Guest blog post by Cash Newmann

I’ve seen a lot of posts on FM micro-transmitter systems, but they’re all lacking in this detail or that. For instance, a lot will say “make sure you’re using a low-pass filter”, but then don’t say how, or where to set it up in your gear chain, or specifically what adapters you need. I made this post to fill a void. This post includes details of ALL parts needed, links on where to order them, and how to set them up and configure them, as well as a lot of related information based on experience.

SCHEMATIC (not to scale) THAT SHOWS HOW TO SET IT ALL UP (click to enlarge)

DISCLAIMER:

I’ve experimented with the transmitters below, so this is from first-hand experience. But I did it on a boat, 200 miles from shore, in international waters. I do not own any of this gear, I sold it to some church folk at a gun show after I was done testing it. And I am not currently transmitting from my house or anywhere else. I’m just passing on information, in a theoretical capacity, for educational purposes only. Nothing here is legal advice, I am not a lawyer. I take no responsibility for anything you do or anything that happens as a result of doing anything listed below. ALL OF THIS IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT DO ANYTHING SHOWN HERE.

Firs question: WE HAVE THE INTERNET. WHO NEEDS RADIO?

Podcasting is cool, but radio can reach people who would never find a given podcast…those who are not Internet savvy, or even people who are who would just never find a particular podcast otherwise. People often channel-flip while driving (especially when stuck in traffic) and inexpensive low-power community radio can reach those folks, bringing them a voice of true liberty.

Besides, radio is fun. There’s a thrill you get from being in your car listening to something you put out without the nerding around of the Internet. Radio is low-tech and almost like magic. Other people who listen to your show will grok that thrill too.

Time was when non-profit groups in America could get a license for a community radio station of up to 100 watts, which can more than cover a large city or even a county. But a while back, the gub’mint sold out to a very small number of huge corporations who each own most of the radio and TV stations in every town. These government-backed monopolistic conglomerates fired all the DJs, replaced them with business dorks, kicked out the free thinkers, and riddled the shows with cheesy & ads, and “news” that only exists to drive horizontal enforcement of statism. That’s why every station in every town sounds the same, plays the same horrible music, and sounds like they choose what to play based on math and marketing and keeping people sheepish, rather than taking chances and making decisions based on taste.

In the USA, you can legally transmit on an open frequency if it’s basically not strong enough to reach past your yard and maybe your next-door neighbor’s yard. This is called Part 15 Broadcast. That name is based on the part of the document with all the damn rules. (They are rules, not laws. Laws can only be passed by Congress. These are rules written by bureaucrats who try to enforce them as if they’re laws.)

While the Part 15 limit is based on a number of factors, including transmitter output wattage, antenna size, antenna type and antenna height, basically if you’re broadcasting at 100 mW (1/10^th of a watt), you’re within the spirit of the law, which will usually keep you from getting hassled.

While using a radio transmitter on an unused frequency for community radio is a CLEAR natural right, as well as use of the First Amendment of The Constitution of the United States (that they are supposed to abide by), the pen-pusher fed goons don’t like it. They make part of their living selling permission slips to transmit, and rake in billions from this.

Also, there is a long tradition of transmitting freedom propaganda into occupied territory, such as the USA’s ongoing Radio Free Europe, which violated Soviet law to transmit into the USSR and into East Berlin during the Cold War. They still do this all over the world, while at the same time, preventing us from doing the same here, AND trying to regulate what we say and do on the Internet. The USA is now occupied territory….the Occupied States of America, with a cop on every corner, and no respect for Natural Rights or the Constitution. If the Occupied States of America thinks it’s their right, shouldn’t it be your right too?

While many citizens do run transmitters at 500 mW (or even much higher) for YEARS without getting in trouble, breaking the law is bad, um’kay? I’m not recommending you break any laws, even nanny laws! We have a social contract. Abide by it or society will degenerate into anarchy!

Many countries do not have the same draconian radio laws as the US (“land of the free”, my ass), so I’m gonna tell how they do it in other countries. DO NOT RUN A TRANSMITTER ABOVE 100 mW IN THE USA. YOU PROBABLY WOULDN’T GET IN TROUBLE IF YOU DID, BUT BE A GOOD BOY OR GIRL AND OBEY ALL LAWS! The social contract depends on it!

