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Click the "Format" tab in the selections at the top of the screen. From time to time you may notice a slight delay while Robot changes screens. This is because it is writing any changes you have made to the hard drive and loading in the new files you will need for the new screen. On most computers this delay will be nominal, but from time to time it may occur for a second as you hard drive "catches up".
The format is the way your station will sound. What it will play and
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when. You have a virtually infinite number of options to either match an existing live format, or create new and unique ones for each hour.
The format screen is divided into four sections:
ITEMS
STATION STANDARDS
HOUR CHANGE
HOURLY STRUCTURE 31 or 7 DAY PLANNER
ITEMS
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These are a range of default settings that can be applied to your format. They can be applied overall, or tweaked for every individual item in your format.
ACTV (Active)
Check the tick box for the items you wish to use with Robot. If you tick the box the item is active, un-tick the box if you don't use the item in your format currently.
FADE (Fading)
You tick the box for whichever item you would like faded out at its conclusion. In most cases it is sufficient to use fades only on songs if you are ripping them direct from CD to your hard drive, this fades out and often alleviates annoying dead air at the end of sound files. You can of course edit your sound files tightly in which case use fades only for taste. You can also set fading on or off for scheduled items (Scheduler screen).
SNAP (Snaps)
A snap is a number of seconds added to or taken away from an audio files length to provide a clean ending. To take seconds away use a negative number (i.e. -15 to shave 15 seconds off the end of each song
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slightly). This allows you to shape the color of your sound for individual items. You can also set a snap for scheduled items (Scheduler screen).
Hint: Most tracks mastered onto CD's have about 4-6 seconds of silence on the end. For songs a good rule of thumb is to apply a snap of about -15, which virtually covers every possibility
SEPR (Separation)
These drop down menus let you set up standard separation for items. Separation stops songs being repeated and rotates items evenly. If you set the SONG separation as an hour then for example when a song is played it will not be played (or it is embargoed) for an hour. These settings hold true in every mode except coded. Use only large separations if you have enough files to cover the time allocated. Its no good embargoing every song for 90 days once its played, if you only have 100 SONG audio files available to the system. In these circumstances the separation will go into error and may repeat - you won't get dead air, but sound files will be repeated. Set a realistic separation.
AVGE: (Average Lengths)
These are approximate lengths of
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the various items you use in your current format. If your format was dance the average length of a song might be 4'30" as against about 3"30" for Country. These values only have to be very approximate, they are used in the coding system, so if your not using Codified song selection you can ignore these settings.
STATION STANDARDS
Playback
WAV rate MP3 Bit rate (WAV and MP3 rates)
Robot expects you to set a station standard for your audio files and stick to it. This is standard practice in radio so repeated here in design. You select the WAV rate for any WAV files you wish to use here. Also robot uses a standard MP3 bit rate, you select the MP3 bit rate you are going to use as your standard here. We recommend 128 for MP3's and 44100 for WAV files.
WAV OFFSET
Robot is designed to use standard Microsoft WAV files. Should you
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