Thanks, yeah, I’m on a Mac so I have to use Kazoo with bubble server. I can see the Minimserver in the upnp so I can access the playlist there, both RPs work but the JBR2 still doesn’t. I’m going to try to repeat my steps from the other night and see if I can get a repeat. Something changed when I set the transcode to :*L16 but it didn’t last.
Edit - I tried the FLAC:L16 transcode and it’s working now. knocks on wood. Do these transcodes change sound quality at all? It doesn’t seem like it.
Transcodes between lossless formats won’t affect sound quality. There won’t be any track info in these flac streams, you will need to use the web site to see what’s playing as Gavin says.
Interesting that the SuperUniti seems unable to handle the stream transcoded to wav but is ok with pcm. Any idea why, @Stevesky?
The flac:wav transcode worked for the RP FLAC streams but not the JBR2 FLAC streams. And the flac:L16 works for all of them.
The JBR2 FLAC sounds so good. The 96K must make a big diff.
It looks like multi room with a first gen Muso doesn’t work with the JBR 2 station, is that because of the 96K? It works with the RP FLAC stations. Weird.
It certainly sounds impressive but I’d like to know how it’s generated. It’s unlikely to be HD source files all round given the range of content? Perhaps some volume (loudness) and upsampling?
Hi @Adrian_P
Re: transcoding a realtime radio stream to wav and it not playing on SuperUniti
I suspect this is down to that a wav file is intended to have a given length, primarily it has a header at the start of it that declares the format, then the samples start at a given offset and there are n samples.
From some of the screenshots it indicates that the server is declaring a huge stream size to work around this (aka how much radio can one person listen to), but this might be hitting a 32bit limit inside the Streaming cores wav decoder. It’s unchartered lands for that platform.
On the L8/L16/L24/L32 formats there are no headers and the streamer just has to assume the length/format of the stream match the meta that is passed in at upnp play time.
Best regards
Steve Harris
Software Director
I think you are on to it. I believe they are upsampling and sound shaping. They appear to be doing a good job at it. No ads, no DJ. I wonder how long this station (JB Radio 2) will last, who’s paying the bills?
Yes, it definitely sounds…BIG. Great to have the option, I hope it continues as well.
This has been an interesting thread and investigation into radio streaming with MinimStreamer. I have been using MinimStreamer for years now to transcode my locally ripped FLAC files to WAV on the fly. To do this, I had set the stream.transcode property to flac:wav.
When I recently added the lossless radio streams from Radio Paradise and JBRadio2 everything worked without me needing to change anything on the transcoding side. This was good for me as I didn’t want to mess up transcoding of my local files to WAV and I didn’t have any issues streaming lossless radio to my NDS, Qute2 or Qb.
Digging into this a little deeper in trying to understand @ElMarko’s problems with JBRadio on the SuperUniti I saw that the Minim author recommends transcoding to LPCM for Internet radio, no doubt for the reasons clarified by @stevesky – thanks Steve.
Although I wasn’t having problems with my existing settings, armed with this new information I did a few tests at the weekend and have now made some changes. My M3U file now looks like this:
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,[RP] Radio Paradise FLAC
http://stream.radioparadise.com/flac
#EXTINF:-1,[RPMellow] Radio Paradise Mellow Mix FLAC
http://stream.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac
#EXTINF:-1,[JBRadio2] JB Radio2 FLAC
http://199.189.87.9:10999/flac
Note that I have removed the stream type specifiers from the square brackets – this means that the streams are ‘unspecified’.
My stream.transcode property is now set to flac:wav, *:L16. The * here does not mean ‘all types’, but matches unspecified types. L16 is 16-bit signed linear PCM. The setting therefore achieves my goal of having locally stored FLAC files transcoded to WAV (which works because of the precise match) while the unspecified radio streams get transcoded to 16-bit PCM.
It might be worth trying this on your SuperUniti @ElMarko. I don’t know if you also use Minim to serve local files but with your current transcode setting all FLAC files (including local files) will be transcoded to 16-bit PCM which means any hires 24-bit files you have will be downsampled to 16-bit. It might also affect your ability to use the seek slider to fast forward or rewind tracks as they are playing.
