Canalis Air · Quick start

From installer to on air in five steps

Canalis Air is a self-contained radio automation system: it owns the audio, the library, the schedule and the clock, and it keeps a station on air whether anyone is watching or not. Here is the whole of getting one running.

1. Install it. Run CanalisAir-0.1.20-beta-setup.exe and click through. It's self-contained — nothing else to install. Full steps below, including the Windows SmartScreen prompt on a beta build.
2. Open Canalis Air. One desktop shortcut starts everything and puts the studio on your screen. Under it are three programs; you only ever open this one.
3. Add music. Library → Browse and add music. Point it at a folder, choose a category, and add. Or import an existing station's library if you have one.
4. Build an hour. Scheduling → The hours. A clock is a template for one hour — slots drawn from categories. Each slot shows how many records can fill it, and the clock tells you whether it can be sustained before it ever airs.
5. Go on air. Pick AUTO DJ and press GO ON AIR. The station fills its own hour, plays it, and lands its top-of-hour ID on :00. Nobody has to be there.

Installation

Installing Canalis Air

What it needs

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.
• A 1366 × 768 screen or better. Everything is reachable at that size; more room shows more at once.
• About 500 MB of disk. Both programs are self-contained, so the machine needs no .NET runtime installed — that's the trade for not talking anyone through a runtime install over the phone.

Running the installer

1. Double-click the setup file. It needs administrator rights (a Windows prompt), because it installs into Program Files.
2. Accept the licence and choose the folder, or take the defaults.
3. Start with Windows is ticked by default — the station comes up after a reboot, once someone logs in. Untick it if this isn't the on-air machine.
4. Finish, and open Canalis Air. On a fresh install it starts empty, ready for your music and clocks.

Updating

Run a newer installer over the top. Your library, cue points, clocks, schedule and audio are untouched, and the database is copied automatically before any update that changes its shape — see Copies of the station. Uninstalling leaves all of that in place too; it removes the programs, not the station.

How it fits together

The three programs

You open one thing. Underneath there are three, and it's worth knowing what they are the first time something looks odd.

The engine

Owns the audio, the library, the schedule and the clock. It has no window at all — nothing on the taskbar, nothing to close — and it keeps the station going whether anyone is looking or not. Closing the screen does not stop it.

The engine manager

The small Canalis icon by the clock. It starts the engine, watches it, and is where you go to stop it. You don't open it — Canalis Air brings it up. Right-click it for:

The top line of that menu says whether the station is playing, so you can tell at a glance. If the engine stops on its own the manager puts it straight back; if it falls three times in three minutes the manager stops trying and says so, because past that point the engine is refusing to run and something needs fixing first.

The screen

Canalis Air itself. Only one opens — launching it again brings the one you have to the front rather than giving you a second copy.

Running the station

The studio screen

The screen the station is run from. Everything else is a detour.

The top bar

The clock, the date, the programme meter, and the buttons for the other screens. The meter is the station's own output on a dB scale: green to −12, amber to −6, red above, with a peak-hold line falling at 20 dB a second. It turns red and stays red if anything clipped. Beside the brand you'll also see the connection and stream status.

What is on air

The title, the artist, how far through it is and how long is left. NEXT is what follows. RDS is the line the transmitter is publishing, with a pencil to hold your own text there — press again to release. The ring to the right is the output by frequency: the two halves match while the station is healthy and stop matching the moment a leg is lost, a record is out of phase, or a mono file plays where a stereo one should.

The three modes

GO ON AIR starts the output; Stop after item waits at the end of what's playing; Stop now stops it dead. A commercial break plays through a stop mark either way — a break that waited for someone who stepped out is a break that didn't air.

Up next, and the transport column

The running order. Press a number to take that item to air now. The column beside it only reorders — the two gestures are kept apart so a misplaced finger is never an on-air mistake.

History & the cart wall

History is what has aired, newest first, with the time it actually went out. Instants is the cart wall — seven across, seven down, several banks on tabs; one press is one sound and eight can sound at once. The stripe down each button says what it is: green an effect, amber a sweeper, slate a station ID. A playing button turns blue and pulses. ARRANGE turns the wall into a layout you can drag; STOP ALL stops everything sounding. From the studio library you can search and PLAY NEXT or ADD TO END.

Running the station

Station health & streaming New

The stream, in the header

The outgoing stream now shows in the studio header, beside the engine connection — on air, how many are listening, and how long it has held:

It's the same line the streaming settings carry, lifted to where it's seen mid-link, so you know the station is reaching people without opening the encoder's own console. It's summarised across every output, and it hides itself when nothing is streaming.

The station-health badge

A badge appears in the header only when a clock that is actually in rotation can't be filled from the library under its own separation rules. A half-built clock nobody has scheduled is never an alarm — it's told the truth quietly on its own row, but it doesn't raise the station badge. See Clock capacity for what the verdict means and how to clear it.

Records

Fix a track

Right-click any track anywhere — running order, history or library.

Details

Where the file is, what it's called, who it's by, the album, its weight (how heavily it's drawn against its shelf — one is ordinary, two is twice as likely), and what it's filed under. A record in the wrong category keeps being drawn from it until someone takes it out, which is why that list is here rather than three clicks away.

READY / PENDING / RETIRE. Ready is in use; pending is held back without leaving the library; retired is out of use, but its history and as-run lines stay so last month's report still makes sense. AUDITION plays a track down the cue output to your headphones — how you tell one ID or sweeper from another when the names say nothing.

