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File This

July 30, 2020 by Aaron
Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Music Business, Programming and Such, Published Work, Recording Magazine
5.1 surround, aac, aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, ac-3, aiff, audio, audio file types, cdda, lossless, lossy, m.c. murph, mp3, nquit, ogg, recording magazine, wma

A Brief Discussion of Audio File Types

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

In my article “Keeping Track”, we covered data.  We talked about the information you need to keep with your songs in order to sell, license and organize them. We covered metatags; data about data that gets embedded in files.  We talked a little about the file types that carry metadata and how to use them, and that brought up a wider topic:  audio file types. 

There are hundreds of audio formats and an endless variety of settings and options.  So, without a whole lot of fanfare, we’ll dive into some of the formats that exist as of now, but first let’s delineate a few traits and categories.

Compression

An audio file (or a video file for that matter) is either compressed or uncompressed.  What this means is the file is either whole and complete or it has been squashed down to save space, like using a .zip file; or in physical terms, like using one of those infomercial vacuum bags to suck the air out of your Christmas sweaters.  A WAV file is uncompressed; an MP3 is compressed.

Don’t confuse compression or the lack thereof with the terms lossy or lossless.  Lossy and lossless are two types of compressed files.  If a file is lossy, it means some data has been thrown out because in theory that data isn’t necessary, usually because the human ear can’t hear it.  That data cannot be recovered.  On the other hand, a lossless file is compressed, but no data has been thrown out.  Think of the difference between cutting off the sleeves of your sweater (because it’d be fine as a vest) and sucking it in Mr. Popeil’s vacuum (lossy), and simply sucking it in the vacuum, but leaving it intact (lossless).  As you might guess, lossless files are generally bigger.  MP3s are lossy.  FLAC files are lossless.

File Format and Codec

You may never need to know this, but there is a difference between a file’s format and it’s codec.  The format, or file type, is simply the wrapper in which the audio data is kept.  The codec is the meat of how it’s encoded.  Not all file types support all codecs, but there are some surprising possibilities.  A WAV file might not be encoded with PCM, for example.  We don’t have room here for a comprehensive list, but it’s likely you’ll only ever need to worry about a few possibilities.  We’ll say more on those big ones momentarily.

Sample Rate, Bit Depth and Bit Rate

These are the main measurement of audio quality, and there can be some confusion about what they all mean.

Sample rate is used to refer to an original or uncompressed recording.  It’s how many times per second a snapshot of the signal is taken.  44.1k means 44.1 kilohertz, or 44,100 times in a second.  You probably know that CD quality is 44.1k, 16 bit.

Bit Depth is how many bits are in each sample.  If you record at 44.1k, 16 bit, you’re taking 44,100 16 bit samples every second.  Crudely, more bit depth corresponds to more dynamic range.

Bit Rate can be a bit fuzzier.  Bit rate simply means the number of bits that are processed over a given amount of time, and it is a measure that can be applied to any file.  A CD quality file is 1,411 kbps (kilobits per second), for example.  In practice, though, bitrate is more often used to refer to the quality of a compressed, lossy file.  To be crude again, it comes down to a measure of how much data we’ve thrown away.  The highest bit rate for mp3s is 320 kbps, and the default iTunes rate is 256.  A 128k MP3 is noticeably smaller than a 320k file, but in many situations, not all that different sounding.  A 32k MP3, however, would sound awful, except in special circumstances (audiobooks, for example, often use low bit rates, because that doesn’t much affect a spoken track).

The Big Ones

While there are actually tons of audio file types and different combinations of format/codec possibilities, there are only a few you’re likely to see very often.  In fact, we can narrow that down to three.  WAV, AIFF, and MP3.

WAV (Waveform Audio File Format) files are Microsoft’s format, used in PC applications, and based on RIFF (resource interchange file format).  Usually WAV files are encoded using PCM (pulse code modulation) encoding, which is uncompressed and the same basic encoding used in CDs, but it is possible to encode a WAV file with other codecs, even compressed ones.  A “RIFF Wav” is a normal WAV file, and a “Broadcast WAV” is a WAV file with extended headers, originally used by broadcasters.  WAV files have .wav extensions.

AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) files are Apple’s uncompressed format, also based on RIFF, and usually using PCM encoding.  The only practical difference between WAV and AIFF files is that AIFF files allow more metadata by default (so you can see stuff like album covers in iTunes), but you will notice that certain DAWs won’t deal with both.  That’s not a problem, as you can easily convert between them with something like Sox or FFMPEG, or free software like Audacity.  AIFF files typically carry .aif extensions.

