APRIL 5, 2008 - NEW HIGH-QUALITY OGG/VORBIS INTERNET-STREAMS OPENED

Dear Listeners,

New era has arrived again in technology, computering, networking and audio quality!
The oldest original streaming technology called "RealAudio" has lost its popularity
and gone too much commercial and annoying to the listeners. Now there's also better
audio fidelity offered by more progressive newer compression/streaming technologies
like OGG/Vorbis which performs more effectively and more naturally than other lossy
audio-packaging formats known today (among them mp3, wma, and of course realaudio).
& another good reason to go with OGG/Vorbis is its free open-source non-proprietary
nature. So it was easy to make a decision for us... And so now we have finished the
setup of new OGG/Vorbis streamer "IceS2" and broadcasting server "IceCast2" to work
in connection with our own original track playing scripts and track data MySQL base
plus also with the current realaudio encoder-streamer located in separate computer.

We decided to set up two independent OGG/Vorbis streams, a higher quality (192 kbps
which equals to 256 kbps usual mp3 files) one for listeners having 256 kbps or more
ADSL or any other broadband connection and another stream (45 kbps) for those users
having ISDN or modem connection (but at least 56 kbps modem is necessary still). In
addition to ensure the best quality we use VariableBitRate(VBR) encoding technology
too. However there's a fine progress also on information side of the things - every
song title, artist and record label is now visible directly on media players screen
in real time! But still for more additional information about every track we invite
you to our station's web homepage where all that information is displayed as it has
been during last two-and-half years. Also we will continue with realaudio streaming
some time from now, hopefully as long as possible. But someday we will take it down
because of costs and economics.

More exact details about our new audiostreams and also several good recommendations
for client players to use can be found on the new created webpage "listen HowTo" on
our station website here - the link is just at the bottom of the main index page!

Stay tuned!




        NOVEMBER 7, 2005 - ABOUT THE ALBUMS AND TRACKS (TOTAL 22,000 JUST NOW)

Dear Listeners,

There's just exactly 22,000 tracks available in our digitalized music library today
which is the best effort we were able to do in ripping the original recordings onto
computer hard disk storage unit. This was two months day-by-day work using the best
audio ripping technology with multiple readings and then the data comparison, error
corrections,etc. All that with non-compressed (WAV) audio file format can guarantee
the best sound archived. Of course we did not took any actions with audio restoring
of older noisy CDs,we did not want to change the sound of original mixing/mastering
efforts. The only exceptions were some vinyl LPs where we manually edited most loud
cracks and skips out off.

But these 22,000 tracks you can listen now is much more than ever before in history
of BGR108 station. We have many badly manufactured or time-degraded CDs or CDs with
cracks, deformations from mail. Our conventional CDplayers were unable to read them
but using the worldfamous powerful EAC (ExactAudioCopy) software and numerous tries
with it we finally succeeded with ripping all CDs but one (which had very bad crack
so the 8 last songs were omitted there). Yes, that process was very time-consuming,
sometimes many hours for just one problematic disc! But not only CDs and (few) CDRs
were our task. Additionally we recorded tracks from some vinyls and rare tapes into
storage. Most of these recordings you have never heard before on BGR108's automated
international internet stream!

Also, at the present moment we have not any tracks filtrated off. So you can random
listen everything now! Sorry for some weird cuts among them and sorry for some very
far-from-bluegrass tracks (but there's not much such ones). We sure will start with
selecting off them but this would take a long time, step by step, just when we hear
them playing. But we do not plan to switch off the mostly acoustic roots music cuts
as they ideally serve like good variations for making the programming more colorful
and so they can put up the real bluegrass cuts in extremely good shine! But there's
also one more good side in it - Previously we were unable to air such over-the-edge
albums in full, so they were totally out of the playlist. But now when playing just
individual tracks is possible, they fit just relatively well in. Also the christmas
music would stay on playlist from now until the end of the year.

Stay tuned!




        NOVEMBER 4, 2005 - MAJOR TECHNOLOGY UPGRADE COMPLETED (BASIC VERSION)!

Dear Listeners,

We have completed building up and debugging our basic set of features now. The best
part of it is the on-line playing song display,of course. We syncronized it as much
as possible and the unique refreshing system must guarantee that you see the actual
playing song in every way you reach the page. In example if you had loaded the page
in middle of the song. Of course the actual buffering time can vary in every player
but we hope that information change is still correct within couple of seconds or so
in most cases. We also added several additional information columns for every album
like original label and number, cdr, tape/vinyl, disc#, country (if not USA), year,
compilation, year-of-origin, live, gospel, christmas.

