World Radio

Cool Idea Dick :)

I played with it and when I forwarded to the next song I got this error message

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TeeGee attached the following image:

Dick, can you add the Raggae and dub playlist, too? Thanks :)

Yes, that should be possible... I noticed it is lacking a jazz channel just as well, will add those shortly :)
BTW, if you spot any countries that are not located on the map correctly (red dot appearing in the top left corner of the radio image), please do me a favor and note down the countries you spotted, I must admit I didnt bother to locate all 192 possible countries yet, I think hungary is still un-located, bet theres some more :)

Reggae Radio playing :) Thanks!

Two small things that maybe could be added, but not crucial:
1 - can the name of the song be displayed too?
2 - if possible a volume adjustment knob? Even better would be some sort of automatic volume control that would raise all the quiet songs to the same level as the average. That would stop us having to adjust the volume all the time.

no problem :)
Title display can be added, tho it doesn't really fit the old school look of the radio to have a title displayed :) It could be opened in some info bubble (like the one opening when you hover over the wl-sticker on the radio) on hovering on the tracks ID... no big issue to add that.

Automatic volume is a completely different ballgame and would require some sort of average volume analysis on tracks - any automatism to do that would require a lot of server power (=cost), and might fail badly - as a sound engineer, thoughts of applying auto-gain / general compression on everything do not really feel good.
Of course, the issue is valid...
adding a volume handler is the smallest problem - but I'm affraid I cant offer more than that a this time.

However, when creating an album, I could basicly add the option to let the album creator adjust each tracks playback volume individually to smoothen the effect you are noticing - this would not effect the downloadable files volume, but would handle the volume differences as the tracks are played back on WL, which is only a semi-good solution.
Will have to investigate the matter sometime...

Info bubble for title, and maybe the description text would be perfect.

Also, if there were a way to get to the song from the radio that would be good too. For instance, I heard a song and liked it and wanted to explore it further (see the tree, download, whatever) but could not get there.

Volume - I only started to be aware of that since I started listening to playlists some months ago. I do try to get the volume level up when recording/uploading.

Regarding the volume, going to compress/gain tracks might indeed not be viable. Sorry if I talk bollox because I haven't got a clue. The problem is not tracks that are too loud, it is the quiet ones that are a problem. There is this volume bar we already have which lowers and raises the volume pretty easy. So if the volume bar would be set standard on half, and automatically go a bit higher when it recognises a quiet track would do the trick. How do you recognise a quiet track? I can see by the wave form if a track is going to be low on volume, surely there is a way of using the wave form to analyse the volume? By the amount of "white background"? I am sure you can find a creative solution :)

my friend, you seem to have unlimited trust in my genius abilities :D
I'll find out... some day :)

"unlimited trust in my genius abilities" - exactly! You ARE a genius even if the volume thing does not happen in the end :)

Dick,

I think the World Radio is fantastic. My only suggestion is that it should be featured more prominently on the site homepage. As it is you have to go looking for it. As a new user or visitor, I would think the radio would be a great introduction to Wikiloops.

And one last thing. I think that the rule of the World Radio that at least 3 musicians must be involved in a track (I think this is the rule?) should apply to all the other categories (rock, heavy metal etc...) to eliminate obvious working tracks etc....thanks great work

RP

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Hey rp,
the presentation of the radio on the startpage is something that definetly needs to happen - and I'll have another look at the filtering / selection algos of the named "other" channels some time, there is definetly room for improvement :)