The Polyglot Radio Jock

by Heimskringla

Radio Automation Software with Speech Support for Win32.

Download Free Version Now!

Contents:

General Description:

  • The Polyglot Radio Jock is a radio automation software application for the Microsoft Windows platform (2k/XP/Vista/7 etc.)

  • The program includes Text-To-Speech support (Microsoft SAPI4), that will allow you to program spoken comments, such as song and artist presentations, of already played songs as well as songs coming up. The synthesized voices, that can be mixed from several languages, can also give time and date in a natural fashion, tell jokes or any other custom message.

  • You can mix songs, jingles, ads, id's and spoken comments etc in many fashions, that you customize yourself to your own liking.

  • You can program thousands of songs to play in Automatic Mode, exactly the way you want, in the order you want. This can be done either in a general way, based on different attributes set for each song and for any user-defined timeslot, or you can make any number of play lists or "clocks" for any hour of the week, or a combination of both. Cross-fade/overlap times can be programmed generally or individually etc. 

  • You can insert ads, jingles, id's, etc. at any given time and/or on a rotation basis. Ads will be forced to play even in Manual Mode, without interrupting the song that is playing, nor the DJ presentation.

  • The user interface can be changed between several different languages, and can easily be customized by the administrator. Currently included interface languages are: 

    • English

    • Spanish

    • Swedish

    • Soon: German

  • As more interface languages become available, you can easily include them by a small download. You can also make any changes to the captions at your own discretion, and you can submit more languages to this site, for others to download!

  • In Manual Mode you can play any song in the database, or any song on a hard disk or CD-ROM drive, or from a network drive, etc.

  • A "song", "ad" etc. can be any sound file, in a huge variety of formats, such as mp3, mp2, mp1, wma, wav, cda, mid, mod, au, aiff, snd, ogg etc. The database supports ID3 tags, versions 1, 1.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4.

  • The user interface can be set to secure mode, that is, you can block the normal user from making any modifications to the configuration, or enter in the general Windows surrounding. The administrator can, in this case, enter with a password in order to make changes to the configuration or the Windows system.

  • You can manage various settings and database profiles, which you can save to and load from a disk drive or a floppy or other medium. This makes it easy to administrate the lists and settings remotely, with or without a network connection!

  • All movements can be logged to tab-limited text-files, which can be easily viewed in any spreadsheet application.

  • You can also export the song-list to a tab-limited text-file for viewing in a spreadsheet application.

  • Supports two soundcards, one used for Public Address, and the other one for pre-listening and cueing.

  • Written in Visual Basic 6 for ultra-high stability.

System Requirements:

  • PC with Microsoft Windows installed (2000, XP, Vista, 7). Make sure you install the latest service packs and security updates.

  • 1 or 2 soundcards. At least one of them (for public address) should be of good quality and converting by up-sampling rather than down-sampling. (The Sound Blaster Live soundcards fulfill this specification.) The other one (optional, for pre-listening) may be simpler, even an older one or on-board.

  • VB6 runtimes (free download) (normally included in supported Windows versions)

  • Winamp 5.1 or better (free download) (Limited support for Winamp 2.95)

For the speech support:

  • Microsoft Speech API 4 (SAPI4) (free download) (~800 KB exe), or

  • Microsoft Speech control panel (recommended) (free download). (~900 KB exe)
    Includes SAPI4, so you don't have to install both. 

  • Microsoft US English voices, Mary, Mike and Sam for SAPI4 (free download) (~7 MB)

    Other recommended downloads:

  • Lernout & Hauspie TTS3000 engines in additional languages are supported.
    (These are free downloads, ~2-3 MB each)

    British English ; Dutch ; French ; German ; Italian

    Japanese ; Korean ; Portuguese ; Russian ; Spanish

    Note: do not use the American English L&H TruVoice. If you have the latter installed, uninstall it, and install or reinstall the Microsoft Mary, Mike and Sam TTS engine.

  • Additional language speech files from different vendors. They are not tested here. Here are a few examples:

  • TweakUI for 2000 (free download) and for XP (free download). With this one you can easily disable the autoplay function for CD-audio and CD-ROM, so they don't start to play until you call upon them from the program.

  • Plugins for Winamp (free download) to suit your needs, such as line-in sampler, CD-reader for digital extraction, etc.

  • Webcast tools from oddsock.org. If you want to transmit on the internet with Shoutcast or Icecast, then download the standalone version of Edcast. (free download) (~3300 KB).

Available Versions:

  • Full, Free Version.
    (Updated 6 April 2009) 
    Version number: 0.999.88 Full. This is the full, unrestricted version. Ideal for commercial or communitary radio stations, churches, supermarkets, etc. Also great for home or parties. This is currently freeware.

  • Download Free Version Installer (Polyglot_setup.exe 1274 KB)

This screenshot represents The Polyglot Radio Jock main window.
User interface language is English.
Windows version is Windows XP in Spanish.

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Heimskringla Software is used by Radio Pirata 99.9 FM, Managua, Nicaragua