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Interesting Streaming Demo

R

rorban

Greg O. put up an interesting streaming demo featuring XM 6.
XM 6 was chosen for the difficult audio material of the time and to demonstrate improved consistency.
The exact stream details are on the actual Player.
Note the bitrates of the two streams.

http://www.opticodec.com/xm

This demo will be up for only a short period of time.
 
Bob-

Thanks. On the flash player, I was able to listen to the XM1 feed but couldn't open the XM2 feed. That said, the XM1 feed sounded great--even on a small laptop with inferior speakers.
 
I think even at 32k using AAC-HE with SBR would sound better than what XM is using currently. Does anybody know what codec XM uses currently and at what bitrate? I heard a demo once using AAC-HE w/SBR on FMExtra @32K and was amazed. I was told that a Mono FM station could theoreticlly have 8, 32K FMExtra streams going at one time. So a 4 FM station cluster could have 32 programs of choice. To bad iboc was chosen as the dominant digial technology. ???
 
Fieldtech1 said:
I heard a demo once using AAC-HE w/SBR on FMExtra @32K and was amazed.
Click to expand...

Everybody is, at the start... However, if you spend a lot of time listening to HE-AAC your ear (better said, your brain) picks up the artificial sounding high-end and then you tend to hear it all the time. The high-end just has a specific, metallic sound to it. I can tell a SBR-enabled codec at any bitrate. To be honest, I've noticed that I seem to have more sensitive hearing than my colleagues or maybe it's just training, but in any case I can't enjoy the music fully any more if it's encoded with HE-AAC. And I was among the first ones to give it all praise, wrote articles about the new revolution in coding, etc.

That's why I much prefer higher bitrate (128 kbps) AAC encoded streams. It's natural and unlike HE-AAC, lacking in almost any noticeable colorations.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
ChiefOperator said:
I'm curious which codec & bitrate would be your choice for streaming? (I'm not being a smart@$$--serious question).

Thanks...
Click to expand...

I would put two streams - a low bitrate and a high bitrate one, giving people choice between low bandwidth usage (possibly cost if not on flat-rate connection) and quality.

For the low bitrate, I would suggest HE-AAC v1 codec running at 48 kbps stereo. This seems to be the optimal bitrate for HE-AAC. If bandwidth cost is an issue or for mobile use, this could be throttled down to 32 kbps. I prefer HE-AAC v1 over v2, becasue of the compatibility and since v2 doesn't seem to increase the quality as much as the inventors claim. This is my subjective opinion, but there are some public listening tests as well: http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/aac_48/plot_overall_zoomed.png

For the high bitrate, I would suggest AAC (AAC-LC, because of the compatibility) running at 128 kbps stereo. This will give excellent sound quality, natural sound texture (unlike HE-AAC) that is practically free of any artifacts. This is the one I would click on and one I can guarantee your listeners could listen for hours with being bothered by the sound quality, artifacts or the synthesized high-end (consciously or not). If cost is an issue, this could be throttled down to 96 kbps which will have some artifacts, but still quite acceptable and still rendering the natural sound texture of source material.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Goran Tomas said:
I would put two streams - a low bitrate and a high bitrate one, giving people choice between low bandwidth usage (possibly cost if not on flat-rate connection) and quality.
Click to expand...

I'm sure we'd all like to do that, but economics seems to get in the way. Not only is the bandwidth going to be more expensive, but, at least in the US, you will owe SoundExchange for two streams, rather than just one. At least, that's how I read it. So far, I haven't figured out how to make much money out of streaming. Maybe one day, those issues will be resolved. I hope so.
 
Chuck said:
Not only is the bandwidth going to be more expensive, but, at least in the US, you will owe SoundExchange for two streams, rather than just one.
Click to expand...

Yes, higher bitrate means more cost. But it's the same with anything else. A $12000 processor is more expensive than $2000, but you also get better and more appealing sound, don't you?

As for paying for two streams, are you sure about that? I can't see a reasoning behind it. It's the same programme on both streams. You are not providing secondary programme, playing additional music, etc. You are just providing a choice of audio quality - the listener who comes to your website will click either one stream or the other.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Goran Tomas said:
As for paying for two streams, are you sure about that? I can't see a reasoning behind it. It's the same programme on both streams. You are not providing secondary programme, playing additional music, etc. You are just providing a choice of audio quality - the listener who comes to your website will click either one stream or the other.

Regards,
Goran Tomas
Click to expand...