EDIT with a sneak pro tip: AIFFs and WAVs are literally the same format, from an audio standpoint. So if Joe Schmo who uses GarageBand sends you a bunch of AIFFs that your Windows DAW can’t read – you can just change the extension and voila.

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III) files are compressed, lossy and very common.  MP3 shouldn’t be confused with MPEG-3, which is a video format.  MP3 compression is done by throwing away data which isn’t needed, mostly due to a phenomenon in human hearing called auditory masking.  That’s a pretty fancy way of saying we don’t hear everything in an uncompressed file anyway, so we might as well throw some away to save space.  There’s no shortage of debate there, but it seems to work pretty well.  MP3 was a proprietary format, owned and licensed by the The Fraunhofer Institute of Integrated Circuits, and that’s why not all software could make an MP3, at least until very recently.  The Fraunhofer Institute declared MP3 an obsolete format in May of 2017, and terminated its licensing program.  Whether this means the MP3 will die or proliferate further remains to be seen.  For now, it’s still the de-facto compressed file format, and typically what you get when you rip a CD with iTunes or other software, or download that free track from your favorite polka band.

Other Major Formats

There are so many audio formats, we’d be hard pressed to talk about them all here, but there are a few you should know about.

CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) is the format for compact discs.  It’s just an AIFF file with different headers.  If you happen across a .cdda file (probably ripped from a CD), you’ll probably be able to play it in anything that can play a WAV or AIFF.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a compressed, lossy format created by Dolby which was designed to be a successor to MP3.  Apple subsequently developed a copy protected version that uses DRM (digital rights management) for iTunes, and that’s generally the format of files you buy from iTunes.

FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is exactly what it sounds like, a free, lossless, compressed format.  Great for archiving files, since it can reduce size up to 60% without losing any quality.

WMA (Windows Media Audio) was originally a compressed, lossy Windows format designed to compete with MP3.  It’s been expanded to include a lossless version, a multichannel version, and a lower bit rate version used for voice.  You may encounter Windows system files or other similar things in WMA format.  WMA files can be copy protected.

AC-3 is a lossy 5.1 surround sound format used by Dolby Digital in DVDs, HDTV and DTV (digital television).  Its highest sample rate is 48k.  A side note:  The “point one” in surround sound refers to a Low Frequency Effect (LFE) channel which has less bandwidth.  The LFE is where the shake your boots BOOM in movies comes from.

What To Use?

At this point your question may be why should I care, or what should I use?  The truth is, audio is audio, and when it comes to format choice, utility is the main consideration.  Your DAW will do what it does, and I recommended letting it do that.  When you’re deciding what to export, think about the use at hand.  You’ll want to export either WAV or AIFF for mastering, making CDs, importing into a video project, or other continuing full resolution work.  They’re really the same thing, so think about the software you’re using next, or what the person on the other end needs, and use that.

When it comes to delivery to the general public, think about the end user rather than entering into an endless debate about the perceptual quality of various algorhythms  or codecs.  If you’re selling downloads to normal people, you’ll probably want to use MP3s.  If you’re delivering files to a digital distributor, you’ll probably be asked for CD quality WAVs, and in some cases, distributors will take AAC files for iTunes.  If you want you can also distribute lossless files in FLAC format, or give people access to WAVs, or even distribute OGG/Vorbis files, which is an open source container/codec combination very similar to MP3.  Beware, though, that not all players support these less common formats, and your user may end up with no way to listen.

As far as bit rate, I like to give my loving, devoted fans the highest quality MP3s I can, so those are encoded at 320k, but it’s also a good idea to make a 128k version for web-based preview listeners, because the smaller size will load faster and stream better.  Some submissions you make (say to internet radio or licensing folk) may have size limits, too, so those smaller MP3s are useful.  In the end, this is a judgement call, and if it’s for your own personal listening, then do whatever you like best.

One other consideration is something we addressed in “Keeping Track”, which is metadata.  There are many situations where you’ll want some data other than audio in your file.  Whether it’s so consumers know who you are, or licensing agents know who to contact, you’ll need some extra info in there, so the file type you use to send to certain people needs to contain that data.  That’s what we covered in “Keeping Track”, so if you haven’t seen it, check that article out.

