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SmartSound
This page was last updated on
Wednesday, 16 June 2010 04:13:26 PM
We are unable to support this wonderful product on win
95, 98, ME, 2000, 2003, XP
It was originally designed for Win 3.1 / Dos application systems
SmartSound does virtually
everything you want a stand-alone radio station to do.
Advertising , Sweepers, Features, Music, News, Time Calls, Back
Announcements, Station Ids, Tourist Announcements, Interviews,
Pre-Announcements, On This Day, Automatic Greeting, Weather Forecasts,
Community Announcements, Automatic Date Announcements
Music
SmartSound can run for four
years without playing the same music in the same order.
You can have both
high-rotation music categories, and low-rotation. With low
rotation, music from the main playlist will play in a given
hour only once in 40 weeks! You normally store all the music
you need on one computer hard disc costing only $600 or so.
SmartSound allows you to
program the hourly flow of your music. You can start your
hour with a particular category of music. Have particular
categories on the quarter hours. And have all your music
categories play in order the order you choose each hour.
You can, of course, change
the music format each hour if you wish.
Some stations use SmartSound
for a solid music format, with wall-to-wall music each hour.
Others run with only a few music tracks each hour.
You can record different
back announcements and pre-announcements. The computer
chooses which one it will play, so that the same piece of
music isn't always followed by the same back announcement.
Advertising
The SmartSound advertising
format is quite flexible. You can run two, four, six, or
twelve commercial breaks an hour. Advertisements can run any
length, without any special programming required to
compensate for longer or shorter ads. if you accidentally
make an advertisement two seconds too long, it won't cut off
the end!
SmartSound runs up to 1000
advertisements a day, spread equally over all time zones. You
can have preferred position advertisements in the breakfast
session. And you can even give your advertisers a list of
when their advertisements will go to air.
If you have less than the
maximum number of ads, SmartSound automatically adjusts
itself to play less commercials per break and/or less
commercial breaks.
Simple set up
SmartSound automatically
schedules every item for you. You don't waste any time
setting up daily or weekly schedules.
It has a one-step set-up
procedure, which saves you considerable time. When you record
an item (music, an advertisement, etc) you give it a play
number. And that play number automatically decides when it
will play and how often it will play. It's that simple!
Automatic time
calls
SmartSound has the simplest
possible system of automatic time calls. You don't need to
record a separate time call for each minute of the day.
SmartSound has one announcer comment giving the hour and
another comment give the minute past (or to) the hour. It
joins them together to give the time. This makes recording
time calls a lot quicker- and saves storage space on your
computer.
You can adjust SmartSound to
automatically play 200, 400 or 600 time calls a week. Once
you set the number, it schedules them for you - and it even
gives YOU more time calls in the breakfast session.
Automatic date
calls
One narrowest operator has
set up SmartSound to run for a year untouched - except for
changing advertisements. The station even gives listeners the
date. SmartSound's automatic date announcements help keep the
station sounding like its operating live.
The date announcements, like
the time calls, join the various elements of the date
together automatically. So the announcer can say, "Today
is Thursday, the 12th of February. I'm enjoying myself, 1
hope you are too. Let's have more music." And those
comments could have been recorded a year ago I
You can have up to 1 000
different announcer comments to run after the date call.
They're all prerecorded and you're audience won't know.
Automatic
greetings
If you have a limited
audience (a-small town, or an ethnic audience) you can record
up to 1 000 different greetings to individuals or families.
These will play in rotation over, say, a month. And then
they'll play again, but in different time slots. It makes
your station personal, helping your target audience identify
more with your station. Once you set up the automatic
greetings, you don't have to touch it again for months - or
years.
Station IDs
SmartSound can run with up
to 50 different station IDs, some high rotation, some low.
You can have specific IDs that play before specific music
categories. There are IDs for each announcer, which
automatically play only when that announcer is on air. And
there are IDs for "commercial free zones" which
automatically play only when you switch off your commercials.
Most IDs play in the same
time slot only five times a year - which keeps your IDs
sounding fresher for longer.
You can adjust how often IDs
go to air.
Automatic apology
If there is a power failure
and your station goes off air, SmartSound automatically
apologises when power is restored. After the power failure,
it automatically goes to the correct year, correct month,
correct week, correct day and correct half hour in its
four-year programming cycle. Then it plays a different music
mix up to the half hour and then resumes normal scheduled
programming. You can buy automated radio programs for
$250,000 which won't do that!
Automated news
SmartSound's news service is
extremely efficient. Newsreaders do not need to write their
stories. They can simply record them one at a time into the
computer - ad-libbing or reading from notes, newspapers, or a
news service.
You can have high-rotation
and low-rotation news stories. You can have two different
versions of each story.
SmartSound will play the
news in a different order with a different mix of stories
each hour or half hour.
An experienced operator can
produce the news for seven breakfast news bulletins in 30
minutes.
Pre-recorded
features
SmartSound has up to six
banks of prerecorded repeating features with up to 50
features in each bank. Each time they're played, the features
go to air in a different time slot. So the effort you put
into recording a feature isn't just used once.
In a music-based program,
you can run these features as often as every 15 minutes, or
as little as once every 90 minutes. Several stations use
Smartsound for a features-based format. One has 500 features,
with one running before each piece of music.
Four-hour repeat
One station uses SmartSound
to run tourist information in four-hour repeating cycles.
(This is to conform to its ABA opinion for tourist
operation.) In this mode, SmartSound will create a totally
new four hour cycle each time for the next four hours. Before
SmartSound, the station spent 12 hours a week recording three
lots of four-hour tapes. Now its weekly set-up time has been
reduced to a few minutes.
Low-cost operation
SmartSound sounds very good.
Listeners would never guess it's automated. Yet everything
about it is low cost. One operator could set up your entire
week's program in four or eight hours. Or you could set it up
to run untouched for months.
SmartSound will rim on a
normal home computer. Or you can buy specialised broadcast
equipment designed specifically for SmartSound. Either way,
the cost to automate your station is incredibly small.
SmartSound can revolutionise
radio. It has been set up on both FM and AM stations and it
works very well on both.
Above all, SmartSound is
practical. It's not some theoretical idea of how automation
should work. We developed it to run our own radio stations.
And since we had on-air staff who had never used computers
before, it had to be simple and practical.
We improved SmartSound each
week for more than a year to perfect it. And now, at last,
it's available to you.
Other features
SmartSound has a host of
other features not mentioned in this brochure. Traffic
reports, weather forecasts, announcer chats, live breaks in
your automation, tourist information, album of the week, and
daily (or hourly) information diaries, to name some. Write,
phone, or fax for more details.
SmartSound is right for you.
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