I may be wrong about that, but as I read my contract with SoundExchange, each stream gets to pay, even if they are the same program. Perhaps someone has better information?

Still, I think the cost of streaming, VS the return on investment explains why you will hear a lot of low bit rate streams.
 
Apparently the links are not Mac compatible as there were no active buttons that worked.

I agree from pervious listening tests HE-AAC sounds quite acceptable at low bit rates (especially compared to all of the other alternatives I have listened to).

Does anybody know of an open source or low cost software encoder for this format that will work with Wowza Media Server? I looked about 8 months ago and could not find anything and gave up a project for a noncommercial station. They still use Windows Media which although it is free it does not perform as well as I would like.
 
speakerman said:
I agree from pervious listening tests HE-AAC sounds quite acceptable at low bit rates (especially compared to all of the other alternatives I have listened to).
Click to expand...
At low bitrates (at or below 64 kbps) HE-AAC is currently the best audio codec.

Does anybody know of an open source or low cost software encoder for this format that will work with Wowza Media Server? I looked about 8 months ago and could not find anything and gave up a project for a noncommercial station. They still use Windows Media which although it is free it does not perform as well as I would like.
Click to expand...

I can recommend you professional broadcast solutions - there's Orban's Opticodec and there's Omnia's A/XE. Both will talk to Wowza, but if you're looking for lower cost, Omnia A/XE is more affordable. It includes a 3-band software audio processor for streaming and an encoder that supports AAC-LC and HE-AAC. IIRC, the list price is $295.

Orban used to sell AAC/HE-AAC encoder only, but I believe they dropped that and now only offer a bundled product. This includes a software encoder and a hardware audio processor on a PCI card with 8500-equivalent HD processing. The lists price is around $1800.

In both cases, you can run more than one instances of the encoder with different settings, if for example you want to offer multiple streams of the same programme ;)


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
speakerman said:
Does anybody know of an open source or low cost software encoder for this format that will work with Wowza Media Server? I looked about 8 months ago and could not find anything and gave up a project for a noncommercial station. They still use Windows Media which although it is free it does not perform as well as I would like.
Click to expand...

Not software, but a Comrex BRIC-Link could be set up to deliver an Icy/Shoutcast compatible stream which should be accepted by your Wowza server.

Tom Hartnett
Comrex
 
Chuck said:
Goran Tomas said:
I would put two streams - a low bitrate and a high bitrate one, giving people choice between low bandwidth usage (possibly cost if not on flat-rate connection) and quality.
Click to expand...

I'm sure we'd all like to do that, but economics seems to get in the way. Not only is the bandwidth going to be more expensive, but, at least in the US, you will owe SoundExchange for two streams, rather than just one. At least, that's how I read it. So far, I haven't figured out how to make much money out of streaming. Maybe one day, those issues will be resolved. I hope so.
Click to expand...

Good point, and if the stream is sufficiently unreliable, advertisers are not going to get any exposure, because at some point listeners just don't bother checking back though they love the station.
 
Last few weeks I've been setting up a streaming for a college station here in Croatia. As was my suggestion above, I've set up two streams: a low bitrate stream using HE-AACv1@48kbps and a high bitrate stream using AAC-LC@128kbps. There's a Flash player on the station's web site in the upper right corner that you can listen with (it's not the video one, but the one above it that has a "Play high" and a "Play low" buttons): http://www.radiostudent.fpzg.hr

There's about 3 seconds of buffering time when you hit play, but nevertheless you can compare the audio quality of aacPlus and AAC codecs at those bitrates. Listen on headphones and pay attention to the sound and texture of the high-end, as well as the overall audio quality.

Alternatively, these are the URLs to streams streamed from the IceCast server (paste them in WinAmp, VLC, etc):
Low bitrate: http://161.53.122.22:8000/aacPlus48.aac
High bitrate: http://161.53.122.22:8000/AAC128.aac

The station has a sort-of underground format so I can't guarantee what kind of music will you run into. If music at all...

The processing is done by Orban PC-1100 and encoded with the Opticodec software, both of which the station purchased about 5 years ago when those came out.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
All I hear on the Croatia feeds is a buzzy hum. It sounds like the computer needs a Jensen transformer interface and there is no program being sent.
 
speakerman said:
All I hear on the Croatia feeds is a buzzy hum. It sounds like the computer needs a Jensen transformer interface and there is no program being sent.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's what happens when you don't have a competent engineer on board who can set-up a silence fail-over system or even just fix the one that was working before. Don' get me started...

Still, when there's "normal" music playing one can appreciate the difference.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
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