KDRT has been using the Rivendell automation system since we first went on the air in October of 2004.

We chose Rivendell because at the time it was the only open source radio automation software available. We have a programmer in-house who has used open source software since 1998 and has contributed to a number of open source projects (Sox, OSALP). The open source philosophy aligns well with our mission of providing tools and facilities for the free and open exchange of information. It affords the highest flexibility for tailoring the applications to suit your needs as they arise.

Technically we required software to allow us to be on the air 24/7. We were very stubborn about having to turn off the transmitter and didn't want to go that route. In 2004 Rivendell was extremely unpolished and very hard to install. Needing to save disk space we hacked in support for mp3 files. There was also no user manual available at the time so we had to figure out exactly how the software worked.

Currently Rivendell is much easier to install and documentation has become more robust. However, the developers of Rivendell (Salem Radio Labs) are very focused on the more high-end bells and whistles. Where as LPFMs? require a suite simply to easily archive and playback audio materials at scheduled times or on-demand by users of all backgrounds and experience. The Salem folks are mainly radio engineers with much higher budgets to purchase high end audio cards, studio consoles, satellite receivers and switchers which can be controlled by the Rivendell software and intergration with proprietary "traffic managers." So suffice to say their focus is a little different then what LPFMs? is. This means most likely Rivendell will never support mp3 files, however ogg-vorbis support is arriving soon and there is also much effort on making the install process smoother.

Reliability wise Rivendell works quite well. We've written a program to automatically downloads programs from the internet (i.e. Democracy Now and FSRN) and import them into the software. This has been a huge time saver for us. We also are able to record our programmers shows and play them back later. We have had issues of the radio playout just stopping. Most of the time just restarting it will fix it, but when it happens at 2am it can be bad. We are coming close to upgrading our system to solve these problems.