Live radio stream query - urgent advice needed

[happy37]

Hi all,

I have a query regarding a live radio stream?

Here's a link that I use/made via Media player myself:-

[url]mms://193.218.160.20/Sunrise[/url]

Or, the website is [[http://www.sunriseradio.com]] Possibly damaged or evil web site-koz]], and then click on the "Listen Live" link.

I have been using Winamp to listen via the above lately, and that is better than Windows Media Player.....

What I have noticed that there are gaps in the live stream, which really spoils the listening/recording experience.

I used to use Windows Media Player, yet have now moved on to using Winamp...but things still don't work as they should.

I am now scratching my head to see if anyone else can suggest any other methods to try and fix this, please?

To quote an article that has been written on Audacity Wiki at:-

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... ings#Skips

It says:-

"You can also run audacity at a higher priority on Windows 2000 or XP by invoking the Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and following these instructions: Click on the Processes Tab. Find the audacity.exe process and right click on it. Highlight Set Priority and set the process to Above Normal. I don't very often set it to "High", the next highest priority unless I am going to walk away from audacity while it does whatever magic I want it to do and don't care about possibly pre-empting any other processes on the PC."

Having read this, I tried this and set the priority to High and things worked well for the first show that I wanted to listen to yesterday (and record) via Audacity. This was between 12-2pm - this worked well and I recorded it all without any problems. However, I did the same thing for the second show between 4-7pm, and lo and behold, all was well between 4-6.45pm with no gaps in the live stream.

From 6.45pm to 7pm before the end of the show, it all fell apart!!! - there were gaps in the live stream again.....

I have also tried to follow most of the advice in this article, and I only record in Mono and 16-bit recording.

What I also do before every recording session is to defrag my hard drives (even though they are brand new - is this overkill?)

My hard drives are 7200RPM ones, and I have got 2GB RAM in the PC with Windows XP Pro and Audacity 1.2.6.

As stated above, I have also tried to set the priority of Audacity higher than the rest of the running programs in the background/system tray.

I also shut down/kill off as many un-needed processes before the recording process, so as to ensure that the recording goes smoothly.

I have also tried the advice given at link:

http://www.wnyc.org/audiohelp/

It states-

"When attempting to listen to an audio stream with Windows Media Player, the audio continuously skips (like a CD player), stops momentarily or gives me the following error message: "A network firewall may be preventing the Player from opening the file by using the UDP transport protocol. To play this file, try opening the file without specifying UDP."

Try the following:

UDP: Disable the UDP protocol (a type of streaming audio protocol) in the Windows Media Player by unchecking the UDP check box found under the Network tab on the Options palette under the Tools menu in Windows Media Player.

Looking at the stated check box picture in the link:-

http://www.wnyc.org/images/wmp_udp.gif

Is this correct, and would I still need to leave the box where it says "Use ports 7000-7007 to receive data" ticked or not???

Apart from all of this, I am now simply failing to see what else I can do or try to get all of this to work properly.

I think that I have mentioned all of the steps that I take in order to make sure that all runs well, but in case I've missed anything, I will pop back and let you all know.

Instead of all the above, is there another program that I can use to listen to and record what I want to? - any thoughts, please?

Sincere apologies for the length of my posting as I wanted to give as much detail as possible regarding the problems I am having.

All your comments/thoughts/suggestions will be most welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Regards

happy37

[kozikowski]

You generally only need to mess with ports if you're trying for a fully interactive experience or a videoconference service. Those demand symmetrical connections and don't get along very well with firewalls.

You're definitely doing something wrong if you need to get down to that kind of granularity. Most people should not have to deal with UDP and TCP services.

Do you know how to to do an internet speed test and do you know the inernet speeds you're paying for? Look on-line or look at your billing. Last I looked, I'm paying for 6000 download and 512 up. This means I can watch TV shows live on my connection (down) but it takes me forever to update my web page because that's going up, the "wrong way."

http://www.dslextreme.com/Support/Speed ... fault.aspx

The red flag in your posting is some times during the day the thing works fine and other times it's terrible. That can be a local problem with your internet service, or it could be an upload problem at your streaming supplier. Much more likely you.

Do you have cable modem? I have telephone company DSL and my connection for the most part isn't affected by my neighbors, but if you have Cable Television Internet, your connection could turn to garbage if all your neighbors, for example, decide to download {word rejected} at the same time. You share your connection with everybody around you.

Are you on a wire at your house or do you use WiFI to your laptop? In a crowded neighborhood, WiFi can change speed with the number of people downloading {word rejected}. All these serious services should only be done with a hard-wire connected to your computer. Not WiFi or other wireless.

Find a friend who regularly watches movies or TV or listens to radio on-line, buy them cookies and get them to try your service at their house instead of you at home. You may find that your home connection may just be terrible.

Koz

[kozikowski]

It's them. I launched the web site and the player took over my machine and then crashed. It sets flags where I couldn't get rid of it even after restart.

It bothers me that I couldn't get my machine back by using the command line tools. That's hard to break on an OS-X machine.

I marked the link as dangerous.

Are you in or have your service in India? We have offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The Mumbai internet connections have never worked right.

Koz

[happy37]

It's them. I launched the web site and the player took over my machine and then crashed. It sets flags where I couldn't get rid of it even after restart.

It bothers me that I couldn't get my machine back by using the command line tools. That's hard to break on an OS-X machine.

I marked the link as dangerous.

Are you in or have your service in India? We have offices in Mumbai and Hyderabad. The Mumbai internet connections have never worked right.

Koz

koz

Many thanks for letting me know that it's them (the radio service), and not me or my Internet connection.

