Rebuilding our 6–10am clocks this week, and GSelector keeps tripping when I hold recurrents at 25% and enforce a 2:00 artist separation. For those programming Hot AC, are you getting better flow with MusicMaster’s goal scheduling or a different GSelector pass order — how are you avoiding gold fatigue without blowing up the clocks?
@OP I’d reorder passes in GSelector: schedule currents + A‑recurrents first with a “soft 1:45” artist rule and energy/tempo goals, then backfill gold with a hard 2:00 and split gold into A/B with higher min rest in 7–9a — morning drive is Tetris at 70 mph. Are you using Daypart Goal Overrides to dip recurrents to about 20% in the 8a hour?
@jessicamartin23 I killed the morning trips by packeting Power Gold 3‑deep and enabling packet unstacking just for 6–10a, then a Daypart Goal Override to dip recurrents to about 22% — flow improved and clocks stayed intact; are your golds packeted yet?
Quick win in GSelector: clean up artist keywords and set ‘featured/secondary’ to non-separating so Post Malone ft. X doesn’t trip the 2:00, then add a 6–10a clock variant with a 10–15s imaging pad after your highest-burn artists to buy time without juicing gold. @OP are your keyword maps consolidated, or are features/duos causing most of the fails? If it’s the latter, flipping those credits plus one imaging buffer usually stops the morning trips.
I fixed this once by auditing imaging/stopset runtimes so GSelector counted the real minutes; a bunch of sweepers were at 0:00, so the 2:00 artist rule threw flags that didn’t exist on-air. After correcting lengths and marking them Non‑Music, I kept recurrents near 25% without touching the clocks; worst case I set one high‑collision artist to 2:15 just for 6–10a. @OP are your link lengths accurate in those hours?
Getting smoother 6–10a in GSelector by splitting Recurrents into Hot/Light, boosting their search depth, and scheduling them before Gold… Cap Gold at one per quarter-hour and turn on tempo/energy flow; you keep the ‘2:00’ but it stops choking — @luna7082, have you tried the category search-depth override?
I solved this by making one morning slot a Flex position (category group A/Hot Rec/Throwback with a light bias to A); when the 2:00 artist rule fires, GSelector swaps there instead of grabbing extra Gold, which cut the fatigue a lot. @owen_j53 do you run a single Flex per quarter-hour?
Try bumping GSelector’s lookahead depth to 3–4 just for 6–10a; it stopped the engine from choking on ‘25% recurrents’ for me without touching the clocks. You on 5.x? If so, the setting moved and the docs are here: GSelector - RCS Sound Software.
I’d keep the 25% and fix the choke by dayparting your gold: create a “morning-safe” code and filter 6-10a clocks to that pool, then bump Rest just on the non-morning gold so they cycle later; artist spacing stops colliding and fatigue drops. Minor caveat: you’ll need to recheck turnover balance in 10a-3p; do you have callout/streaming data to tag which titles get the “morning-safe” flag?
I’d flip GSelector’s artist rule to “Primary Only” and daypart it: keep 2:00 on A/Gold but let Recurrents sit at 1:45 from 6–10 so the log stops stalling — it’s like loosening the belt one notch without changing outfits. If features/duets are still colliding, merge those artist keywords so ‘Artist’ and ‘Artist feat. X’ don’t double-count, @lee89.
I’d reorder the pass so category/attribute and min rest evaluate before separation in 6–10, and make the separation check the last pass; that kept ‘25% recurrents’ intact without the engine seizing. Also turn on reset-at-stopsets so the ‘2:00’ can span a break instead of stalling. If you’re on 5.x, pass order is adjustable per daypart.
Try setting an artist “max plays per daypart” in GSelector so 6–10a caps at 2 spins per artist, with any overflow pushed outside that block; it eases the choke without touching your 25% mix or the 2:00 gap. Just watch the 9:50–10:10 handoff so the cap doesn’t get gamed by the boundary. @OP are you anchoring powers at:15/:45, or could one slide to:05 to smooth that push?
Running one static clock or a couple variants? Split your Recurrents into R-Hi/R-Lo and build two 6–10 micro-clocks that alternate their slots; in GSelector set ‘Max in Sequence’ for Recurrents to 1 so it quits clumping when the 2:00 separation hits. Small caveat: ‘Platoon’ 15–20% of Gold weekly so R-Hi doesn’t burn — like shuffling the deck between quarters.
One tweak that helped me: make the 2:00 artist rule a “best” 1:45 just in 6–10 and add a light Title Keyword separation, then bump Era/Energy goals up one notch so the engine favors variety; that kept 25% recurrents and the “keeps tripping” stopped… Also double-check featured-artist credits count toward separation or they’ll sneak through. It’s like loosening the belt one notch so GSelector can breathe.
I solved that “2:00” choke in GSelector by dayparting the Recurrent category to use a deeper search only 6–10a (bump Search Depth to about 60 and enable Lookahead 2–3 positions) while keeping the rule hard, so flow improved without messing with your recurrent target… Small caveat: it’ll slow scheduling, so I only apply it M–F and revert on weekends. @OP have you flipped on Lookahead in that block? RCS_website_SVGs.