Slots listeners and bits oh my

[Vanlen]

Can anyone explain a scenario where you have a station with 100 dedicated slots how can you have advertising revenue? I mean I know that listeners tune in and out through out the day like terrestrial radio but I'm trying to wrap my head around what would be the average total that your listener base would be?

Secondly with listeners on smart phones is it better to go 64kbps rather than 128kbps?

Thanks in advance

 

[stuckinthe50s]

With 100 maximum listeners, and assuming you can fill them for the peak hours of the day, you should see an ATH of 30 to 35 thousand. (YMMV)

64kbps is better if you expect a lot of smart phone listeners. For all the hype, 4G coverage is not that widespread. And 3G has trouble at 128kbps.

 

[DarkStarPDX]

For a smartphone, I would recommend on feeding a 64kbps AAC+ stream. Those sound amazing!

 

[Vanlen]

Thanks for the explanation of slots and audience capacity. I had no idea. I'll definitely look into ACC+ as well.

Cheers all.

 

[lynxalb00]

Anyone who uses listener slots does not know how to manage capacity. Streamguys(stuck on WMA), our former provider, great people though, Abacast, we looked into them, awesome people, but c'mon free streaming...how is that going to feel when I need something. Cash means priority when it comes to paying customers. I suggest you look at BitSizzle. They use them over at relevantradio.com, Wisconsin radio group I listen to daily...updated their site last month or so when I visited and I noticed it just plain worked without and app. I think I'll give them a shot here in Louisiana. I wanted to know how this stream was working on my iPhone and droid tablet without the media player or flash and dug around. It's these young fellas in Texas. Hope this helps, slots are like paying for empty chairs and limits to me.

 

[Vanlen]

Thanks for the tips...so many hosts and options to choose from. I've found stream hosting that now offers 1000 and 2000 slots respectively that are pricey, but have, according to their web sites, no buffer under runs.

Hope this helps, slots are like paying for empty chairs and limits to me

Hmm. This makes me want to reconsider other scenarios, but how then can you manage capacity without the slot format. I'm new to all this so maybe I'm missing something.

Cheers

 

[FightingIrish]

With 100 maximum listeners, and assuming you can fill them for the peak hours of the day, you should see an ATH of 30 to 35 thousand. (YMMV)

64kbps is better if you expect a lot of smart phone listeners. For all the hype, 4G coverage is not that widespread. And 3G has trouble at 128kbps.

You're absolutely right! Pandora currently does 64K with AAC+. I believe Clear Channel does the same.

The old Citadel (now Cumulus) FM stations are doing about 48K AAC+, and sound decent. I was listening to KRML's 32K stream the other day, and even that sounds decent. WRLT's 32k stream also sounds good on my speaker dock at home (didn't give it the car test yet).

I also found an Ogg Vorbis stream (sound quality is similar to AAC+ at low bitrates), which is very rare, but my Android phone didn't seem to like it, so I couldn't really do a test with it. Shame, wish there was more support for this open source format.

128K on smartphones can sometimes be a problem (depending on network/coverage). Lots of dropouts and rebuffering. 64K and less (in a low-bitrate format like AAC+) is great for smartphones/3G, but stations could also go down to either 56K, 48K and 32K and get away with it.

 

[deltas69]

http://chucklundi.com/default.aspx curious bout what you think about the quality of this stream...click the link on the home page and try to listen at least 20-30 minutes to get the gist of the show...

 

[mikerichardson]

You can stretch the bits out even further with HE-AACv2 (even better than AAC+). I run a 48 kbps stream this way and it works on my iPhone without any special software. Sounds better than 64 kbps AAC+ in my tests.

 

[lynxalb00]

Thanks for the tips...so many hosts and options to choose from. I've found stream hosting that now offers 1000 and 2000 slots respectively that are pricey, but have, according to their web sites, no buffer under runs.

Hope this helps, slots are like paying for empty chairs and limits to me

Hmm. This makes me want to reconsider other scenarios, but how then can you manage capacity without the slot format. I'm new to all this so maybe I'm missing something.

Cheers

According to my support guy, slots limit the server's connections so a system admin doesn't need to do it manually. Some providers, we use BitSizzle, have middleware that is "elastic, like a rubber-band, it grows or shrinks according to demand" or so he says. We were on slots, but noticed an issue when iPhones attempt to connect, they use 3 slots to initiate the connection then one slot when the connection is established. At 100, 200, 1000 slots, if they are all taken the buffer failed.

We finally just decided that on-line is just as important as our transmitters...we don't go cheap when it comes to the tower, so why act like hobbiest with our on-line stuff.

 

[Vanlen]

We finally just decided that on-line is just as important as our transmitters

That is EXACTLY why I haven't clicked on the buy button on some of these hosting services until I have a solid understanding of what I'm getting.

As I'm starting an Internet Radio station in the spring and testing 24-7 off line now.... I just want to have all my ducks in a row so I don't end up with too many Got Yahs. It would be great that if your listener base is reaching capacity, say 1000 slots or bandwidth or whatever, the streaming provider would provide a type of warning so you can make adjustments and not be left with listeners not being able to tune in as it were.

This elastic approach you mentioned from BitSizzle and some of the Freedom servers I've looked at seem to address this.

Cheers

 

[Jay Peninger]

Its funny because a couple years ago when I launched RDSN our first station was 64k AAC and I thought it sounded amazing on my computer and my mobile devices... But low and behold I gave in to my engineer and we went 128k on all our stations now and here I am nearly 3 years later making plans to move all our stations back to 64k AAC for the very reasons people outlined here...

Our stream provider also says that when we goto 64k AAC we will be on a scalable type service that expands as we need it and we simply pay for the average number of slots used for the month which is something that appeals to me as we begin to advertise and promote our network more mainstream.

 

[nd2023]

A 64k AAC stream sounds better than listening to the station on an HD radio if it's in HD.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

An OGG or an AAC+ stream will not play on my Logitech Squeezebox, so you might get some Android folks, but those of us that ponied-up for dedicated net radios are screwed.