How To Fix A Specific Problem With A Shoutcast Stream

Radio 1's web stream has for a long time been intermittently lo-fi, even though the actual stream format is nice-enough 128k mp3, i.e. 44.1kHz stereo. More often than not (and pretty much permanently) the audio quality was in fact 22kHz mono, i.e. shithouse, tragically being re-streamed at 128k (oh the waste.. oh the bits...).

So, since the Energy Flash podcast relies on this stream, the problem was one dear to my heart. For a lil while I had been emailing, attempting to suss it out, get to the bottom of it, or just keep hassling so someone figures it out.

Didn't get anywhere, but last week I noted that the tech guy hangs out on GChat sometimes, so I decided to keep banging on about it in an attempt to really get it fixed. AND WE DID IT!

The culprits:

• Microsoft's Audio Compression Manager and


• a little-known piece of software known as RecALL Pro (note the super slick modern website featuring Comic Sans MS)

R1 uses RecALL Pro for logging purposes, recording at low quality everything broadcast on the station. Running on the same machine is WinAMP and a Shoutcast server powering the web stream.

When RecALL pro starts up recording, it requests a low-fi audio stream from the antiquated (and I think deprecated) MS ACM. I believe that this results in subsequent requests to the audio input (particularly the one made by WinAMP) being downgraded to the low quality. This makes sense, as MS ACM (as I see it) is an older, lower level technology that was probably designed when only one app would even think about accessing the soundcard.

So the solution was to start up WinAMP first, and maybe (I wasn't there!) tweak the quality settings (still low quality) used in RecALL Pro.

Get on with it then - have a listen to the stream or check out the podcast! The water's fine, come on in...

Sounds Good - tracklist 16/08/2008

I do a show on Radio 1 and its tracklists have been on a few different profiles over the years. From now on, they will be here! And potentially with djdownload buy links.

Don't forget you can listen to old and new episodes of the show, as it's a podcast, via podshow aka mevio.

Here's last week's tracklist:
Sleazy-E - How It Looks
DJ Steep - Large oLL (M1 remix)
K.I.M. - Wet & Wild (Riot in Belgium remix)
DJ Sneak - Acid Talks
Nick Supply & Khaled Nimry - Hizniz
Plastikman - Risk Assessment
Cult - Sound of Seduction (Guns & Bombs dub mix)
Afrojack - Hard Love
The Crystal Method - Cherry Twist (Deadmau5 remix)
Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler (Joakim remix)
Grey - Shame On You (Slater Hogan remix)
Crookers - Il Cattivo
Micky Slim ft. Tank - Hit the Club
Relentless - Blitzer Disco
Paul Jacobs pres. Soul Grabber - Motocross Madness
Missoddkidd - Smoke Machine (Dekker & Johan Even Leaner mix)
Elite Force - No Turning Back (Mowgli & Solo remix)
Tittsworth - Broke Ass Nigga (feat DJ Assault, Kenny B, Jinxx &
Frankie Baby)
The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name (LA Riots remix)
Marc Leaf & Drew Scott - Fabulous (Twocker remix)
Sebastien Leger & Chris Lake - Ghost
Soul Of Man - Scatterbox (Mowgli remix)

Thanks to Hope for hooking up the R1 site to here.

NOW TO THE POINT

(thanks for reading this far)

The R1 stream is now stereo and 44.k, i.e. it sounds good!

There was an uninteresting technical hitch causing the previous lack of quality, which I'll detail in a later blog (if you'd like to hear the story, comment!).

UPDATE

(here are the buy links)

Note that not all the tracks above are present and some have been substituted due to catalogue issues. Like, why is "Word" available when "Ghost" isn't, I thought they were on the same EP (oh right, it's from various compilations)? And, looks like MAD DECENT (Crookers' "Il Cattivo") don't put their stuff on djdownload yet..

In there is the track that Missoddkidd guests on, mentioned on the show, not her track that I played.

Buy this stuff - I get 3-5 cents for every purchase!!!