Here's the result of a speedtest from the site youu suggested as above, DSL Extreme:-

http://i.dslr.net/imc/0/0/1/3/84908889.png

Is this result fast enough to stream live radio?

Your comments, please? - what do you mean by that " it sets flags where I couldn't get rid of it even after restart."?

I am based/live in the UK, and this online radio station is also in the UK (West London) to be precise.

I am on a wired/ethernet connection at my house with a router.

I am paying for an upto 8mb connection download speed, with upto 1.3mb upload.

So, reading what you have mentioned here, what can I now do to get round this problem...continue as I am doing now, or can you please suggest any alternatives?

Thanks again for the diagnosis - please feel free to provide more info if you can as to what else transpires(d) when you tried to listen via the links I provided.

Apologies again of this has caused you any major inconvenience with your Mac or PC.

Should I try "Total Recorder" instead , or not? - could that help at all?

Look forward to your response.

Regards

happy37

[steve]

I have been using Winamp to listen via the above lately, and that is better than Windows Media Player.....
What I have noticed that there are gaps in the live stream, which really spoils the listening/recording experience.

The chances are that there is nothing that you can do about it. It sounds like either there server/connection is not fast enough for the number of listeners, or there is some bottleneck in the network somewhere between their server and your computer. An 8MB connection should be easily fast enough to stream audio smoothly (they're only using a 7KiB stream). That web-site is absolutely loaded with adverts which will eat your band-width. If you use Firefox with "Adblock Plus" and "Flashblock" then your available bandwidth will improve a lot.

"A network firewall may be preventing the Player from opening the file by using the UDP transport protocol. To play this file, try opening the file without specifying UDP."

Typical misleading message from Microsoft. What it really means is that the connection has been lost, probably due to network congestion.

Can you watch BBC iPlayer smoothly? If so, then your computer and Internet connection are definitely fast enough.
You could try listening at a different time of day.

[happy37]

I have been using Winamp to listen via the above lately, and that is better than Windows Media Player.....
What I have noticed that there are gaps in the live stream, which really spoils the listening/recording experience.

The chances are that there is nothing that you can do about it. It sounds like either there server/connection is not fast enough for the number of listeners, or there is some bottleneck in the network somewhere between their server and your computer. An 8MB connection should be easily fast enough to stream audio smoothly (they're only using a 7KiB stream). That web-site is absolutely loaded with adverts which will eat your band-width. If you use Firefox with "Adblock Plus" and "Flashblock" then your available bandwidth will improve a lot.

"A network firewall may be preventing the Player from opening the file by using the UDP transport protocol. To play this file, try opening the file without specifying UDP."

Typical misleading message from Microsoft. What it really means is that the connection has been lost, probably due to network congestion.

Can you watch BBC iPlayer smoothly? If so, then your computer and Internet connection are definitely fast enough.
You could try listening at a different time of day.

Hi steve

Thanks for your very useful reply.

I am now typing this to you on Firefox...what a world of difference to IE.

The pages load instantly, yet with Fasterfox, they're even faster.

Will see how this goes, have now also installed "Adblock Plus".

Another query, however?

In IE, the website as above (Sunrise) comes up with the Listen Live box and shows who I am listening to (please see attached, named Internet Explorer PNG screenshot at the very bottom).

In Firefox, I get the same box, but no relevant info? - can I get the same effect in Firefox or not? (please see attached, named Firefox PNG screenshot - the first picture).

Any comments on how to achieve this same effect in Firefox? - can this be done or not?

Thanks again for all your help and comments - much appreciated.

happy37

[steve]

In Firefox, I get the same box, but no relevant info? - can I get the same effect in Firefox or not?

In simple terms, there are 2 different standards for writing code for web pages - there is the W3C standard (The World Wide Web Consortium), and there is Microsoft. Ironically, Microsoft are members of W3C, but they prefer to write their own rules for web authoring rather than make Internet Explorer compatible with what has been agreed as the international standard. This creates major headaches for web designers - if they write semantically correct code it will probably not display correctly in Internet Explorer, so they have to add various hacks to make it work. As IE has a majority market share in web browsers, web designers are compelled to author websites that work correctly in it, especially since their client probably uses IE. This often leads to web pages that display correctly in IE but have some glitches in browsers that implement coding standards correctly (either through ignorance or laziness on the part of the designer). As far as I can tell, that part of the player has been written for Internet Explorer using code that is not W3C compliant (strictly speaking, it's invalid code). Fortunately, the rising popularity of Firefox and the diminishing dominance of Internet Explorer (currently around 63%) is encouraging everyone to play be the same rules (a great blessing for web designers). So the short answer to your question is no, not unless the websites update their site to support other browsers better. Fortunately it is a relatively small detail and other than that the site appears to work correctly.

[kozikowski]

<<<Fortunately it is a relatively small detail and other than that the site appears to work correctly.>>>

...In Windows.

Koz

[happy37]

<<<Fortunately it is a relatively small detail and other than that the site appears to work correctly.>>>

...In Windows.

Koz

Koz

Thanks for the detailed explanation about the code and various browsers - this now makes sense.

Mind you, could I still give other alternative browsers a try instead?

Like Google Chrome or Opera, for example?

Is it worth giving Chrome a go (just to see what happens?).....

Thanks again.

happy37

[steve]

The site seems to work better in Chrome than in Firefox, worse in Opera and very poor in Safari (tested on Linux).
I suggested Firefox because that website is rammed with adverts, flash scripts and other annoyances which can easily be blocked using Adblock Plus and Flashblock. Chrome does not have these content blocking features, but by all means give it a go. Another option is that there is a plug-in that allows Firefox to use the IE rendering engine to display pages (can be set-up to run on specific web sites or web pages). I can't remember for certain but I think it's called "IE Tab" or something like that.