Cue points

The waveform editor is behind CUE POINTS…. A record drawn as its shape, with three markers:

Drag the line or the card above it; double-click a figure to type it (1:12.4, 72.4 and 72400 all mean the same moment). Scroll to zoom, shift-scroll to move along. Space plays down the cue output and stops back where it started. FADE TO THE END fades a record out from NEXT IN to END whatever follows it — the fix for a single that stops dead where the master was chopped. SAVE CUE POINTS marks it cued by hand, which stops a library-wide re-measure from undoing your work.

Records

How one song joins the next

Each record carries its own segue point, read from how it actually ends — nothing on a cold stop, a longer overlap on a fade — because one station-wide number sounds wrong on a record that stops dead and one that rings out. A track cued by hand always wins over the station's numbers. In Settings → Audio:

IDs, imaging and commercials are never crossfaded — they land hard and stop, by design.

Programming

The library

Everything the station can play.

• Search by artist or title; click a category to narrow. Ctrl-click a second, and the any / all toggle decides whether a record needs any of the picked shelves or every one — “the 2024 dancehall” is Dancehall and 2024 with all.
• The MUSIC / IMAGING tabs show the music shelves or the imaging ones — IDs, sweepers, drops, beds — one kind at a time. Show retired and Show hidden bring back what's been set aside.
• BROWSE AND ADD MUSIC opens the folders the engine can see: stage what you want, choose a category, tick the box if they're drops rather than songs, and add.
• MEASURE LOUDNESS measures selected tracks — or everything never measured — and leaves hand-cued tracks alone. Every record is levelled against the library.
• Each category shows how many are in it and how many of those can actually be scheduled.

Programming

Scheduling & clocks

The hour editor

A clock is a template for an hour: a list of slots, each drawn from categories. Each slot has a pool (any of these) and filters (all of these must hold) — a slot that says “any of Reggae, Dancehall” and “all of 2020s” draws a 2020s record from either shelf. The count beside each slot is how many records could fill it right now, and it refreshes as the library changes underneath you.

The week & rotation rules

Paint clocks onto a grid of days and hours; save a week under a name and restore it later — the schedule on air is untouched until you restore. Rotation rules (in Settings) are artist separation, title separation, minimum rest and a repeat floor; when a rule can't be met the scheduler relaxes them in order and records which it relaxed, so an hour can always be explained.

Landing the top of the hour New

In Auto DJ, the top-of-hour ID lands on :00. The record that crosses the hour plays its full length and is faded under the ID exactly on the hour — nothing is cut. If a clock runs a little short, its own music fills the gap to the hour rather than the ID airing early.

Landing the hour

An hour of real records almost never totals exactly sixty minutes. Rather than cut the last record to fit, the correction is spread across the hour — a few seconds each, off the end where the next record is already coming in. Nothing but music is touched, nothing under a minute is touched. If an hour still can't be tightened enough it's left long and says so in the hour's notes.

Programming

Clock capacity New

Before an hour ever airs, Canalis works out whether it can be filled from the library, hour after hour, without breaking its own separation rules — and tells you if it can't.

Every clock in Scheduling → The hours carries a verdict:

It answers a different question from the ready count beside a slot: a shelf can hold one song that qualifies right now and still be far too thin to play a whole hour without repeating a title inside its own separation window. A category of five songs on a three-hour title separation can sustain fewer than two plays an hour — so a clock leaning on it every few minutes is Degraded however “available” each slot looks.

The quantified fix

Click a Tight or Degraded verdict and it shows the shelves that can't keep up, with the numbers behind each and a plain fix — for example:

Only what's on the air raises an alarm

The header's station-health badge counts only clocks in rotation. A clock you're still building — short of a category or two while you finish it — reads its honest verdict on its own row (“Degraded — not scheduled”) but never sets off the station warning. The verdict re-checks itself when you save a clock and when the library changes: readying or retiring records, moving a song between categories, or changing a separation rule.

Programming

Traffic

Advertisers, campaigns, spots, rate cards and what actually aired.

• Advertisers carry alternate names and a sector, so two spellings of one client bill as one.
• Campaigns hold bookings and the cuts that serve them; break templates describe the shape of a break in bands.
• Rate cards hold bands and sectors; spot import watches a folder for new cuts.
• As-run records what aired and when — what an invoice is built from.

A break with nothing booked is left out of the hour, and the jingle that would have followed it is dropped, so the station doesn't identify itself twice running.

Reference

Settings

Five tabs, one SAVE SETTINGS button that writes all of them.

Reference

Copies of the station

Settings → On air → Copies of the station. The database holds the library and its cue points, the clocks, the week, the cart wall, the advertisers and every as-run line. The audio files are not in it — a restore puts back what Canalis decided about a record, not the record itself.

A copy is taken automatically before every migration — before an update changes the database's shape. COPY NOW takes one whenever you want, worth doing before a big import or a re-measure. To go back to one, pick it and press GO BACK TO THIS COPY:

• The database as it stands now is kept too, labelled replaced by a restore — your way back if you restore the wrong night. It's never deleted to make room.
• The restore is applied when the engine next starts, the only moment nothing is holding the database open. Until then, CANCEL THE RESTORE undoes it.

The path beside COPY NOW is where the copies live — select it to copy the path and get one onto a memory stick.

Reference

Where things live

Audio files are never moved or modified. Everything Canalis decides about a record — trims, levels, fades — is stored beside it and applied at play time.

Reference

When something is wrong