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Z-88.9 Stream... Great station,,, But it keeps buffering

  • Thread starter Mid West Clubber
  • Start date

M

Mid West Clubber

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Ive been listening to WBZ 88.9 all day, and while I love this station, as well as the other school stations, im having buffering problems today and yet I have Comcast High Speed internet and its a 32k stream, it should play okay... Im not that familier with the new version of Real One, I hadnt used Real in years, but I installed the newest Real One just so I could listen to Z88.9. Is their any kind of settings in the Real Player that I can adjust to make it quite REBUFFERING, I know you can do this with Winamp, thats why im asking... Also, is their any other players besides Real that will be able to stream Z88.9.. I love listening to Z and comparing it to Giant 90.9 here in indy, they too air mostly Dance, but also alot of NON dance specialty shows, both stations are similar in that sense, but Giant 90.9 will play more long remixes and underground instrumentals... Both stations are great in their own way, and each are programed to serve their local market, so thats why they dont sound exactly the same... Also, as ive been typing this the Buffering seems to have stopped (Knock on Wood).... But if I can adjust anything or use a different player, let me know,,,, DOH... It just cut out again...DOH >>>DOH.......
 
I also noticed the buffering. Z88.9 streams itself directly through the Burlington County College network without using a commercial streaming service, and if their ISP connection is slow or there's a lot of traffic on the network, Z88.9's stream will buffer.
 
This has been brought up before and the problem is going to be taken care in the next few weeks. We will be switching to shoutcast and will have that up and running shortly. Please understand Burlington County College is a publicly funded operation and as such things can take sometime. There is a major philosophy change going on with technology there. There are some major changes coming that are going to take Z889 to another level. So be patient. I hate Real Player too.
 
No doubt! Ever since the change to Real One, I refuse to have it installed on any machine I own! Of course now I feel the same about Winamp since they started pushing toolbars and all the AOL crap. I either go with iTunes or VLC depending on the machine.

As for encoder, Hot 96 is using Oddcast and Orban's 1010LE. The Oddcast does a great job, and doesn't steal a bunch of CPU power to encode, but it's not as rock solid as the Orban (which we use for the AACplus stream.) If you are tight on bandwidth, I really suggest the Orban encoder.
 
When I listen to Hot 96, I cant really tell the difference between the 32k aac and the 96k stream. They both sound pretty good for 32 and 96k, but I think Hot 96 would be really awesome if it had a good 128k mp3 stream,, and a 128 AAC stream would really rock. Also, I think Bretts station sounds pretty good for a 32k Real stream. Real Streams usually sound really really bad, all garbled and hissy, like the way Energy 108 and hits 1035 Torronto sounded back in like 1998.

I really hate real player,,,, I downloaded it exclusively to listen to the Z88.9 stream, its an awesome unique station, even some of the Non Dance programs are cool. They have some good Jazz and Reggae shows on Z too. Plus, since its a school school station I dont have to sit through all thge offensive Sexual Laguage thats quite prominate in todays Hip Hop and Pop, I know I can listen to Z88.9 with my little Neice and Nephews and not have to worry about them picking up any bad language,,, C89.5 and WMPH are all good family friendly stations, proving that you dont have to just let the kids listen to Radio Disney and crap like that, there are good School stations out there that keep a family friendly,,, But not lame playlist...

I wish WBDG Giant 90.9 would start streaming, they air about 12 hours of Dance from 6 to 6 every single day, and even more on weekends... I think Brett would enjoy listening to this Dance Intensive school station. There are so few School stations around that give regular exposure to Dance, and I greatly applaud those that do.