Here’s some good gear you’ll need to get started. Total price, $250:

$170 Transmitter with roof kit antenna:

Fail-Safe .5 W transmitter

Bundle Deal: Fail-Safe 0.5 W Long Range FM Transmitter + 1/4 Wave GP Antenna Kit. Includes 30 foot FREE BNC Male-to-male cable. Power settings able to change from 500 mW to 100 mW:

Disassembled 1/4 wave antenna as it comes from the manufacturer.

Close-up showing how to assemble the antenna.

Antenna set up in a house.

Controls on the transmitter.

The power cable on these is too short, like less than two feet. You may need an extension cord, but you probably already have one.

Low-pass filter.

$50 Ramsey FMLP1WT Broadcast FM Low Pass Filter (says “Kit”, but is already assembled):

Accessories you WILL NEED:

$8 StarTech BNCCOAXFM BNC to F Type Coaxial Adapter F/M

$8 StarTech BNCCOAXMF BNC to F Type Coaxial Adapter M/F

$9 Dual Shielded Coaxial Digital Audio Video Cable – F-Connector to F- Connector with Easy Twist Caps – (8 feet)

THINGS YOU WILL NEED BUT MAY ALREADY HAVE:

$8 Male-to-male stereo audio cable 3.5 mm to plug computer or iPod into transmitter.

Only use a stereo plug into the transmitter. A mono one will mechanically damage the female jack in the unit.

Computer or iPod to play your programs from.

SOME TIPS FOR PROPER USE:

NEVER power up your transmitter without a proper antenna attached! Powering up your transmitter without a proper antenna attached will damage the transmitter. Use a proper antenna only, or you will damage your transmitter. Both the short “rubber ducky” antenna (it looks like the antenna on a walkie-talkie) that comes with these transmitters, and the ¼ wave antenna listed, are proper antennas for all of the transmitters listed here.

NEVER run an FM radio receiver in the same room with the transmitter. Same house should be OK, but in the same room can harm the receiver. Running other electronics should be fine, but don’t run an FM radio receiver in the same room as the transmitter.

To adjust the power on these little Chinese transmitters from 500 mW (not legal in USA) to 100 mW (probably legal in USA, depending on your antenna and other factors), here’s all you need to do: Push in and hold the power-on button then plug in the power cord the LCD will read “H” (high, 500 mW). By using the frequency up & down buttons you can switch to “L” (low, 100 mW), then unplug the power cord, then plug it back in and power on and you are now broadcasting at low power.

Legally I have to recommend that you don’t turn the power up to 500 mW unless it’s the zombie apocalypse and you have to warn your neighbors of the threat. 100 mW can give you a range of less than a block (with rubber ducky antenna indoors) – what Dale Gribble on “King of the Hill” called “the most powerful station in the tri-yard area.” It can reach about two blocks in all directions (with rooftop ¼ wave antenna). 500 mW can reach about 4 blocks (with rubber ducky antenna indoors) and over a mile and a half to two miles with a rooftop ¼ wave antenna. (That’s line of site with the antenna. It more or less stops dead when it hits a big hill or a line of tall buildings.) In an urban area, two miles each way is 16 square miles which is is potentially 250,000 people who live within the broadcast area, plus many more who drive through (and may be stuck in traffic if you live near a freeway). One of these transmitters can cover a medium-sized college campus plus off campus areas where students hang out.

On the off chance you get a knock at your door, I would not let them in without a warrant, and one should stop transmitting. Do the same if you get a nastygram (cease-and-desist letter).

If you want to lower the chances of getting in trouble, you need to make sure you’re being a good neighbor to your fellow broadcasters (and to your neighbors. If you don’t follow all of this, you could even interfere with cell phones, wireless internet and ham radio operators near your house):

1. Pick an open frequency. Here’s a site that helps you find one if you’re in the USA, searching by zip code:

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/vacant

Once you’ve found a frequency, you may want to drive around just to verify it’s clean. “Stepping” on an existing broadcaster is a sure way to get a visit from the goons. Treat your fellow broadcasters as you would like to be treated!

2. MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE RUNNING THE LOW-PASS FILTER BETWEEN YOUR TRANSMITTER AND ANTENNA. Other than picking an open frequency, this is ABSOLUTELY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING I CAN TELL YOU. This prevents your transmitter from splattering itself all over different frequency multiples via “Harmonics”. Meaning, if you are operating a cheapie transmitter with no low-pass filter at 100MHz, then you are also broadcasting at 200MHz, 400MHz, and so on. This is NOT being a good neighbor, and you may be interfering with other communications on other bands even though 100MHz might have been a clear channel.

All the small made-in-China transmitters listed here are incredibly inexpensive, and represent a great leap in technology and price from any previous transmitters that can solidly hold on one station with no drift. They are cheap, but they do NOT have built-in low-pass filters, so you need to add one between the transmitter output and the antenna.

Here’s a good one that works (even though it kinda looks like a fish take filter):

It requires no external power and does not need adjusting. It has no polarity, so it doesn’t matter which side you connect the antenna into and which side you connect the transmitter output into. Use the low-pass filter even if you’re using the rubber ducky antenna, but ESPECIALLY if you’re using an external ¼ wave antenna.

3. Don’t have your audio output volume too high from the computer or iPod that’s running into the audio input of the transmitter. Check the volume of transmission on a car radio a block from your transmitter. It should be comparable with commercial stations. NEVER louder. Audio material with consistent dynamics, i.e. a close-to-even volume, is better to use than audio material with lots of dynamics.

Don’t use material with cussing, that’s what gets people shut down. The gub’mint doesn’t actively monitor the airwaves, they generally only act on complaints. If you’re not cussing and not interfering with another station (remember, pick and empty frequency and USE A LOW-PASS FILTER!) you’d likely be OK. The goons are mostly busy chasing down cell phone jammers these days anyway. The goons generally issue a cease-and-desist letter for the first few infractions, then threaten fines. They really don’t want anyone to take it to court, for fear it will make it to the Supreme Court and they might lose on First Amendment grounds, which would open a hornet’s nest for them, and spread a lot of liberty.

Using music by other artists might get you a copyright lawsuit. The best thing to transmit is either talk radio and music you produce, or talk radio and music produced by people who don’t mind if you broadcast it.

Tuning your antenna:

“Tuning” your antenna (adjusting the height) helps maximize transmission. You adjust it based on the frequency you’re transmitting at. The rubber ducky antenna is not tunable. But the ¼ wave antenna is, simply by making the top and the bottom (the radials) taller or shorter. Here is a link to a short PDF on how to tune it for all the different frequencies.

WHAT TO BROADCAST if you don’t have your own material, or enough to fill 24-7.

This podcast, the Freedom Feens

http://www.freedomfeens.com/

is the very best liberty podcast in the world. It’s funny, smart, has a large following, and is produced with very high audio quality, and with limited dynamics, which is perfect for radio. It’s also released copyright-free, Creative Commons, so it’s cool with them if you broadcast it. They’ve actually mentioned on their shows that they’re cool with people sharing it anywhere, any time.

Some Freedom Feens episodes have cussing. If you want only the non-cussing episodes, they’re all here on the Feens’ drone-proof bunker site in the Czech Republic:

http://www.freedomfeens.cz

Some of the newer episodes are also non-cussing, listen to find out.

Also good is the Liberty Radio Network’s streaming feed:

http://lrn.fm/flashplayer/player.php

LRN is like the libertarian/an-cap NPR, in that it’s 24/7 of well-produced, great and varied programming. And in that some people like to leave it on in the background all the time. But unlike NPR, LRN actually allows and encourages people to share is anywhere they’d like.

An easy way to start would be to run a mix of Freedom Feens and LRN.fm most of the day, and do a one-hour show yourself one hour a week and then expand to one hour a day or more. These transmitters do have a microphone jack, or you can pre-record your show and drop the MP3s into the random mix with other people’s episodes. Here’s a good, inexpensive microphone recommendation, for $9.

Here’s a blog post with information on better microphones (and mixers) if you want to spend the money.

RANGE

You’ll get greater range if you have a good ¼ wave antenna vs. the rubber ducky. And greater range if your antenna is properly tuned, and if you can get it up as high as possible. An antenna outside a house will have better range than an antenna inside a house. An antenna on top of the house is best, though it could attract attention.

