I’ve created some presets of the effects I usually use on vocal in Ardour, distributing them here as screenshots. Presets aren’t something that should be treated as perfect settings for your needs but could  be a place to start. As the saturation is highly dependent on the signal level of your tracks, adjustment of treshold for compressor and blend/dry/wet for reverb/delay effects is the first move to be carried out.

To get a reference to the processed examples, first take a look at  the raw unedited vocal track.

SC4 mono: Vocals with presence
I wouldn’t have thought of using this high ratio of compression on a vocal track. But, by letting the attack off a bit, allowing the early amplitude peak to pass trough uncompressed it actually keeps some of the natural sound.

Try out:
For more natural sound:

• Increase attack time
• Decrease ratio

For more presence:

• Decrease attack time
• Lower treshold

SC4 mono: Light compression
These settings gives more dynamic sounding vocals compared to the earlier preset. I’m adjusting the treshold only to touch the loudest parts of the track, leaving the main part unaffected.

Try out:
For more uniform compression:

• Increase release time

For more presence:

• Lower treshold

Delayorama: Short Vocal Delay
The delay effect can be used as a trick to add some fatness to the vocals. The delay range should be set to somewhere between 0,08 – 0,15 (s) and the saturation of the effect should barely be hearable in the mix.

delayorama.ogg

Reverb
Here’s a collection of reverb presets that I find suitable on vocals.

C* JVRev: Short reverb

C* JVRev: Long reverb

longreverb.ogg

GVerb: Long tail

longtail.ogg

I found a free script that lets you determine the status of an icecast channel. You could use it to display the online/offline status to listeners. From the downloaded files the interesting one is mnt_check.php. Try the demo below to get a demonstration of the functionality.

Update:
I have moved the online tester to a separate location.

This article is an idea of live streaming with instant feedback from listeners. There are quiet a few source clients that can generate direct streaming from OSS, ALSA audio devices. When using more advanced musical softwares in Linux, especially when running them in sync the sound engine and routing is handled by Jack. Therefore you need a source client capable of dealing with Jack to forward the sound to the streaming server. Internet DJ Console fulfills the requirement. Furthermore it delivers an ogg output stream, which enables you to easily embed it on a website with the audio tag implemented in the html5 standard.

To enhance the user interaction you could implement a chat/shoutbox on the station website. Bumpin is an alternative but I’m not fully satisfied with it’s loading time. If you know of any service similar to Bumpin, please direct me to it. Optimal would be something that can be installed on LAMP.