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Here is a recent article from Radio World that you might find interesting: https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/news-makers/broadcasters-need-to-do-better-with-visual-displaysI entirely agree with this article. The message is as follows: if you want your radio station to survive the following years, forget about obsolete scrolling PS and start to use RT+. The PS is a part of your brand, it's not a children's playground. I would also like to add a message to car radio manufacturers to finally implement the RDS2 logo reception. We offer all this functionality for many years, incl. our budget products.
This is possible only with another hardware. We have also offered these devices in the past but later we decided to take a different path. The Windows software always provides more functions at lower costs and easier setup, that effect is getting stronger with number of frequencies in the network. As the economic situation of many FM stations is worsening, there are increasing demands on how the radio station presents itself, incl. the RDS utilization - programme announcements, ads etc. The broadcast automation systems usually provide only basic set of RDS features which is insuficient, so some kind of specialized RDS automation software is needed.Thanks for the detailed reply. I don't want to depend on a Windows PC and application to keep RDS operating. Sending directly to the device using UDP is working, so I will continue with that configuration.
The RT+ group selector is implemented to avoid potential conflicts with other ODA applications in large broadcast networks. If you feed the RDS encoder from the broadcast automation only, the RT+ group selection requires no attention from your side. The receiver always gets information about correct group. There's no "native" RT+ group.I understand there is no "native" RT+ group, I meant the device "natively" supporting 12A in addition to the existing 11A/13A.
Such feature is supported, the P164 can hold text messages in non-volatile memory in the XCMD format, i.e. with the RT+ information:Thanks, I will use it to alternate between RT+ tags artist/title from automation and stationname.short/stationname.long.
https://pira.cz/forum/index.php?topic=531.msg1659;topicseen#msg1659
The encoder switches between RT1 (broadcast automation or other source) and RT2 (from the non-volatile memory).
On the other hand if you use the PS field corretly (that means static), you probably do not need to send the StationName.Short field.
I know that it is recommended to have Magic RDS 4 running 24/7 to handle multiple inputs to the P164, however that is undesirable for several reasons. I prefer to send metadata directly from automation to the P164. I currently have the P164 configured for UDP which works well, however I would like to also be able to connect and monitor the P164 using RDS Spy built-in to Magic RDS 4 while still allowing for the metadata to continue flowing. Is it possible for an enhancement to allow two IP simultaneous IP connections (both TCP, both UDP, or one TCP and one UDP)?This is possible only with another hardware. We have also offered these devices in the past but later we decided to take a different path. The Windows software always provides more functions at lower costs and easier setup, that effect is getting stronger with number of frequencies in the network. As the economic situation of many FM stations is worsening, there are increasing demands on how the radio station presents itself, incl. the RDS utilization - programme announcements, ads etc. The broadcast automation systems usually provide only basic set of RDS features which is insuficient, so some kind of specialized RDS automation software is needed.
I would like to configure RT+ in Group 12A instead of 11A or 13A. I know this can be done manually using user-defined groups, but please consider supporting group 12A natively for RT+.The RT+ group selector is implemented to avoid potential conflicts with other ODA applications in large broadcast networks. If you feed the RDS encoder from the broadcast automation only, the RT+ group selection requires no attention from your side. The receiver always gets information about correct group. There's no "native" RT+ group.
In the U.S., NRSC Guideline G300-A https://www.nrscstandards.org/standards-and-guidelines/documents/archive/nrsc-g300-a.pdf published in 2014 states the following on page 11: "... it is recommended that receiver manufacturers decode the RadioText Plus (RT+) StationName.Short field in place of back-calculating the call sign using PI codes". For this reason it would be very useful if the StationName.Short (and StationName.Long) field could be saved in non-volatile memory so that they don't need to be sent regularly.Such feature is supported, the P164 can hold text messages in non-volatile memory in the XCMD format, i.e. with the RT+ information:
I configured automation to send an XCMD containing the "short" tag along with the artist and title but I don't ever see it being transmitted. The XCMD that I am sending is "XCMD=<rds><item><dest>3</dest><text><artist>Artist</artist> - <title>Title</title></text><short>Slogan</short></item></rds>".The RT+ specification allows two tags at maximum per one text. The third tag is automatically removed by the encoder. Decision is made upon the tag priority as given in the XCMD specification.
As others have mentioned in the forum it would be useful if the RDS Injection could be configured in percentage. Please consider for a future enhancement.I would like that too. Or kHz even more. Unfortunately, the MPX is characterized by peak to peak voltage. Conversion characteristic of voltage to FM deviation differs accross various broadcast equipment. Our encoders are made to work with all of them so the level setup is made in the voltage units.