Antenna on the roof of a garden shed. An actual “radio shack!”

System set up in a garden shed. And that’s not a gas can, that would be a bad idea near electronics. It’s weed killer.

Some people have been known to camouflage an antenna inside of PVC pipe, which does not attract as much attention on a roof as an antenna on a roof. This is because roofs, especially in cities, often have various tubes and pipes sticking out of them. The PVC will not cut down on transmission power, but will protect the antenna from the elements.

Rubber ducky antenna inside a PVC housing.

If you have to have it inside, an antenna in the upper floors or attic of a building is better than on a lower floor. An antenna in the basement is horrible. Near a window is better than not near a window. Inside a wooden house is better than in a brick house.

IMPORTANT NOTES -

LOCATION:

An ideal location is any populated area, especially near college dorms or a near a highway with slow rush-hour traffic.

PROMOTION:

Stickers with your frequency, city, and some symbol of what you do, or the name of your show. Best to be mysterious and symbolic, to keep squares from groking what you’re up to. I don’t recommend graffiti, but I’ve seen it done.

TRANSMITTER LONGEVITY:

If you run your transmitter 24/7, put a fan blowing on it.

MUSIC SOURCE:

iPods last about 12 hours, I don’t think they can be plugged in and run at the same time. You might want to run your media from a computer using iTunes or Windows Media Player or other player, set on random shuffle.

SAFETY:

I’d keep the antenna away from my head and pregnant women, but transmission health issues shouldn’t be much different from a cell phone. If you live in an area with a lot of lightning and you put the antenna on a high roof, you should have a lightning rod elsewhere on your house.

Some people run gear from a hidden public location or empty building and consider it expendable. Many people do this in the UK, and even leave a beer for the goon who finds it. They usually wipe all their fingerprints from the gear, though really motivated goons could probably locate the buyer based on serial numbers and credit card records. But hey, stuff get’s stolen. I suppose it’s possible that someone could actually file serial numbers off things, but I wouldn’t do it.

Do not use made up “call signs” (“KLSD”, “WEED”, etc.) You can name your show, but don’t give it alphabetical designations.

SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING TRANSMITTER:

Several people in different areas could chip in and buy a system, and each run it for a few months, then pass it on to the next in the group, in a rotation. This would reduce costs, and reduce issues with authorities.

OTHER NIFTY GEAR:

KIT OPTION FOR LOW-PASS FILTER:

Ramsey FMLP1WT Broadcast FM Low Pass Filter, as kit, saves 20 bucks if you’re good at soldering:

STRONGER TRANSMITTERS (for non-USA use). These all require an antenna, and the low-pass filter listed earlier:

$210 for a 1 W Fail-Safe Long Range FM Transmitter – TX-01S : Toggle from 0.1 W to 1.0 W Power Levels (ships without antenna) (range, 3 miles each way).

$240 Fail-Safe 5 Watt Professional Long Range FM Transmitter – TX-99A. (ships without antenna) (range, 6 miles each way).

$90 Fail-Safe 1/4 Wave Professional Grade Tunable Ground Plane Antenna (for transmitters that ship without an antenna):

25 foot male-to-male BNC cable (to go with the above antenna). $8.

Hope this post helps you in some way. Enjoy. Radio is plenty of fun for the whole family! Be safe, be legal, and ENJOY!

–Cash Newmann

Thanks to Ian F. for inspiration and a small bit of the content here that was borrowed from him. (The part about picking an open frequency, and the part about splattering harmonics).

Starving in the Company of Beautiful Women.

by Michael W. Dean.

My first novel. Buy the out-of-print paperback used on Amazon HERE.

Download the PDF HERE.

Here’s an interesting and accurate great bad review of the book:

STARVING IN THE COMPANY OF BEAUTIFUL WOMEN by Michael W. Dean; Kittyfeet Press, 2000

The author is a pretentious, rather dismal looking fellow who happens to have a probing self-awareness to the point of distraction. The book is a case study of Cash Newmann, a similarly pretentious antagonist cum “rock star.” His omnisexuality, his purposeful decadence, his inanity and his absolute self-righteousness portray someone we all know. How many of us can say we have known and even been fond of a person who’s a complete pain-in-the-ass? Author Dean puts this in the most certain terms.

