The "Where did the music go?" thread (new stream)

Posted: 2004-10-11 22:34

Hi all,

Any minute now, the 128kbps MP3 stream will be shut off and replaced with a 112kbps Ogg Vorbis stream. This is the result of a complete revamping of our streaming setup resulting not only in better quality, but also better manageability for us. We will keep the 56kbps full MP3 stream as a legacy option for people with old players and slow links, but at the same time we encourage everyone to upgrade if they don't have an Ogg Vorbis capable player yet (we feel confident that most people do).

While the new setup has been in testing for months now, it has still not been tested on a large scale, so if the ride is a bit bumpy in the days to come, please forgive us and leave feedback (good or bad) in this thread.

Refer to the main web page for all the details and updated stream URLs.

Thanks!

Players that Work (as of Mar 29, 2005)

Platform Independent

JOrbis - Open Source Java based Ogg Vorbis player. Shows metadata (title+artist) updates on Windows, but not Linux (Firefox) or OSX (Safari). It should work on other platforms where the Java2 environment is available, too.

Direct Kohina satisfaction link (Accept the signed applet if necessary and hit play):

Kohina in the browser

Windows

foobar2000 - Freeware audio player. No known problems.
Winamp - Another popular audio player. Versions 2 and 5 work. No known problems either. Users of Winamp who don't have the Vorbis decoder (in_vorbis.dll) will need to grab it off a Winamp 5 installation or use this slightly older version (tested with both WA2 and WA5).
DirectShow based players - This includes Windows Media Player, BS Player, and others. These work with the DS filters from this link. Make sure you uninstall all previous Ogg DS filters first (CoreVorbis, OggDS). Doesn't show metadata updates (tested with Windows Media Player 6.04)

Linux/Unix

XMMS - No problems.
MPlayer - Doesn't show title+artist updates, but otherwise fine.
ogg123 - The official console client. No problems.
BMP - Beep Media Player - No problems. Shows metadata.

Mac (OSX)

WHAMB - Shareware turned freeware audio player for OSX. Doesn't show title+artist, but otherwise plays fine.
XMMS/Fink - The Fink port of XMMS, works flawlessly with the stream, as expected.

If anyone has updates, please let us know.

Guest

I suggest replacing the 56k mp3 stream with the following configuration:

Vorbis q0 22050khz 2ch

Average bitrate will be 36.6kps
You may even make it 1ch (mono) 44100khz for a possible bitrate of 48kbs... up to you.

In any case, I'm glad the mp3 crap is almost gone.

Posted: 2004-10-12 01:47

The MP3 stream is staying. We get daily listeners from Shoutcast's directory service and also have to consider users of older hardware and software.

I think we've done our bit to help promote Ogg Vorbis by converting the full high-quality stream.

Guest

Why not keep a 128kbps mp3 stream?

Posted: 2004-10-13 21:25

If it was free (CPU time, network traffic & money), then I guess it might make sense, but the fact is that keeping even one 128k MP3 relay wastes a *lot* of our resources. 56k doesn't, because we can transcode it from the Ogg source stream. (No need for a separate MP3 encoder.)

Also, why keep a 128k MP3 stream, really? Razz

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

iTunes doesn't support OGG and the third party QuickTime component you will find for OGG (from SourceForge) doesn't work with QuickTime 6.5.1.

However, VLC Media Player can handle the format so Mac users aren't completely stuck.

You can find VLC on http://www.versiontracker.com and, when you've downloaded/installed it, drag the .m3u file that gets downloaded from Kohina onto the VLC application icon.

It's not the best solution for Mac users but it works.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

Thanks for the heads up on getting the stream to work on Mac. I realize the switch might be bit of a bother for some people, but staying with Windows/Wine and Winamp/Foobar and MP3 was not an option either (from our point of view) as it seriously hampered what you could actually do. When developing the new system, Icecast and Ogg Vorbis proved the easiest to work with tools (or technologies or whatever) to work with, hence we settled on those.

VLC should also be available from www.videolan.org.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

That iTunes problem sucks Argh

But I'll add the VLC info to the news page too.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

Stakker wrote:

That iTunes problem sucks Argh

But I'll add the VLC info to the news page too.

There're some problems with VLC for the Mac as it doesn't show the current track title from the Vobis comments in the player window, like iTunes does.

Also the tunes don't cross fade so there's a distinct gap between songs. That's more annoying really.

Maybe I'll see if I can get the ogg QuickTime component going from the source code on SourceForge. It'd mean that it'd work for QT on both Mac and Windows, allowing Windows users to use iTunes for Kohina. I'm sure many iPod owners would like that.

