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AAC Streamhosts

J

JimmyJames

Guest
Anyone have recommendations for a hosting company that can handle AAC streams?
 
Almost any Shoutcast/Icecast stream hosts can handle an AAC(+) stream.

Do not use regular AAC - use AAC+. AAC has the compatibility issues of AAC+, but not the noticeably improved quality.
 
The codec is not your problem...if you go with anyone that uses a flash-based web-player, kiss the mobile goodbye. You can build apps or pay someone to do it, but who wants to maintain that stuff...not me! A friend of mine at World cast systems pointed me to BitSizzle. These guys were in Chicago at NAB and you can upload MP3/AAC to a single shout cast id to make sure any browser and player can see your stream. They use HTML5 and flash...cool stuff. Their cheap as well.
 
lynxalb00 said:
The codec is not your problem...if you go with anyone that uses a flash-based web-player, kiss the mobile goodbye. You can build apps or pay someone to do it, but who wants to maintain that stuff...not me! A friend of mine at World cast systems pointed me to BitSizzle. These guys were in Chicago at NAB and you can upload MP3/AAC to a single shout cast id to make sure any browser and player can see your stream. They use HTML5 and flash...cool stuff. Their cheap as well.
Click to expand...

For those on mobile, flash can be a problem, if the phone is not capable of flash. On the other hand, on mobile, if you download the SHOUTcast app for iPhones, or Winamp or A Radio Online for Androids, you should be able to connect to most stations using SHOUTcast.

Shoutcaststreaming http://shoutcaststreaming.us offers a nice flash player and a mobile page for Blackberry, iPhone and Android that will direct to players loaded on a mobile phone, and is quite inexpensive. Just another alternative to pass along.
 
nitnitr said:
lynxalb00 said:
The codec is not your problem...if you go with anyone that uses a flash-based web-player, kiss the mobile goodbye. You can build apps or pay someone to do it, but who wants to maintain that stuff...not me! A friend of mine at World cast systems pointed me to BitSizzle. These guys were in Chicago at NAB and you can upload MP3/AAC to a single shout cast id to make sure any browser and player can see your stream. They use HTML5 and flash...cool stuff. Their cheap as well.
Click to expand...

For those on mobile, flash can be a problem, if the phone is not capable of flash. On the other hand, on mobile, if you download the SHOUTcast app for iPhones, or Winamp or A Radio Online for Androids, you should be able to connect to most stations using SHOUTcast.

Shoutcaststreaming http://shoutcaststreaming.us offers a nice flash player and a mobile page for Blackberry, iPhone and Android that will direct to players loaded on a mobile phone, and is quite inexpensive. Just another alternative to pass along.
Click to expand...

Great info, but Shoutcast is just a protocol for streaming, any vendor can use the shout cast protocol to establish connections between an encoder and the stream host. If you want to deliver more than a raw stream to a devices media player, you need a great vendor to build dynamic web-players that don't look like a template!

All of these hurdles (download this app, follow these instructions, pick your format, etc.) for the audience beyond visiting the site and clicking "listen live" will cause us all to lose reach and market share. It should just work regardless of the device (resoundradio.com...we consulted for these guys) Also, we like a vertical host because without the stats, how can we monetize the stream...we need numbers to show agencies and refuse to join the Triton digital giant land grab. We can cover that topic at another time. :mad:
 
As stated above most all Shoutcast stream providers support Mp3 & AAC+ but if you are looking for a service with AutoDJ or automation for AAC+ then not all of them handle it the same...

We have used SHOUT Radio Automation the past couple years on two of our stations and I am about to move a couple more onto them as well. They are affordable reliable and can handle MP3 & AAC+ no problems....

But the best feature by far is they offer a LIVE DJ Encoder so your DJ's can connect to it rather than the main encoder and SHOUT automatically handles the switch seamlessly and then back again when they disconnect. This feature alone makes it worth the money rather having to right scripts and things to kick people etc....
 
IF you would like listeners with Logitech Internet radios (like the Squeezebox) to listen in, then FORGET about using AAC+ as the radio craps out and plays a warning that says to contact "tune in dot com" to request a compatibel stream.
It's too bad as there are two station feeds I really want but can't listen to because of the unsupported streams.
 
JohnnyElectron said:
IF you would like listeners with Logitech Internet radios (like the Squeezebox) to listen in, then FORGET about using AAC+ as the radio craps out and plays a warning that says to contact "tune in dot com" to request a compatibel stream.
It's too bad as there are two station feeds I really want but can't listen to because of the unsupported streams.
Click to expand...

Is that with older models? I do know that AAC+ is rather hardware-intensive (just for a laugh, I encoded some audio files in the format, practically choked my Android phone playing them back). I know British DAB is having some issues upgrading to the format due to compatibility issues.

On a related note, I found a station a while back that was streaming in ogg vorbis. Tried to load it and got the compatibility message. A bit surprising, since I assumed ogg was a native format for Android (I encode most of my music for my phone in the format and it works very well). Maybe it was just that stream. Hard to find other ogg streams for comparison.
 
I tried your link and tried KONA Stream, and the BOX was able to search & find it, but said "incompatible stream".
I wonder if it's possible that Logitech would offer a firmware update for OGG, and other links it doesn't like?
 
I switched from MP3 to AAC about a month ago (most of my listenership is on iTunes, so desktop compatibility shouldn't be an issue) - my encoder is the Oddsock Reborn plugin using Breakaway. I use AAC-LC for comparability with TuneIn, and found a Flash player online that was $20 - http://danielbrinca.com/aacplayer/ is where I bought it from, and so far it's been easy setting it up.

Here it is on my site - http://jamminoldiesradio.com/?page_id=8. Still trying to get the title/artist working due to a PHP issue with GoDaddy.

So far, the only issue going AAC was finding a decent encoder and web player for the site. And the TuneIn webplayer doesn't work, but eh. Can't win em all.
 
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