Cash Newmann is a name-dropping music world nobody whose identity hinges on the fame and fortune of his band. His tale is one of heroin addiction, $8,000 royalty checks, and compulsive, conquest-ridden sex. The reader takes in his commonly dysfunctional upbringing, his forays into the punk rock scene in DC circa early 1980s, on to San Francisco, where he settles in the Haight.

“I pulled the half-smoked ciggy butt out of my pocket and lit it. I took a deep drag and thought about the politically correct lesbian who had taken me home and seduced me. I met her at the VD clinic. She smiled at me and she was alone. I said “Hi, come here often?”

It’s like this and it’s good. The fantasies the author lives through his pen are those of almost any post-punk music hack who had some singles and CDs out and about but was still taking in bottles for a pack of smokes and a quart of Miller. The drugs—heroin, coke, acid, whatever—are consumed with the familiar mixed-drink emotion of guilt and excitement. (“Gee, your heroin smells terrific”) The earnestness is scrapped only when the script—which is what it often reads as—turns to the half-baked lyrics that could only be written by someone without a touch of taste. Likewise off-putting are the thinly-veiled references to bands such as Flipper—referred to here as Fibber, and the Dead Kennedys—Red Kennedys; Dean also sprinkles in references to Leonard Cohen, Melvins, et. al. Cloying never read so good, though.

This is the stuff we read about now, things that many late thirties and early forties can relate to with ease and little regret. The people who were dumped on the way to whatever passes for adulthood are simply chapters that were never as serious as they seemed at the time.

This book is about perspective. Cash Newmann—a fictional character who carries more truth than even the self-absorbed author would know—has some and it’s contagious.

-Steve Miller

–

I also tried to make a film of this book, it was my first film project, ever. Here’s the trailer:

Regarding all the “How would the courts and policing work in LibPar (libertarian paradise)?” in many discussions I have, it comes down to the same arguments as “But who would take care of the roads without the government?” and “But who would feed grandma and starving children without the government?” ……

I’m really fond of something Stefan Molyneux said on this subject, I think it’s dead-on correct, better than anything else I’ve heard or come up with on my own, and it’s my new go-to argument in these situations….I’m paraphrasing, but it’s basically this:

Worrying about “How would it work” isn’t the real argument. The real argument is “Government is immoral, because government is based on aggression.” Dismissing a desire for the absence of government because of “How would it work?” is like someone in 1850 America saying “I’d like to get rid of slavery, but we can’t because the cotton won’t get picked.” No, you get rid of slavery because it’s the moral thing to do. Then the cotton gets picked anyway. People find a way.

I would add this: We don’t really KNOW how any of this would work in the absence of government, because they won’t let us try. They have a monopoly on all this stuff. I hate simplifying it to “the free market would take care of it”, but think about how computers were when only the government had them: they were slow, unreliable, required a team of scientists to run them, they cost millions of dollars and filled a building. Then the free market got a hold of computers, many great minds worked on them, and now the cheap iPhone that fits in your pocket is a far better computer then the giant government computers of 1955. Computers are the one major piece of technology that the government has had the least amount of monopoly involvement in. Cars haven’t advanced nearly that much, because the government so closely controls their production.

There is plenty of good conjecture of how cops and courts would work in LibPar, in fiction written by Heinlein or L. Neil Smith. But I think that worrying about the minutia of “how would it work?” is intellectual masturbation. It’s fun intellectual masturbation, and I’ve done a lot of it. But it’s not the really important thing.

The really important thing is teaching as many people as possible (especially young people) that all government is immoral, and teaching them why government is immoral (all nanny laws and all taxes are enforced with the threat of the gun and the cage, and you can’t opt out). That’s the basic nut of it. Once they get that, you can follow with examples of how things would work better without the government. But the moral argument is the most important part.

We need many more minds on the side of non-aggression before we can draw up the detailed blueprints for LibPar.

I only ever “debate” statists (including minarchists) if I think there’s a chance they may be statists only because of their schooling and that underneath they’re not. (Like I was.) If they cling to their statism, I don’t want to even be in the same room with them, let alone be in business with them. They are advocating theft, fraud and murder. I can’t hang with people like that.