Resources

As with any very technical topic, an exploration of audio file types can go quite deep, and we don’t have room here to cover everything we could think of, so here are some recommendations for further reading:

  • Principles of Digital Audio by Ken Pohlmann
  • The Audio Expert (chapter 8 especially) by Ethan Winer
  • Mastering Audio by Bob Katz
  • How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt (for a great history of the MP3 format)
  • Any Wikipedia page about “audio file types” or specific types – google “WAV Wikipedia”, for example.

If you’re new to audio or recording, then hopefully we’ve helped you at least begin to sort out file types in digital audio, and if you’re a veteran, I hope you’ve reminded yourself of a few things here.  For the most part, file types are pretty straight forward, but you can run into confusion at times, especially when a DAW or other piece of software gives you a thousand choices.  It’s nice to remember a few basic tenets, cut through the noise, and get back to creating.  So file this away, and we’ll see you in the studio!

Did you know I have a master’s degree in “Music, Science and Technology” from Stanford University?  That means I can go back and forth between Macs and PCs in the studio, and talk at length about debt.  Find me on Facebook and Twitter and other various stuff @AaronJTrumm.

Tweak Your Own

July 28, 2020 by Aaron
Audio Instruction, Instructional Stuff, Programming and Such, Published Work, Recording Magazine
aaron j. trumm, aaron trumm, audio computer, audio pc, build your own windows pc, music computer, nquit, optimize windows for audio, recording magazine, sound computer

Studio computer, that is…

Optimizing your Windows computer for audio

This article first appeared Recording Magazine. I reprint it here with permission, and I encourage you to subscribe to that publication, as they are a stand up bunch of folk!

If you read my “Roll Your Own (studio computer, that is)” article, you’ll remember I promised to talk later about setting up that computer for optimal audio performance.  Even if you haven’t built your own machine, you’ll still want to optimize audio performance, so this is for you too.

Before we dive in, make a note of a few things:

  • We’re talking about Windows.  Macs and Linux boxes are different beasts.
  • Screenshots here are from Windows 8.  Instructions apply to both Windows 10 and Windows 7/8 machines, but your screens may look a little different. 
  • We’re assuming you’ve got your hardware set.  If not, you can refer to “Roll Your Own” for some guidelines about specs (even if you’re not building it yourself).  Most modern, good machines will work.  4GB RAM with a 2.5Ghz multi core processor would do.
  • We’re just covering the system here, not setting up audio software.
  • Finally, not everything is necessary, especially if your hardware is great, so you can use your judgement and adjust your settings to taste.  Think of this as a list of things you CAN do, some of which you probably should.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Basic Optimization

We’ll start with the easiest stuff.  First of all, make sure all your drivers are up to date, as well as your plugins and software (both audio and other).  Outdated drivers especially can cause performance problems.

Next, uninstall unnecessary software.  If your computer is ONLY for audio work, this can include Office products, accounting software, extra browsers – anything you don’t need.  You can uninstall Windows components that aren’t necessary like games, or apps like extra music players, painting programs, etc.  This really just saves space and distraction, but it’s a good start.

Next disable programs running in the system tray.  These are the pesky items here:

Figure 1 – System Tray

Right click on those items and you should be able to find a settings section (you may have to actually open the program) where you can tell it not to run on start up.  You don’t want to disable your virus protection or system critical applications, but you can trim the fat.

Next, defragment your hard drives, if they need it.  The easiest way to get to this is open the control panel and put “defrag” in the search box.  You should do this whenever that utility says the drives need it.

Next up, tweak your screen saver.  Fancy screen savers take up resources.  Disable it or set it to just turn off the screen.  Increase the time so it doesn’t kick in while you’re recording.  This can happen because Windows doesn’t consider audio activity “activity”, so you could be singing your heart out on that 10 minute rock opera, but if you’re not touching the mouse or keyboard, the screen saver could come on, cause a glitch, and ruin your life.

Next, disable system sounds.  You don’t need extra dinging and binging, but more importantly these sounds can grab control of the sound device.  Search for “sounds” in the control panel and click “change system sounds”.  Pick “no sounds” from the system scheme dropdown.

Figure 2 – System Sounds

Next tackle visual effects.  Windows has some cool animations and transparencies which you don’t really need.  They’re actually not that bad, but it could make some difference.  Search for “visual effects” in control panel, and choose “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows”.  It’s easiest just to pick “adjust for best performance”, but you can pick and choose which effects to keep.