The second major subsystem is created for generating the back-playlist now. In fact
you can access backwards all of the played songs on day-by-day basis using the very
handy small dynamic calendar on log#4 page. We also hope that the colorizing of the
playlist makes it comfortable to browse. Additionally, you can click on every album
number (our database number) and get the full tracklist of the album! But note that
all the times in the playlist are GMT+2 hrs (winter) or GMT+3 hrs (summer). This is
7 hours earlier than the clocks in the heart of original bluegrass region ;) Length
of the song (min:sec) displayed on main page on-line window is always correct as it
is calculated "on fly" from the song file, not inserted manually into database (the
song lengths printed on CDs and booklets are very often incorrect).

The station people have many ways to flexible intermission in the usual random play
mode. We can submit individual songs, full albums or complete precompiled playlists
for playing immediately (after the current playing song ends) or for playing in the
exact time in future. Even the repeating playlist mode is possible. Additionally we
can justify also the random play by creating multipliers for albums or songs needed
more airplay than others. Or just block some individual songs or albums out. Yes it
needs long time to create all this list information but in principle it is just one
simple txtfile. But sorry, we decided not to give these possibilities for listeners
because of 1) some tech security reasons, 2) unintentional spamming, 3) intentional
spamming, 4) other misuse reasons. But maybe some day later.

Still, we are very happy our hardware (storage, 3 special servers, rented webserver
plus all of the original software) has lived well over all of the initial tests. We
pray for that same reliability also in the future,although you must still agree for
some occassional mostly short breaks in sound, streaming or the internet connection
caused by various tech, maintenance or human reasons here or there at net provider.
Also there's couple or more days in year when our powerline electricity company can
let us without the voltage supply ;) And there may be unforeseen situations too. We
aren't so rich here to build up complete full hotrunning backup spare copy of every
thing. Also, the storage hard disks may fail whenever. But we have RAID5 for single
disc failure recovery, although replacing the disc makes a longer pause still. Also
we have a second full HDDbackup of the music plus original CDs as the third backup.

Stay tuned!




        OCTOBER 25, 2005 - MAJOR TECHNOLOGY UPGRADE ACTIVATED (BETA TEST)!

Dear Listeners,

Since April 1997 we have used Pioneer PD-F25 FileType 25CD changer playing original
uncompressed compact discs directly to our local transmitter. A few years later the
same player was installed for international non-stop music-only extra feed over the
Internet in RealAudio format. But as you also probably have noticed, that CD player
has lately weared out totally and messing the songs with skips. So it was needed to
take some action... We decided to move on totally new contemporary technology basis
utilizing hard disc computer storage system. It took some months to copy all 22,000
songs to the HDD but now it's here - 735 GigaBytes of music, original sound quality
without any compressing, just wav-files! Hold on 4 x 320 GB HDD RAID-5 storage unit
attached to a special storage server playing wav-files to RealEncoder computer unit
which is sending the RealAudio stream to the RealServer unit installed at netcenter

So it's all started now. But it's in early Beta step, so please be patient, there's
more functionality to come in nearest days or weeks. Currently we can just play the
individual songs in total random order. Yes, that's pure random choice of all 22000
titles! No exceptions. So there may also some inappropriate songs (christmas, other
genres, few weird announcements, etc.) playing among others. But it's small percent
still. We are not sure if we can find time to out-filtrate all of this special part
and additionally generate the multipliers for every song for less or more often air
play amount. But we are adding more play modes like full albums random playing just 
what it was the BGR108 trademark through the years. This mode can be switched on in
some hours every day in example. But the most interesting new feature would be pre-
defined playlist mode (with taking listener's song requests by on-line web form and
then play the requested cuts automatically in appropriate time). But...no guarantee

But now the most essential thing you all were sure interested in - On main page you
can see the information about CURRENTLY ONLINE PLAYING SONG, PERFORMER & ALBUM now!
The song information online refreshes itself but that refresh may shift few seconds
from the moment of changing the songs you actually are listening to! The reason for
that is buffering time of the stream which is different in various players. Also we
already have backplaylist with all played songs,too. This link will be working soon

NOTE!  During next days or weeks there may be some short breaks in airing caused by
system upgrade and configuration. Also the sound level is not finally justified now

Stay tuned!