RadioCaster more AAC bitrates, few suggestions & bugs report

hi there

finaly i were able to buy a radioboss licence. i'm so happy with it i even taken radiocaster and radiologger licence too. feel free to give an ear or too on my online station ;-) (yeah, call me spammer guy, i don't care, i assume this reputation !)

of course it's never perfect.





1/ low bitrate stream : i have recently configured a low bitrate stream in aac. it's not that low it's 160 kbps. i would like to were able to create a 144 kbps stream, cause dropdown menu let only select between 128 and 160 with no intermediate.

to go further in the stream specification, i can't remember when i make encoder test and with which software (probably in 2014), ut at some point, bitrate was very fluctuant. the 144 kbps was able to move from 112 to 192 kbps. now, using vlc, in media stats, i can see radiocaster bitrate very constant, moving only from 160 to 165 in 160 kbps mode.

i think a vbr bitrate is much more efficient, especially if it's limited to 165 kbps and when vbr can allow to go up to 192 kbps. but maybe the sofware i used in 2014 for tests provided  wrong informations ? i can remember in winamp 2.95 few years ago, playing in radio in aac resulting in some weird bitrate displaying.






2/ other streams in aac : i see radiocaster using a lot of cpu on my very modest intel atom fanless 45w machine, when i configure multiple aac encoders. so i think i will stick to 2 encoders. but if one day i want to broadcast with a more powerful machine, of course i will allow much more than one low bitrate.

so for very low bitrate, it's the same problem. choice between 64 and 80 when my needs is 72 kbps. it's not about wasting bandwidth, but it's about disconnection when you listen in a car which is moving. and 72 is my last limit i don't want stream under so i don't want use 64 one.

one the other side, i would like the ability to brodcast in "lossless" format (once again, i can't remember with which sofware i was able to do it, but i can assure you i was). indeed, my tests goes up to 448 kbps in aac, and starting from 432 kbps aac, my tests can tells me it's 99.9% lossless (i thought it was why aac don't un further than 448 at this time). but radiocaster (and several others softwares) has a limitation very low, you'r is 320 kbps in aac.

from the other side, you allow to brodcast in flac, whitch according to vlc is more than 1000 kbps consuption. plus flac is not supported on shoutcast (and not easily playable from a mobile device, cause they don't usualy embed flac codecs). so going up to 512 kbps in aac mode will be an huge bandwidth saver compared to flac, and a great option for mobile/shoutcast streams.

to be more precise, the sofware i used to broadcast was able to let me choose any bitrate from 4 to 4 in aac (428 kbps, 424 kbps, 420 kbps, etc) starting from 008 kbps.


EDIT : i forget to mention it will be awesome if there was a way that "lossless 432 aac kbps stream" was premium member only, with some password protection or other security system (not sure if shoutcast technology is able to allow it, but di.fm per exemple having some premium streams feature like the one i suggest). of course bandwidth is expensive and such quality is luxuous. listeners can easily understand the utility to pay for it (and helping the project to survive). so it could be an awesome "win-win" feature for my listeners and i !









3/ the embed radiocaster in radioboss version. i had to install radiocaster cause the radioboss embeded version have issues (or less features ?). when i select a soundcard, it only play the sound from the software. if i use a second software for jingles per example, listened will not hear. if i play a youtube video, it's not broadcasted.

when i use the stand alone radiocaster, it works perfectly. but i guess having 2 softwares uses more pc ressources, plus i'm not able anymore to enjoy the listeners statistics "track by tracks" witch radioboss was able to provide





4/ about the clock (now i finished with casters encoder and all technical happy stuff !)

i would like to be able to put a clock in the stream name, per exmple with the "%time" code. maybe refreashed each 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds (and maybe with an option to set it manually)

also, there is in radioboss software, an embeded clock to the top-left of the screen. under the clock, we can display weather with temperature and humidity. i really would like to enjoy this feature but it just don't display anything and i can't find any way to configure it. it just displays "--?C --%"





5/ some minor bugs i want report.

- gain on track. when i set in track editor a play gain (ex +4 or -4 db) i think it's not works perfectly (sometimes gain is different only on the very firsts seconds, during the fade in/out. maybe the fade in/out make conflicts with this feature, i don't know). it's sometimes hard to say when a track is 2db plus or less than usualy, but i still having trouble with different volumes on my tracks (and this feature doesn't helped me a lot)


- silence detector and scheduled event. when nothing is playing and when i stop manualy the silence detector playlist. the silence detector playlist never start again. and if there is a scheduled program per exemple 1 hour later. after 1 hour of silence, the silence detector playlist start at the place where the scheduled show should be start. maybe sometimes the silence dectector doesn't work even when i don't stop it manualy. but this bug occurs only when silence dectector playlist don't start. it's like the software wants to broadcast the silence dectector playlist but it can't until a scheduled event wake its and push it on air (maybe if the station is stopped manually silence dector having issues to restart it). weird but not happens often if you broadcast 24/7.

it's most of the time when playlist is manualy stopped and scheduled to restart. silence detector don't start and upcoming event is replaced with silence detector program. very not a big issue but i'm here so i report it. and not due to my computer cause i really taked care to decrease windows 10 and other software ressources consuption. so the computer is never used more than 60-70% to its full capacities.