Next, you could disable automatic Windows updates, or tell Windows to “check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them”, so that Windows updates aren’t running when audio should be prioritized.  If you fully disable automated updates, be sure you remember to periodically check for updates manually.  To do any of this, search for “Windows update” in the control panel.  You can pick “turn automatic updating on or off” to change automation or “check for updates” to manually update.

Now look into your virus software.  Disabling virus software is definitely not recommended, but you might be able to tell it when to do scans and otherwise tweak its behavior so as not to interrupt audio processing.

Next, if you’re not using it, consider disabling the onboard sound card.  The onboard sound drivers don’t always play nice with other audio drivers, and to boot, they sometimes introduce noise into the system.  Search for “device manager” in control panel, click “device manager”, find the sound device in the list, right click and pick “disable”.  Note:  I didn’t do this on my laptop, because I want that device working if I’m not in the studio with my interface.  I did do it on my desktop.

Figure 3 – Device Manager

Next up, if your system is a 64 bit system and your Windows is 64 bit (find out at control panel->system), AND your DAW has a 64 bit version AND your plugins are all 64 bit, run at 64 bit!  This allows the software to access a lot more memory.  Beware though, because 32 bit plugins generally don’t work in 64 bit DAWs, and vice versa.  If you’re starting from scratch though, you might as well stay in 64 bit mode.  You do this by simply installing and using the 64 bit version of your software.

Finally, consider using hardwired keyboard and mouse devices instead of Bluetooth (wireless) devices.  Bluetooth communication can affect audio performance.

Advanced Optimization

Power Options

Here’s where the fun begins.  By default, Windows is set up to balance between power saving and performance by doing things like putting the computer to sleep, throttling down the processor and other tricks.  This is a great place to get a significant boost.

Go to control panel and search for “power options”.  Click on “power options”.  Start by picking “high performance” under “choose or customize a power plan”.  Now click “change plan settings” to further tweak this plan.  You’ll see two settings: “turn off the display” and “put the computer to sleep”.  If you’re using a laptop, there will be an “on battery” option and a “plugged in” option.  You can leave the “on battery” option alone to conserve power, but for “plugged in”, pick “never”.  Next click “change advanced power settings”.  Here you have a whole bunch of options.

For the plugged in options, use these settings:

  • Hard disk: turn off hard disk after “never”.
  • Internet explorer: JavaScript timer frequency, “maximum performance”.
  • Desktop background settings: slide show, “paused”.
  • Wireless adapter settings: power saving mode, “maximum performance”.
  • Sleep: sleep after “never”.  Hibernate after “never”.
  • Intel CPCC energy efficiency settings: enable energy efficient operation, “disabled”.  Energy efficiency aggressiveness 0%.
  • USB settings: USB selective suspend setting, “disabled”.
  • Graphics settings: graphics power plan, “maximum performance”.
  • Processor power management: minimum processor state, “100%”.  Maximum processor state, “100%”.  If you do nothing else, do this.  It prevents the processor from throttling down when it’s not active.  It can take a long time to throttle back up when an audio process needs the processor.
  • Display: turn display off after “never”.
  • Multimedia: when sharing media, “prevent idling to sleep”.  When playing video, “optimize video quality”.

Here’s a very advanced extra.  Under “processor power management”, you probably DON’T see an option called “processor performance core parking min cores”.  This is a feature which allows Windows to turn off (aka “park”) cores in a multi core processor to save power.  This can affect performance because it takes time for the core to un-park.  It’s turned on by default, and the option to change it is usually hidden, but you can just turn it off, which I’ll tell you how to do.

Warning, this is advanced stuff.  Do not attempt if you’re not comfortable with advanced configuration and paying attention to detail.  Even then, attempt at your own risk!

  1. Make sure the “high performance” scheme is selected in power options (you probably just did this).
  2. Click the Windows start button, and in the search window, type “cmd”, which should pull up “Command Prompt”.
  3. Right click on this and pick “run as administrator”.
  4. A command line window will appear.  Type the following on one line:

powercfg –setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_processor bc5038f7-23e0-4960-96da-33abaf5935ec 100

  • Hit enter and then type:

powercfg –setactive scheme_current

This will turn off core parking, but it won’t give you the new option in your power options window.

Other Options

Besides power options, there are quite a few more things you can do boost audio performance.  Try these on for size:

Processor scheduling:  Search for “performance” in the control panel.  Click on “adjust the appearance and performance of Windows” and go to the “advanced” tab.  Under “choose how to allocate processor resources” select “background services”.  Note: this is usually the better setting because most audio processing is done in the background, but there are times when it actually harms performance, so if you change this and notice a dip, change it back.

