`Great for live shows as well!

[Janus24]

First of all: great idea of @garybaldy72uk to start this forum section.
Now, after exploring RDJ for a few months, I've started producing live shows and found this is the time to share my experience.

My set-up (in short):
- Windows 10 machine (Intel Core i7 + 16GB RAM)
- Music library on network drive (NAS)
- RadioDJ v2.0.4.5
- AKAI APC Mini MK2, a MIDI controller allowing me to easily control most playback functions in RDJ without mouse or keyboard.
- very basic 8-channel mixer, BUT with USB audio interface, allowing digital audio I/O via USB (mixer is seen as a soundcard in Windows)
- Proper microphone
- Thimeo StereoTool, software to process/encode/stream
- VB-AUDIO Virtual Cable, virtual device driver for routing processed audio to a recording software

I'm producing shows with presentation. I produce and stream one live show to a local station (they put it on cable, FM, and the internet), and pre-record a weekly show for another station; I aim to do the latter in one take to prevent editing afterwards. I do NOT use the recording feature in RDJ as I run the output signal of my mixer thru StereoTool for processing. Besides, RDJ currently only supports 128kbps MP3 for recording.

I'm using RDJ as playout software. For my shows I prepare a playlist (including jingles, sweepers, promos), and pretty much stick to it. I've loaded some carts to play name/program shouts when nee3ded.

On the MIDI controller, I've configured part of the pads to control main player, aux players, to start a bunch of carts (instant player) as well as enable/disable AutoPlay. During the show I might disable AutoPlay during a track if I want to talk afterwards, or enable AutoPlay in case I want to play 2 tracks (with or without station ID) back to back.

This whole setup runs rather nice and allows making live radio shows or pre-record them (in the latter case I use Audacity or something similar to record the processed signal from the Virtual Cable 'device').

I consider RDJ a great software for playout (or non-stop playing) of music. I haven't extensively tested the working of events or more complex rotations yet, as I don't need them right now. RadioDJ really does the job for me.

Great stuff!