Wireless Internet Radio Drop Outs

[MattParker]

Help. I have a Nokia N85 media phone which I got, among other reasons, because I can use it to listen to Internet radio while driving. The area in which I drive regularly has good 3G cell phone coverage but the audio stream keeps dropping out, both when I am just running errands close to home (and presumably not changing cell phone towers) or when I am driving cross country. I usually have good signal strength and a 3G connection but my media player apps show "buffering" or no connection. What causes this? Traffic on the cellular network? I notice this seems to happen less during off-hours. Changing towers somehow disrupting the stream? Is there anything I can do to get more dependable streaming audio on a mobile device? Are some audio apps more resistant to drop-outs?

 

[GeneSavage]

Not 100% sure on this, but it's possible that the stream you're listening to is simply streaming at a rate right at the top capacity of what your connection can do.

At that point, the slightest glitch, hiccup, anything, is enough to cause buffering.

I used to have this experience listening to internet radio over a dial-up modem (I'm dead years old in internet years, yes): I could listen to 24k as long as I didn't load ANY pages on the net. 32k might be listenable on a good day, but don't hold your breath; about the time you thought it was going to be solid, your mail program would check for new messages and down would go your stream.

I'm not against investigating other issues, but you might just try other, slower streams on your phone and see if they play solidly.

Others may have good ideas on where else to look for problems (your phone, your provider, etc.).

 

[Tom Wells]

Remember back in the 90's when people had special car-phone antennas?

That would be what you would try , if you'd ever like your smartphone to have the slightest chance of jumping cell to cell without dropping.


And THAT'S if it's your carrier's cells. Lose your preffered carrier, your stream will die.

Better make sure to live in a well populated are with no topography, too.

Maybe someday the concept will work, but I'm not willing to try again for a while.

 

[MattParker]

@NightAire: You raise a good point. I've noticed more and more broadcasters (and Internet-only audio streams) have gotten rid of their "dial-up connection" streams in favor of "CD Quality" streams. On the phone I stay away from any streams over 64 kbps for the reasons you mention but I'm finding some stations don't offer anything below 128.

I think this policy is misguided. (1) Given the quality of speakers on most computers, what's the point of a high bandwidth stream in the first place - especially for talk programming? (2) High bandwidth audio streams are inaccessible to mobile users, who are going to be an increasing audio segment. (3) Wireless providers are moving away from "all you can eat data plans" and are moving toward metered plans. Result: High bandwidth audio forces users to go to (and pay for) high bandwidth data plans.

And yes, mobile Internet audio does remind me of my experiences in the mid 90s with 8kbps audio streams on Real Audio Player (from "Progressive Networks").

@Tom: An external antenna is an interesting idea. C Crane still offers a "trucker antenna." The description says it is not compatible with iPhone and Blackberry devices (but no mention of Palm, Android of Symbian). 90s phones (mostly analog) had external antennas so you could unscrew the provided antenna and attach a lead to an external antenna. Not sure how you'd hook up an external antenna to today's devices but an antenna is an option worth looking into.