BSI Simian Pro is a radio automation suite used by many terrestrial radio stations. It includes a basic streaming encoder, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that some broadcasters need. Rocket Broadcaster can be run alongside Simian Pro or on another PC as more flexible streaming encoder.
In this guide, you'll learn how to configure Simian Pro to send track metadata to Rocket Broadcaster, so your stream can have accurate "Now Playing" metadata for your listeners.
Before you begin, ensure you have the following:
For this guide, Simian and Rocket Broadcaster can be installed either on the same PC or on separate PCs.
First, we need to configure a couple of settings inside Rocket Broadcaster before it can receive metadata from Simian Pro.
In the Rocket Broadcaster window:
Rocket Broadcaster is now configured to let other applications update your stream metadata. In the next step, you'll configure Simian Pro to connect to Rocket and send those metadata updates.
(These instructions are based off pages 52 - 54 of the Simian Pro manual. If you get stuck, please consult those pages of the manual for clarification.)
Inside the Simian Pro window:
If there are certain categories of tracks that you do not want metadata being shown in your online streams for, you can configure "Exclude Categories" in Simian. These can be configured in the Categories tab back in the Program Options window.
Simian Pro should start sending metadata to Rocket Broadcaster as soon as the next track begins. In the Rocket Broadcaster window, the metadata shown under Now Playing will update as soon as metadata is received, and is immediately inserted into your online streams. If you see it update, it's working successfully and your configuration is complete.