I am not embarrassed that I was a “libertarian Republican” before becoming an anarchist. It allows me to speak to people who still believe in some state. It’s similar to how a recovering alcoholic does not hide his past, because it allows him to speak to the active drunk who’s still suffering and say “I’m not some doctor or priest or judge looking down at you, I AM you.”

Here’s is the quote from AA that would also apply to the statists you can’t reach with logic: “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.”

In short, I’m done yammering with people about “how would roads (defense/police/etc.) work without the government?”. If you really need to hear my opinion on it, there’s hours of me talking about it in the older episodes of Freedom Feens. But repeating myself is a waste of energy, especially with people who won’t accept the basic fact that, no matter what, they’re advocating theft, fraud and murder by defending ANY amount of state.

–Michael W. Dean

Anarchy Gumbo Podcast
Insomniac anarchist chat and chatter from Freedom Feen Michael W. Dean and a rotating cast of nifty guests

THE PRINCESS OF POT JODIE EMERY TALKS ABOUT THE PRINCE OF POT MARC EMERY AND MORE [ 45:33 | 41.76 MB ] Play in Popup | Download

JODIE EMERY, wife of incarcerated political prisoner MARC EMERY talks about censorship, 2 Live Crew, helping marijuana lobbyists in America and Canada, Marc’s arrest, life in federal prison, conjugal visits, how to help the marijuana re-legalization effort, Advice for Aspiring Activists, BC Marijuana Party, the DEA, all-issue activism vs. single-issue activism, Ron Paul, Canada’s conservative government, friendly fascism, Geo Prison, Health Canada, medical marijuana in Canada, marriage, love, and hope for the future in a troubled world.

LINKS:
Free Marc:
www.freemarc.ca

Prince of pot documentary:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5n2OY3nqVc

Cannabis Culture Magazine:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/

……From the viewpoint of the content provider.  Check the new improved Czech Feens URL, for our drone-proof non-US backup server:

http://www.freedomfeens.cz

You can even download the movie Guns and Weed the Road To Freedom there, FREE! It’s beyond the reach of US nanny laws, so should stay up even if we’re DRONED!

I started a new side-project, the Anarchy Gumbo Podcast. Middle-of-the-night chat and chatter with a rotating cast of cool folks.

Check out these three samples. It’s all the same 75-second chunk of a recent Freedom Feens episode. It’s a part with both Neema and myself talking, and some music, and DJ talking. Test with headphones if you can. Give us your thoughts, especially if the 96k and 64K ones sound good enough for weekly listening. The file size is smaller, we may be moving in that direction if people are cool with it.

128K-stereo.mp3 (NORMAL Feens encoding. File size: 1.2 megs.)

96K-stereo.mp3 (File size: 920 K, 2/3 of NORMAL Feens encoding.)

64K-stereo.mp3 (File size: 615 K, 1/2 of NORMAL Feens encoding.)

I tried mono encoding, but for some reason, in both
programs I tried, it was the same size of stereo
encoding at the same sample rate.

We’ve been thinking about a change for a while, but got this note today from Jimmald : “Michael & Neema: Your podcasts are great, but if I may offer some unbidden advice: stop worrying so much about ultra-high sound quality. Anybody who listens to FreedomFeens listens for the content, not for high-bandwidth sound. As long as I can hear what you’re saying, that’s great. Huge files take longer to download, are more pain to copy & store etc. It’s about the ideas, as well as the entertainment value, but c’mon, your voices are not such beautiful music that we need mega-fat bandwidth high quality audio.”
-=-=-=-
I wrote Neema,

I’ve been thinking about this. Our file sizes ARE huge. NO other podcasts use 128 k stereo files (except Garrett because I trained him.) I found our archived Sunday live show VERY listenable, and it was 128 k mono.

I’m thinking with all the care we use with mikeing and recording, maybe we don’t need to put out 100 meg files, and maybe we’d have even more listeners if the files were smaller. Also, if we started doing that now, if our audience doubled, we wouldn’t have to spend more on bandwidth. We’re spending like 70 bucks a month now.

I think I’d rather put up 128 k mono files than 64 k stereo files, which would both be the same size, half the size we’re doing now. Or maybe 96 k stereo files, which would be 2/3 the file size we’re using now.

