New Naim Internet Radio - feedback & requests Part1

Thank you for the great service :slight_smile:

  1. The beat 92.5 Montreal is found but at albeit a lower bitrate (aac 56k instead of mp3 96k) & sounds worse.
  2. H2O Radio, Lac d’annecy 90.4, France missing?
  3. Bestnetradio - Christmas Pop: missing ?

Firstly I wanted to say a big thank you to @Stevesky . I don’t tend to use radio on my Naim, but I have been following this thread with amazement of the effort Naim and Steve are going to in order to improve the Naim radio service. Certainly someone going above and beyond, seeing updates over weekends and evenings - so Thank You!

This has inspired me to have a closer look, and came across the channel below. Now two things I noticed, first (I suspect this is already known) that if you scroll down, you get a load of additional useful info.

Secondly, On this radio station, I get some extra buttons as shown below. The buttons suggest you can fast forward and rewind. The icons last night were not greyed out, however did not affect the positions of the stream. Other radio stations don’t seem to have this. An hour later last night, the buttons disappeared. Then this morning they are back, but greyed out. So was wondering if this is a new feature that may be coming down the line for station that support it? Also is this a device feature based on its own buffer, or a remote control going back to the station?

Hi @terry3

The planets have been realigned and Celtic Moon is back.

We’ve added the full network of stations into a brand for Canada.

Enjoy!

Regards

Steve

Hi @GadgetMan

Buttons ion NowPlaying - that is an app bug. Will be fixed shortly.
That should only show when doing podcasts.

Best

Steve

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Hi @Stevesky, were you able to get a more definitive answer/understanding of the dropouts of groove salad HD around and afternoon CET?
It is still happening.

Hi @fritsveer

We’re still working on that one.

We captured a very large Wireshak of the comms last week and did analysis of where time was going.

Summary so far:

  • the stream is delivered in 10second fragments
  • we aim to have 3 hls fragments loaded (so 30secs of audio buffered). Most the time we achieve this. That is a lot of audio buffered.
  • during the problem time if not streaming from the USA (eg. Europe) there is a huge amount of traffic congestion which results in that its impossible to read 10secs of audio in less than 10seconds. The round time of the link (typically 140ms but can jitter to 300ms+) that can make it unfeasible for it to be all transferred and ack’d in time. We also replicated the issue on PC version of VLC.
  • at 320k rates it is feasible when playing from Europe to transfer the data in time.

We’re now exploring options on what we can do to improve matters. We’ve also been discussing the above with the team at Groove Salad.

So, better understanding of what is going on, but scratching head on what we can do about it.

Best

Steve

2 Likes

Hi @aboulfad

Christmas stations - As a mid October festive treat they’re now added (+ a few others):

H20 - already in the system. Details here:

The Beat, Montreal - typically we pick AAC over mp3 even though the rate is lower as AAC works so much better at lower rates. However, in the case of this station i think they re-encode the aac from the mp3 so double trouble. Adjusted to use mp3 stream.

Best

Steve

1 Like

Hi @dave709

Now sorted. Details:

Best

Steve

1 Like

@Stevesky that was quick, thanks!!

Hi Steve,

Could you please check an issue with one of Switzerland’s official stations? Some of our dealers have reported the following claim:

The SRF 4 News channel is playing the SRF 3 stream instead of the correct one.

Thank you for looking into this!

Best regards,

Thanks
Greetings from Switzerland
Christian

Steve,
I read your answer that you added a second WDR3 stream in MP3 quality. However, I don’t see a second WDR3 station in the radio directory. The current stream still gives hick ups. They seem to coincide with the underruns. Perhaps the attached print screen from my diagnostics will help.

Hi @Chi

Now fixed on the wrong url.

Regards

Steve

Hi @JoostMollerus ]

Browse to WDR3 (or search) and it should show:

We did sone work on WDR yesterday and have a proposed workaround for the 2sec fragments used by WDR (normal HLS is 6secs).

Best

Steve

Sorry Steve, I see different things than you see. Both by browsing and searching.

Yes, same here in Paris, France. I can no longer even attempt to listen to the Groove Salad HD stream. Such a shame.

Groove Salad MP3 stream sounds equally good to me!

Hi Joost,

In your screenshot posted the ‘WDR3’ station is a folder (observe no bit rate quoted). Select it and it should then show the two stream options.

Best

Steve

Thank you. Did not realize there were folders at this level.

Steve, I just want to pause and take a moment to thank you personally and Naim for the awesome work you are doing.
I understand that this may have been the plan with rolling Naim own’s webradios service but your involvement, speed of resolution and feedback is just stunning.
BIG THANK AND KUDDOS.

8 Likes

I can’t say I’m having any issues with Groove Salad, has been fine for me using the HD stream…(BTW, thanks for highlighting the station, didn’t know it previously but quite enjoying it…Good to switch to from RP at times…!) – Reminds me of hanging out in bars with the same chilled vibe in my London days…!

I’m listening in Australia however, so obviously a completely different time zone – I’ll have to try late evening at some point and see if I experience the same drop outs as you report in the European afternoon….

SC