Here’s a rundown on broadcasting equipment. Basically, there are four parts, the audio system, the radio frequency system, the automation system and the other bits.
The automation system is one or more computers which will contain our library of bits and pieces to play on the air. Also, there is software which helps in scheduling the bits and pieces so that you don’t hear the same stuff often and other stuff never. The automation system interfaces with the audio system through a sound card. The computer itself doesn’t require a lot of horsepower but it is good to have business-type redundancies like disk drive mirroring or RAID.
The audio system consists of one or more microphones, a sound board or mixer, and probably a sound processing device to do compression and/or automatic gain (volume) control. The processing device makes sure all of the stuff that comes out over the air is at about the same volume level (more or less) so that listeners don’t have to twiddle with the volume control all the time.
The radio frequency system consists of a transmitter, an antenna, and a piece of coax cable to hook the two together. Audio from the audio processor goes into the transmitter. The transmitter produces the radio signal which goes out to the airwaves through the antenna.
The “other bits” is a bit complicated.
The FCC requires all radio stations, no matter how big or how small, to participate in the EAS/CAP system. This is that emergency broadcast system which you may have heard, the one with the funny tones and the “..if this were an actual emergency you would have been informed where to tune in your area for more information…” An EAS/CAP box monitors the signals of other broadcast stations and relays the emergency message. The CAP part monitors a FEMA web site for emergency messages. So yes, all radio stations have to have Internet access or a good reason why not. Believe it or not, the purpose of the EAS/CAP system is to allow the President of the United States to send out an emergency message over all broadcast media, like if we were being attacked or something. Yes, the government can flip a switch and talk to you out of every radio and TV in the nation! But it has never been used for that, so far. Mostly it is used for severe weather warnings and such.
We want to get an optional box called an RDS Encoder. RDS is that little display in your car radio which can show the name of the station and the name of the currently playing song. We would like to use that to show the Title and Author of the work being played.
I don’t think we will need any special box for the internet streaming side of our operation. The audio feeding into the transmitter will also go into a computer (either the automation computer or another one) and be encoded and sent to the streaming service provider.
Finally, we will have a “monitor” radio, which is just an FM receiver to listen to our own signal. That way we can tell if the transmitter breaks or something.