bet on it with all the news about festivals, events, and even music joints threatened by GEMA fee increases and such.

BluePaw:
there are a good number of models of mobile speakers with okey lasting batteries.
just connect a smart phone^^
the parade was something like 30min long?
you don't even need fully charged batteries for that, even less so drawing cables for power supplies.
and i don't think 2k ppl would crash the 3G/4G/Telecom networks as badly as not being able to receive music (at least never seen this problem in Sweden), you don't really need the highest quality either.
it's gonna be for temporary entertainment, not for a fine musical show, some beats and people will dance^^
so 64k or something usual like that, if you take DI-radio (American streamed music with tons of different genres) as an example of band-width needs at least.
i walk around for hours, several times per week some months during summer at the local zoo listening to this, with a monthly limit of 1gb data on my phone, and no problems there either.
and taking something like a small band-width stream from the hotel network would not be as trubblesome? (this though i actually don't know much about).
but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff :P

MOW:

--- Quote from: BluePaw on 10.09.2014, 20:25:25 ---but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff :P
--- End quote ---

The problem is not so much to play something but rather to synchronize all the devices.
If they just connect to a vlc stream, the time the music starts to play depends on the device's buffer size, wifi/3G signal strength, and wlan congestion, so it'd be worse than everybody just trying to hit "play" on a local file at the same time.

Fineas:

--- Quote from: MOW on 11.09.2014, 21:17:23 ---
--- Quote from: BluePaw on 10.09.2014, 20:25:25 ---but from what i can remember, softwares such as winamp or VLC have streaming capabilities in themselves. or just ask someone that have dedicated stuff :P
--- End quote ---

The problem is not so much to play something but rather to synchronize all the devices.
If they just connect to a vlc stream, the time the music starts to play depends on the device's buffer size, wifi/3G signal strength, and wlan congestion, so it'd be worse than everybody just trying to hit "play" on a local file at the same time.

--- End quote ---

Let me attest to that.

Yes this is a real problem. I would normally say you just time code / time sync devices that are told at what time they should play something.
Unfortunately, most or almost all mobile devices these days (smartphone, tablet, mp3 player etc) do not have a real time clock.
They all operate on variable CPU clock speeds and try to determine the time from that while running NTP all the time to try and get closer to the 'actual time'.

Shoutcast even without this problem for some reason can go askew for more then a full minute over a day of play from the actual broadcasted stream because it apparently buffers up and adds like... 2 ms empty spaces every so much time to give itself time to make it work.

The only devices I have heard of that can actually synchronize playing a source of multiple sources of audio is a good old radio (FM/AM)
And these new Sonos speakers seam to do a very good job which are digital as far as I can tell, but have a limited range.

I can not attest to digital radio, but I think that the decoding procedure is so well done by a single chip it will probably perform the same as an ordinary radio.

So the only practical thing I can think of is for someone to carry a 'boombox' radio or speaker and just keep it at 1 or 2 speakers, working on the same line out from a phone/mp3 player or Bluetooth.

But what are we trying to solve here? Was their something wrong with the marching band?
I personally really like it and I would love them to have some variation from year to year.
I would even vote to have it as a default thing for upcoming years. (not for me to decide, but it would just be neat)


--- Quote ---I learnt the marching band was a cool new thing. My impression was: "Great music in the front row - and a bunch of cool fursuiters sneaking behind silently".. a little like a funeral (just happier outfits :-)

--- End quote ---

I guess only the 'local radio station' playing a playlist and then multiple radio's along the road would be sort of an option.
I would opt for a separate fund raiser to pay any fees or some sort of commercial agreement on which they can use the EF name on their station to do a 60 minute music run.

Anything else is just to hard to coordinate:
- The public frequencies are 2.4ghz and 5ghz and have a limited output strength else you already need a license.
- As far as I can find their are no radio's that work on that frequent so you would need to end up solder/program your own stuff to use it.
    - Or agree with portophone quality audio. In which case we could technical reserve a channel on the EF radio network and play it from their but... really... that doesn't sound so appealing to me personally.
- Using FM radio with our own transmitter, you need to buy or rent: a frequency, get a transmission license, rent radio broadcast equipment etc etc

I could give IceCast a go to see if that doesn't have that lagging problem and maybe their are other protocols that are really simple that I can just set up a very small buffer and can get a guaranteed smooth audio output (as long as their is a signal and a connection with the audio source) and it doesn't lag behind more then 2ms maybe 5ms max. (which is already very hearable)

The other option would be is to ignore the offset problem completely and put speakers so far apart that you can't hear them between the 2.
Just let them play in places like the rotunda, leave the lobby in front of the dealers den empty, but play music at the dealers den. Something like that.

But then we haven't touched the whole musical licensing problem. If people bring their own radios that's their decision.
If EF provides it and blasts away music all over the place we need a license.

And I can't figure it out completely, but I guess you can give this GEMA fee calculator (German) a go:
https://online.gema.de/aidaos/index.faces

Ralesk:

--- Quote from: Fineas on 12.09.2014, 11:06:20 ---But what are we trying to solve here? Was their something wrong with the marching band?
I personally really like it and I would love them to have some variation from year to year.
I would even vote to have it as a default thing for upcoming years. (not for me to decide, but it would just be neat)

--- End quote ---

Absolutely.

As for anything wrong with it — well, to also address Cheetah's concerns about a cacophony: They couldn't be heard too far back.   I'd guess having some music for the back half or third of the parade wouldn't cause trouble with the front third (who can sort of hear the marching band).  Especially if the route stays the same, it'll be a very long snake like it was now.

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