so many thanks for your royal boss stuff. and hope this feedback helps to make it even more royal in the future.

cheers

michael,
from france

 
www.housestationlive.com said:
1/ low bitrate stream : i have recently configured a low bitrate stream in aac. it's not that low it's 160 kbps. i would like to were able to create a 144 kbps stream, cause dropdown menu let only select between 128 and 160 with no intermediate.
A 144 bitrate will be added to the list in the next update. Perhaps, some other intermediate bitrates too (like 72kbps).

www.housestationlive.com said:
i think a vbr bitrate is much more efficient, especially if it's limited to 165 kbps and when vbr can allow to go up to 192 kbps. but maybe the sofware i used in 2014 for tests provided  wrong informations ? i can remember in winamp 2.95 few years ago, playing in radio in aac resulting in some weird bitrate displaying.
For AAC, it won't improve quality, as many tests show that AAC is transparent on bitrates higher than 128kbps. But VBR causes problems with most of Centova cast streams.

Please note that RadioBOSS and RadioCaster offer "Custom encoder" feature. You can use any command line encoders with it (e.g. ffmpeg), any bitrate and any encoder settings. There are examples in the help file.

www.housestationlive.com said:
one the other side, i would like the ability to brodcast in "lossless" format (once again, i can't remember with which sofware i was able to do it, but i can assure you i was). indeed, my tests goes up to 448 kbps in aac, and starting from 432 kbps aac, my tests can tells me it's 99.9% lossless
There's FLAC encoder that is lossless. Its bitrates are around 1000kbps.

www.housestationlive.com said:
going up to 512 kbps in aac mode will be an huge bandwidth saver
There's no real point in it. Compared to 128kbps, it's about 3 times more bandwidth, but only 5% (roughly) quality improvement. Would you be able to hear this improvement, is another question :)

www.housestationlive.com said:
EDIT : i forget to mention it will be awesome if there was a way that "lossless 432 aac kbps stream" was premium member only, with some password protection or other security system (not sure if shoutcast technology is able to allow it, but di.fm per exemple having some premium streams feature like the one i suggest). of course bandwidth is expensive and such quality is luxuous. listeners can easily understand the utility to pay for it (and helping the project to survive). so it could be an awesome "win-win" feature for my listeners and i !
Protection like this is implemented on server side. Typically it would be a proxy server with authentication, that relays the high bitrate stream and controls who can access it.

www.housestationlive.com said:
3/ the embed radiocaster in radioboss version. i had to install radiocaster cause the radioboss embeded version have issues (or less features ?). when i select a soundcard, it only play the sound from the software. if i use a second software for jingles per example, listened will not hear. if i play a youtube video, it's not broadcasted.
Broadcasting features in RadioBOSS and RadioCaster are the same. The difference is metadata handling and also RaidoCaster offers "Capture audio" option while RadioBOSS only works with inputs or its own playback.

www.housestationlive.com said:
but i guess having 2 softwares uses more pc ressources, plus i'm not able anymore to enjoy the listeners statistics "track by tracks" witch radioboss was able to provide
In terms of resources it's more or less the same. You can broadcast with RadioCaster but make RadioBOSS collect the broadcasting stats. The feature is called Statistic Relays: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/statistic-relays.htm
 
www.housestationlive.com said:
i would like to be able to put a clock in the stream name, per exmple with the "%time" code. maybe refreashed each 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 or 60 seconds (and maybe with an option to set it manually)
We'll consider adding time/date variables to title format string, thank you for the suggestion.

www.housestationlive.com said:
also, there is in radioboss software, an embeded clock to the top-left of the screen. under the clock, we can display weather with temperature and humidity. i really would like to enjoy this feature but it just don't display anything and i can't find any way to configure it. it just displays "--?C --%"
The data is updated with weather scheduler command: http://manual.djsoft.net/radioboss/en/automatic_weather_announcement.htm

www.housestationlive.com said:
- gain on track. when i set in track editor a play gain (ex +4 or -4 db) i think it's not works perfectly (sometimes gain is different only on the very firsts seconds, during the fade in/out.
Windows controls the final output level and if it's higher than allowed, it's lowering the volume. If you like some tracks to play at +4dB level, you should adjust the final playback level in RadioBOSS to -4dB (the Gain slider in the main window).

www.housestationlive.com said:
- silence detector and scheduled event. when nothing is playing and when i stop manualy the silence detector playlist. the silence detector playlist never start again.
This is the correct behavior, silence detector only actions when playlist is expected to be playing, but not playing. If it was stopped, then it shouldn't play, and silence detector will not do anything.

www.housestationlive.com said:
after 1 hour of silence, the silence detector playlist start at the place where the scheduled show should be start.
I suggest creating a separate topic for this issue, and provide details there. A screenshot of the main window right after this happened will help (with playlist and log windows visible).
 
Some good news here: additional bitrates were added in today's RadioBOSS 5.7.2 update: https://www.djsoft.net/smf/index.php/topic,4325.msg26219/topicseen.html#msg26219
 
Back
Top