What are your thoughts? I’ll feen source it too.
Maybe I’ll do some encoding and listening tests on my end.
MWD

Neema Vedadi and I do the Freedom Feens Live show. It streams live over the Internet, is on Ku-band free-to-air satellite radio throughout North America, and is on a couple of FM stations in New Hampshire. We have been doing a non-live podcast weekly for a year, but added the live show last week. It’s Sunday from 5-7 PM East Coast Time, and you can listen live, HERE.

Neema and I talk to each other and also wire into the New Hampshire servers with the program Mumble. Info on how to use and configure Mumble is HERE. We also record the show for our archives via Mumble. Mumble has a red button on it to bring up the recording interface:

Mumble puts the WAV files of the recording in your MyDocuments folder by default.

We have people call in to our show and talk with them live on the air. The first week, we DIY-rigged it by simply taping a telephone headset to a microphone, like this:

The problem with that, other than crappy sound quality, was the fact that while callers could hear me, and Neema and I could hear the callers, the callers could not hear Neema. That didn’t work well.

I tried getting a second headset, cutting the headset off, stripping the wires and soldering two plugs on the end, one for the microphone and one for the speakers. But when I plugged it into the mixer, it produced horrible squealing sounds, because the impedance did not match.

I talked to a friend who works at a radio station that has people call in. He told me the model number of the rack mount unit they use for callers. I looked it up, the units start at 900 dollars, and quickly go up in price from there.

Neema and I came up with a last ditch effort, and it WORKED. It not only worked, but worked well. Here’s a short MP3 if you wanna listen to our test. It’s Neema and I talking via Mumble, with my wife calling in on her cell phone from another room, and the whole thing was recorded by Mumble’s record feature.

Here’s how we did it: We got a Skype-To-Go phone number (a paid Skype number, 18 dollars for three months). A Skype-To-Go number is an actual ten-digit phone number that people can call in to from a cell phone or land line, but you receive it on your computer with Skype. You can even get a custom number in any state and almost any country for no extra charge, if you can find a number that’s not taken for the area code you want. I couldn’t find one that spells anything, so I simply got one in my area code that’s easy to remember.

I set up Skype on a second computer (not the one we’re using Mumble on, we tried that and it didn’t work). I used a small inexpensive netbook that doesn’t have a whole lot of processing power and it worked fine. I plugged both computers into my mixer. The Mumble computer connects via USB, and the Skype netbook connects via audio outputs. We use Skype with audio only, no video, for better bandwidth and audio quality.

Here are closeups of how I hooked the Skype computer up to the mixer (click image to enlarge):

Here’s a pulled-back photo showing my mixer settings:

One thing that’s hard to see is the buttons above the bottom right master volumes. The “2 Track To Mix” button is off (not pressed in). The “2 Track to Control Room” and “Mix Track to Control Room” are both on (pressed in).

IMPORTANT: If you don’t have an output on your mixer called “Control Room Out” (Or “Ctrl Room Out”), make sure that wherever you plug that plug is a LINE output, not a speaker or headphone output. Otherwise, at best, you’ll get horrible audio. And at worst, you’ll fry your Skype computer’s sound card.

My condenser microphone is going into channel 2 via XLR. The Skype computer’s audio out is going into channel 7 via a 1/8″ mono male jack with an adapter to a short 1/4″ mono male cable. Control Room Out is going back into the audio input of the Skype computer via a short 1/4″ mono male cable connected to a 1/8″ mono male jack. I’m listening to everything on headphones.

Here’s a sort of blurry photo of the whole setup:

The full-size laptop on the far left is running Mumble. The smaller netbook laptop to the right of that is running Skype. The mixer is just below the netbook. The large desktop computer on the far right is not connected to the mixer and is not doing any audio function, it’s on for Internet research during the show. (You could do this whole setup without the third computer if you didn’t need to do Internet research live.)

Neema, the other host on the podcast, is in a different state, using one computer to connect to me and New Hampshire via Mumble.

The people calling in only need a phone, not a computer. Though they could also call in via free Skype anywhere in the world, without a phone and without it costing them anything.

I have to accept the call via Skype when the person calls in, and disconnect when they’re done, using the mouse on the Netbook.