USB hub power:  Search for “device manager” in control panel, go to device manager, scroll down and click on “Universal Serial Bus controllers”.  There should be one or more items called “USB root hub” or similar (look for the words “root hub”).  On those, right click and pick “properties”.  Click on the “power management” tab and UNCHECK “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.

While you’re in device manager, you can disable devices you don’t need, but be careful!  Don’t disable a device if you don’t know what it is.  In general, don’t disable devices in the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, processors, system devices, universal serial bus controllers or computer groups.  Some devices that are usually safe to disable are batteries, Bluetooth, imaging, network adapters (wireless especially), sensors and sound, video and game controllers.  Obviously you don’t want to disable devices you’re using (the network adapter, for example).

Don’t actually uninstall device drivers unless they’re for hardware that no longer exists in your system.  Instead just right click and pick “disable”.

Drive properties: In windows explorer, right click on your hard drive, pick “properties” and uncheck “compress this drive to save space” and “allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties”.  If you have an extra drive that’s JUST for storage and isn’t getting accessed by audio software, you can go ahead and use “compress this drive” to save some space.

Graphics card:  Some graphics cards have a throttle setting much like the processor setting, which allows the card to throttle down when not in demand.  This can cause the same problem of lag when it throttles back up.  If you can, turn this setting off in your graphics card settings.

Page file settings: The page file is also known as the swap file.  Basically it’s how Windows uses the hard drive as additional random access memory when it needs to.  Windows dynamically chooses the size of this swap file unless you tell it not to.  That dynamic sizing takes time, so while you’re still in the performance options window, tell it not to by going to the “advanced” tab.  Under virtual memory, click “change”.  Uncheck “automatically manage paging files size for all drives”.  Next, for each of your drives, select “custom size” and enter in your desired initial and maximum size values.  If your RAM is small, use about one and a half times the size of your RAM memory.  Eg, if you have 4GB of RAM, use 6GB (6000MB).  If you have more than 8GB of RAM, you probably don’t need a paging file that big.  On my desktop, which has 16GB, I use a 6000MB paging file.

Finally, pay attention to things like backup software or other tasks that run regularly.  Make sure they run when you’re not working on audio.  You can use the task scheduler to dig into that further, but be careful.  The task scheduler does a lot of necessary work and it’s a bit out of this article’s scope to dig into it.

Testing

If you have problems, or if you’d just like to get a bench mark before and after you do all this optimization, there are a couple of highly recommended (and free!) programs that can help you get a gauge on how your system is performing, what applications are hogging memory, and even which drivers might be causing issues.

LatencyMon is a free and thorough program that monitors latency issues and CPU load and reports on problematic drivers and software.  You can find it here: www.resplendence.com/latencymon.

DPC Latency Checker is another similar tool.  It’s a simpler tool which doesn’t point out problematic drivers and the like, but it’s great for checking whether your audio stream is getting interrupted.  You can find it at www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml.

Ok Go For It!

We’ve covered a lot here, but it shouldn’t take you long to make these adjustments.  They’re foundational adjustments, and you’ll find yourself tweaking settings in your DAW and other software to taste, but you should be in a really solid place at this point.  There are some other more advanced things I haven’t discussed, like spread spectrum, Nagle’s algorhythm and digging into Windows services and startup apps.

If you’d like to dig deeper, I highly recommend a free PDF download called “Glitch Free”, by Brad Robinson of Cantabile.  Brad goes into great detail and gives wonderful background information on this topic.  His book is one of the best resources on this topic I’ve come across.  You can get the book for free (you don’t even have to sign up for anything) at www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree.

Even if you don’t want to dive deep, you’ve got plenty here you can do to get your machine rock’n’roll ready.  Have fun with your new computer!

I’m a singer, producer and recovering developer.  I’ve built a lot of computers, but I love people more.  Contact me on social media at @AaronJTrumm

How to ACTUALLY use autoresponders in PHPList

November 30, 2015 by Aaron
Programming and Such
autoresponder, autoresponders, drip marketing, phplist

This post is a step by step to get Autoresponders working in your PHPList installation.

PHPList is a mailing list software that gets installed on your web server. If you don’t know what PHPList is, you don’t need this article 🙂

As you probably know, autoresponders, aka “drip marketing” are a very powerful tool in being able to create more one-on-one style relationships to your customer or fan base. Basically, an autoresponder sends out a message (or series of messages) to new list members, based on when they sign up. For example, I might enter my email address to get a free download, and the first message I receive is with my download link. A day later, I might get a follow up that says “hey did you like the download?”. A couple days later I might get an offer or maybe just a link to a blog post (like this one! lol), and so on.

