The buffering feature of the Ando software makes this process sound very smooth for the end-users of stream audio.

Hubert told me that one important consideration in this process is that the spot block playing on the stream must be shorter than that playing over-the-air. For example, a spot block over-the-air is 4 minutes and 10 seconds in length, and the spot block for the stream is just 4 minutes. As the ad-insert audio is playing through the CPU that generates the stream, the Ando software (running on the same CPU) is waiting to receive a logic signal from Enco 1 (in this example) telling it that the over-the-air spot block is over. Because the spot block for the stream is, of necessity, shorter than that for the over-the-air signal, the Ando software does the following:

So in this example, the over-the-air spot block was 4 minutes and 10 seconds. The stream-only spot block was 4 minutes. If Ando started a 30-second fill piece at the end of the stream-only spot block, then when all is said and done for this block, the stream audio is 20 seconds behind the over-the-air audio (ignoring any other types of delays used for the over-the-air signal). So if you were to listen to the stream source in one speaker and the over-the-air source in another speaker (again neglecting additional delays used for the over-the-air signal) you would note that the stream source is always behind that of the over-the-air source. The amount of time depends on the net difference in length of the spot blocks.

The end-users hear a smooth transition when the stream source returns to the common program feed.

-- continued on page 4