Hope that helped someone, and feel free to call in during our show and talk about liberty, anarchy, digital recording, cats, or anything. Again, it’s every Sunday from 5-7 PM East Coast Time. Live studio number: (307)-215-5171. Or via Skype to user name kittyfeet1

Please also see my related post, Mumble for encrypted Skype-like conversations. Also, read this article on how we do our uber-high-fidelity Wednesday non-live double-ender podcasts.
–Michael W. Dean

I’ve recently discovered a program called “Mumble” that’s great for chatting with friends. It’s like Skype, but more secure (according to everything I’ve read), and has much higher audio quality than Skype. It was invented by computer gamers so they can talk in groups while gaming across the miles.

Neema and I use Mumble for doing our live call-in radio show, since we’re in different states, and the satellite transmitter/streaming system is in a third state.

Download Mumble, HERE. (Click on the blue thing that says “Mumble Client”, not the red thing that says “SOFTWARE UPDATE REQUIRED”). Pick your operating system.

Install Mumble. Plug your microphone/headset into the computer, then go through the audio setup wizard.

Then open up Configure/Settings, and change things to these settings:

The only thing I’d recommend maybe doing differently is in the first screenshot, under Compression, where I have a Quality setting of 91 kb/sec….That’s because I live in Wyoming and my DSL is not the fastest. If you live in a big city with really fast DSL, set it all the way over to the right. If you have DSL that’s even slower than in Wyoming, set it a little lower than 91 kb/sec.

When click Server/Connect, you’ll get a list of servers, by country. Pick an empty server in your country (you can tell it’s empty if there are no numbers under “Users”). When you log on a server, you may get a a notification that says “this server certificate has expired, do you want to connect anyway?” Go ahead and connect.

You can log in and jump on to an empty server to test it out with a friend, but if the person who owns the server comes on, be polite and leave. What I did is set up my own server by clicking on the green “create a mumble server” link on the main Mumble page. It’s 4 dollars a month for up to ten users at a time (great for people who work in teams across the miles), and you can password protect it.

You can even record from within Mumble. Mumble has a red button on it to bring up the recording interface:

Mumble puts the WAV files of the recording in your MyDocuments folder by default.

Please read my related article, How to take phone calls on a live Internet or radio show.

Enjoy!

–Michael W. Dean

New Live call-in show, starting this Sunday, March 18

In addition to the usual weekly podcast, which comes out sometime between Tuesday and Thursday, the Feens are now doing a second weekly show on the Liberty Radio Network, and it’s LIVE! You can call in with your questions or comments.

Freedom Feens LIVE! expands on the Feens’ weekly Wednesday podcasts, but now they’re kicking the hornets’ nest live. Talk back to the back talkers every Sunday from 5-7 PM Eastern. Call in soon, before they get droned!

Live studio number: 765-27-FEENS.
(765-273-3367)

Calling is free from most phones, as most plans now include free long distance in the US. We’ll eventually be adding a Skype line for non-US listeners. Though if you have a paid Skype account, you can call our phone number on that in the meantime.

Live listen link is HERE.

Other internet and phone listening options are here.

Show Times in different US time zones:

5-7 PM Sunday Eastern time
4-6 PM Sunday Central time
3-5 PM Sunday Mountain time
2-5 PM Sunday West Coast time

Satellite (Free-to-Air)

You can also listen anywhere in North America via KU Satellite Radio. Galaxy 19, Transponder 11, 11929 MHz, Vertical Polarization, Symbol Rate: 22000 , SID: 16, ONID-TID: 3016.

Here’s our current coverage map.

Why pay monthly for satellite radio, when you can get Freedom Feens LIVE! and the rest of LRN.FM (and many other great and interesting shows and stations) on satellite for free? Audio quality is better than with Internet streaming. LRN.fm has launched 24-7 broadcast on Free-to-Air Ku-Band Satellite.

If you have a view of 97 degrees West in the southern sky in North America, you only need to get a Ku-band dish and Free-to-Air receiver, hook it up, and you’ve got LRN.FM (and a bunch of other channels) 24/7 with no subscription fees! (It also makes for a good audio source with which you can rebroadcast LRN on FM or AM!)

You can buy inexpensive KU Sattelite recievers and dishes HERE. Go here for a detailed signal map with minimum dish width for your location.