PHPList is very powerful and awesome, but out of the box doesn’t have an autoresponder. Well these people have saved the day by creating an autoresponder plugin.

However, “those people” are very busy, and although there is SOME documentation, there is not a proper step by step, how to get this running tutorial. So I’m doing THIS post. Now this really isn’t very complicated, so it should be painless. Here we go. I’m assuming you’ve installed PHPList 3.something and have it running, messages succeed in getting sent, etc. So…

Step 1: Dependencies

  • Make sure PHP is 5.3 or later.
  • Install the Common Plugin v3:
    • Go to yourdomain.com/lists/admin. Login.
    • Go to config->manage plugins.
    • Under “package plugin URL” enter this url: https://github.com/bramley/phplist-plugin-common/archive/master.zip and click “install plugin”.  There are also instructions for manually installing at the link above.
    • Check that it’s enabled by scrolling down and finding it. You should see green thumbs up under the 2nd column, “enabled”.
    • If not, click the “enable” button.

Step 2: Install autoresponder plugin

Actually install the autoresponder plugin by entering the following url in “package plugin URL” under config->manage plugins:

https://github.com/bramley/phplist-plugin-common/archive/master.zip

Check that this is enabled the same as before.

Step 3: Using autoresponder

  • Make a campaign.  Navigate to “campaigns->send a campaign”.
    • Click “start a new campaign”
    • Enter your message details, click “save and continue editing”
    • Go to the scheduling tab, and make sure “start sending after” is a date far in the future.  This is important!  Your responses won’t send after that date!
    • Go to the lists tab, and pick the lists you want to send to.  Only subscribers who subscribe to THOSE lists will get this message, and you HAVE to set this, or nothing will happen.
    • Now DO NOT send or add to queue <—- also very important
    • Instead, click “save as draft”
  • Create an autoresponder
    • Navigate to “campaigns->manage autoresponders”
    • Click “add”
    • Enter a description and pick your new draft campaign from the dropdown marked “select the draft message to send”
    • select a delay and if you want an action like a move to another list to take place.
    • Keep “Only send to new users” checked!  Other wise you’ll keep sending this thing to everybody. <— important

Step 4:  Making it actually work

You may be inclined now to think everything will automagically happen.  It will not.  Two more steps need to happen EVERY TIME an autoresponse is to be sent.  These two steps are:

  • “Process autoresponders”
  • “Process queue”

There are two ways for those TWO processes to happen – you can either do them manually:

  • Login to lists/admin
  • navigate to “campaigns->process autoresponders”
  • navigate to “system->send the queue”

At that point, the queue will send to everyone who’s up for sending.  This may be nobody, in which case step 1, “process autoresponders” will have said no messages to send.  If there are messages to send, it will have told you “1 message processed” or whatever number of messages.  That’s MESSAGES, not subscribers.

You may have noticed by now that doing it manually does not, per se, constitute “auto” responding 🙂  The second way to make it happen is with a cron job.  This is not something I can step you through as easily, because your server situation will vary.  For me, I use icdsoft to host.  This is a shared host, so what I do is this:

  • Login to control panel via mydomain.com/cp
  • go to the “cron jobs” tab
  • point a cron job to a .sh script I keep in a private directory, and run it every 15 minutes.
  • that shell script contains the following:
  • #!/bin/bash
    /usr/local/bin/php.cli /mypath/www/lists/admin/index.php -m Autoresponder -p process -c /mypath/www/lists/config/config.php
    /usr/local/bin/php.cli /mypath/www/lists/admin/index.php -p processqueue -c /mypath/www/lists/config/config.php
  • you  might also consider processing bounces here – or in another cron job.
  • Here is a decent resource with examples of cronjobs for phplist:  http://docs.phplist.com/CronJobExamples.html

Step 5: Test

Obviously I recommend a lot of testing.  I create a few autoresponders with maybe a few minute delay, create a few email addresses in my host and sign up to my own test list, and watch to see if my autoresponders are working.  If there is trouble you can’t sort out, I find the people over at http://discuss.phplist.com quite helpful, and the developer of the autoresponder plugin might even respond to help you!  In fact, *I* might even! 🙂

Cheers!

Aaron

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