Speaken of Real, I tunes, and Winamp and all that,,, What players do you guys like? I use winamp simply because I have to, there are alot of unknown mp3 players available out there, but do they actually work, are they safe, and will they fully support mp3, AAC, OGG, and Mp3PRO, or at least easily download a plugin to play those formats. Ive been looking for a replacement for Winamp since it can be pretty buggy and likes to crash and lock up alot. I really like the sound quality of Itunes, but I dont think I-tunes supports AAC, and I know they dont support Mp3Pro. I used to have a player called Jet Audio or Jet Cast, it was really nice and it supported mp3pro without a plugin, but Jet Audio is old and outdated, they discontinued making new versions and updates, and I dont think they have any way of playing AAC streams... I also used Sonique briefly about 5 yrs ago, it had some nice features for its time and it was a Pretty Eye Candy player, BUT MAN...(What a resource hog) but this one too was discontinued awhile back as well, so all you can get are the old mp3 only players, no way to play AAC OGG or MP3pro..... I know hardly anyone uses mp3pro except for the Live 365 casters in the U.S........... But I listen to alot of foreign stations, and MP3PRO is still very popular in Europe, several stations I listen to use Mp3pro,, the bad thing is, the mp3pro plugin is hard to find online, especially the latest and most stable, best sounding Vol. 1.3.... So what all good players are out ther that have the support I need other than winamp. Does Jet Audio support AAC now...(Probably not) I cant live without my AAC and mp3pro support.
 
Our audio gets processed before it gets to the server. Thats why the audio sounds better than normal 32k streams. The streaming server sounds great, I just cant wait to get it online
 
We are running MBL4, which is a freeware you can find online. It's low resource usage was a plus for me, considering the processing and encoders run on the same box. It's ok for processing, but it doesn't require you to lean on it pretty hard to get some consistent processing and it has some other quarks that you must get used to in order to keep the final clipper from shredding the heck out of the highs (mainly using and finding the sweet spot in the Pre-/De-emphasis circuit.)

We were running a winamp plugin called Sound Solution that was multiband processor and we used a custom wrapper another engineer had written to run it stand alone. This program became a bit of a resource hog with the 2.0 version.

Another worthless fact about the MBL4 is the original Inovonics Omega FM processor box was a hardware interface running MBL4. It seems the creator of MBL4 parted ways with Inovonics and took his code with him..
 
Some exciting news. We are getting a PPM encoder for the webstream. So this is helping me get the webserver up and running faster.
 
I cant wait for the new stream for Z-88.9,,, Really fun station to listen to when the stream cooperates. Are we going to be able to listen with Winamp??????

I wish our local dance School station Giant 90.9 would stream, I cant get the signal unless I drive about 2 miles North, and even then the signal is weak. They air Dance every night from 7:00 PM till 6:AM, its called the Giant Mix, and its a little more underground leaning, but its still Dance Hits based, it could be slightly better, but im happy to have even a part time Dance station in this conservative city. At least all the CHRs around here like WNOU and WBWB have good weekend mixshows with Pure Dance, and of course WBWB airs two hours of Dance in mixshows a day, Early morning, and the Drive at 5.
 
Whats wrong with your website? It looks fine to me.... 8) Brett, are you also a professor at Burlington College? I wish I was a student at Burlington and lived in the area so I could get a volunteer shift at Z88.9... I would try to Volunteer for WBDG in my area, but their Dance programs are completely automated and its too far a drive from the Com CHR station I work for.
 
Thats cool Brett, I figured you taught some kind of classes over at Burlington, you would be a cool teacher to have. Back when I was with highschool I had a pretty good friendship with my Astronomy teacher Dan Goins, he was into alot of the same nerdy activities I was into, we were both big on stuff like Dxing, and Meteorology and he was real familier with all the high powered AM stations, he was who taught me early on about FM Dxing and how it works and theories of what caused it. While most other senior's took this class as a filler, and used it for naps and goofing off, I actually got the highest grades in his class because I liked it,,, I always liked any form of Science classes, and also Social Studies-Geography. One of his assignments was to scan the FM dial and do a radio spectrum graph, listing the stations and putting a bar graph of the signal strength between one and ten. There were only like 15 people in the class, and I was the only one that understood the assignment well enough to get an A, and turn it in on time. Anyway, I cant wait until you upgrade the Z88.9 stream,,, but the Real Stream is definately better than nothing,, If it wasnt for Z88.9 I would uninstall Real Player. Your right though, it does sound really good for 32k, the only problem is it buffers alot. Sorry for the long off topic post guys.
 
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