Guest

Well my braindead admins at work decided to block everything mp3 related and that includes .m3u files, meaning i can't listen to any of the higher quality streams. Is it by any chance posible to change the .m3u to .pls ? i still listen to the 56k mp3 stream but the endless teasing of the song names is killing me Mad

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

Simply strip ".m3u" off the URL and feed it to your player manually (the added .m3u is only so that if you click the link in your browser, it won't think you're downloading a normal ogg file but launch whatever program is associated with .m3u instead)

The 56k MP3 stream should have streaming titles, BTW.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

NCG_Mike wrote:

There're some problems with VLC for the Mac as it doesn't show the current track title from the Vobis comments in the player window, like iTunes does.

Also the tunes don't cross fade so there's a distinct gap between songs. That's more annoying really.

This is the same problem JOrbis (a Java Player) has. There's a gap in the audio when the metadata (artist and title) changes. I've reported it to the JOrbis developers and hopefully they'll fix it (As a player JOrbis is a nice (albeit extremely primitive) truly platform indepent solution)

Quote:

Maybe I'll see if I can get the ogg QuickTime component going from the source code on SourceForge. It'd mean that it'd work for QT on both Mac and Windows, allowing Windows users to use iTunes for Kohina. I'm sure many iPod owners would like that.

As far as I can tell, the QT Vorbis plugin doesn't stream at all. It thinks the stream is a file and tries to download it all (which can't happen of course) before streaming. I couldn't get QuickTime to begin playing a file before it had finished downloading it.

There's a freeware player for OSX called WHAMB (www.whamb.com) that claims to support Icecast and Vorbis streaming, but I have no way of trying it. If anyone does, please report back here.

Guest

Just found out what it was, it's not the file names but the ports. 8080 and 8000 work fine but 9000 doesn't Crying or Very sad

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

We're currently testing a special relay for firewalled users:

http://boron.prg.dtu.dk/stream.ogg
http://boron.prg.dtu.dk/fresh.ogg

It runs on port 80 and should be indistinguishable from normal HTTP traffic.

Guest

Talus wrote:

We're currently testing a special relay for firewalled users:

http://boron.prg.dtu.dk/stream.ogg
http://boron.prg.dtu.dk/fresh.ogg

It runs on port 80 and should be indistinguishable from normal HTTP traffic.

You are my hero ! Smile

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

First post updated with a list of players that have been confirmed to work with the stream. This includes a platform independent Java player, so check it out!

Joined: 25 Oct 2002 Posts: 214 Location: Stockholm

I am very bothered about this sudden switch of formats. It is obvious that OGG still has a long way to acceptance, both based on experiences of my own and the crowds squatting at the remaining MP3 relay.

While I don't much fancy leaving the comfort of iTunes, I can, thanks to the port 80 relay (port 9000 is blocked at my work, too, unlike port 8000), report that the main stream works with Audion (OSX/OS9). However, the port 80 stream goes silent just when a new song starts. Audion goes on downloading, but the timer stands still.
Also, and this has always been the case, the fresh 64k stream plays at double the intended speed in both Audion and Mint Audio.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

idrougge wrote:

I am very bothered about this sudden switch of formats. It is obvious that OGG still has a long way to acceptance, both based on experiences of my own and the crowds squatting at the remaining MP3 relay.

While I don't much fancy leaving the comfort of iTunes, I can, thanks to the port 80 relay (port 9000 is blocked at my work, too, unlike port 8000), report that the main stream works with Audion (OSX/OS9). However, the port 80 stream goes silent just when a new song starts. Audion goes on downloading, but the timer stands still.
Also, and this has always been the case, the fresh 64k stream plays at double the intended speed in both Audion and Mint Audio.

I dont know anythign about itunes or macosx but I made "itunes ogg plugin" query with google with very interesting results. Maybe theres some help for your problem Smile

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

idrougge wrote:

I am very bothered about this sudden switch of formats. It is obvious that OGG still has a long way to acceptance, both based on experiences of my own and the crowds squatting at the remaining MP3 relay.

The MP3 relay is undersized, and this is being dealt with. There's already a second 56k Kohina stream on Shoutcast.com now (identical contents). They will be merged to form a cluster (so that people will be redirected if one is full) as soon as possible.

Quote:

While I don't much fancy leaving the comfort of iTunes, I can, thanks to the port 80 relay (port 9000 is blocked at my work, too, unlike port 8000), report that the main stream works with Audion (OSX/OS9). However, the port 80 stream goes silent just when a new song starts. Audion goes on downloading, but the timer stands still.
Also, and this has always been the case, the fresh 64k stream plays at double the intended speed in both Audion and Mint Audio.

Unfortunately this sounds like the Ogg Vorbis support in the players you mention is incomplete. I suggest mailing the developers about it (you can give the stream as a reference), and using one of the alternatives (which exist for Mac, too) in the mean time.

Posted: 2004-10-17 23:32

idrougge wrote:

It is obvious that OGG still has a long way to acceptance, both based on experiences of my own and the crowds squatting at the remaining MP3 relay.

True, and we're doing our part to promote it Wink

We can't completely drop MP3 it seems, but there have also been surprisingly healthy numbers of Ogg listeners lately. It looks better than I actually expected... The Mac problem is by far the biggest issue. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon enough...