SoundHound gets looked over more often than not. Yet, it is the little brain of Event Builder. If SoundHound cannot see it, Simian cannot either. Here is an overview of the options in SoundHound, located on the OPTIONS tab.

 Manual mode prevents the program from auto refreshing data. It helps if you are making a lot of data changes, and don’t want it to refresh until you are done.

High Priority, unchecked, puts the program in a very low processor priority. Checked, runs the program at equal priority as every other program. This setting can break audio that is playing.

Auto Refresh, it will refresh when a change is detected in the folders.

Compact at Startup/Auto Compact, compacting removed the database and rebuilds it. It is recommended to compact at startup and then once a day. I prefer the wee hours of the morning, to avoid audio breaking.

Use Ini File, SoundHound’s settings are, by default, saved in the registry. You could use an INI file if managing stations that use the same paths/folders.

Hide File List, this hides the Audio Files tab, geared towards slower computers as it increase the program’s reaction time.

Notification Filter, this allows you to control when the program will update entries in the database.

SoundHound Troubleshooting

SoundHound can cause issues due to database corruption and missing audio files and paths.

The program works best when there are only ten (yes, 10) monitored folders. Despite being able to add more, at some point, the program may decide it will only be monitoring ten. Ten folders and five thousand, 5000, audio files.

Other things to remember:

• Do not use folders and paths that are part of the users profile (desktop, documents, etc.), this creates long, user dependent paths.
• Do use a mapped local drive or the AUDIO folder in the C:\BSI32 folder
• Do not use drives that are networked, to avoid any interruptions in on-air play
• Do consider removing seasonal audio pieces when not needed, for instance, Christmas music
• Try to avoid nested folders, such as C:\BSI32\Audio\Music
  • Map a network drive to your audio folder, for example, map network letter drive M to C:\BSI32\Audio. Your folders will then be M:\Music and so on
• Do create a folder just for carts
• Do remove all non-audio files from the folders (Adobe Audition may be creating .pk files)
• Do remove all forms of punctuation from audio files including spaces. BSI has a software that is designed to rename and cleanup audio pieces. BSI FILEAME CLEANER V3.0
• Do delete the audio database regularly. Please see my FAQ on Deleted Audio Still Shows Up