Agreed, there must be sound shaping going on here.
I particularly remember Go Home, Girl playing from Ry Cooder’s Bop Till You Drop and thinking, this sounds HUGE. It struck me so much that I played my local rip of the CD immediately afterwards and it didn’t have anything like the presence or scale of the radio version.
Definitely the best sound quality I have heard on Internet radio, but just a bit too much emphasis on country and soft rock in the mix for for me compared to RP.
Thanks for your input, still trying to understand it all. I’m currently using Asset for my local files and haven’t used Minimserver or Bubble Server for playback of my local files. Is there an advantage (sound quality?) to be had here? Bubble server makes my Tidal sound better so would it (or Minimserver) make my local files sound better too? I’ve spent a lot of time getting my meta data sorted for Asset and don’t have much of an appetite for revisiting this exercise so hopefully I wouldn’t need to do that.
I noticed when I’m streaming the RP FLAC and JBR2 FLAC stations the tag says PCM and now you’re referencing it. What does this stand for? I’m currently using FLAC:L16 for my transcode in minimstreamer so does that mean the radio streams all get processed 16 bit? I have a few hundred high res files in my local NAS so I don’t think I should use that setting if I’m using minimserver to server my local files.
Is there an advantage (sound quality?) to be had here? Bubble server makes my Tidal sound better so would it (or Minimserver) make my local files sound better too?
I doubt it. I have run Asset and Minim side-by-side on my NAS and on Raspberry Pi servers and can’t tell the difference between them. If you’re happy with Asset for local files then there’s no reason to change.
I’ve spent a lot of time getting my meta data sorted for Asset and don’t have much of an appetite for revisiting this exercise so hopefully I wouldn’t need to do that.
No need to edit any metadata to use Minim, Minim will scan your existing files and organise them according to the existing metadata. Organisation and browsing via Minim is more flexible and customisable than Asset, although Asset does a fine job.
I noticed when I’m streaming the RP FLAC and JBR2 FLAC stations the tag says PCM and now you’re referencing it. What does this stand for?
Pulse Code Modulation – this is the most common method used to digitally represent analog music. WAV files contain the raw PCM data along with other metadata.
I’m currently using FLAC:L16 for my transcode in minimstreamer so does that mean the radio streams all get processed 16 bit? I have a few hundred high res files in my local NAS so I don’t think I should use that setting if I’m using minimserver to server my local files.
Precisely, that’s what I said above. At the moment it’s not an issue as you are only using Minim for Internet radio streams. However, if you were to give Minim a spin for serving your local files, you would want to make the changes I outlined above to ensure that your high res files are not downsampled during transcoding.
With Minim installed and running there’s no reason you can’t give it a try serving your local files alongside Asset – just point MinimWatch at your library by setting the contentDir property on the Server tab in MinimWatch and then choose Rescan from the MinimWatch menu. If you want to try this make sure you change your transcode setup first as described above.
Just as a data point changing the m3u file to remove the ;flac within the brackets doesn’t work for me. It changes the text of the displayed label and none of them play. I even tried it with just the ; and it didn’t work. It needs the ;flac to function for me.
It definitely won’t work unless you also change your stream.transcode property to flac:wav, *:L16. If you had already done that then I don’t know what’s wrong. Perhaps it’s an issue specific to the SuperUniti. At this point all I can suggest is sticking with what you have working, otherwise best to take it up with the Minim developer.
Ok, I hadn’t changed that. It’s working for me with my current set up so it may be best to leave it as is.
Might not be your thing but another FLAC lossless station is Chill Out Zone, https://chillout.zone/
#EXTINF:-1,[ChillOutZone] Chill Out Zone FLAC
http://air.chillout.zone:8000/radio/chillout_plus
Cheers, I’ll check it out this evening.
I’ve also been trying out a bunch of streams from https://www.hionline.eu/streaming-url/
Thanks for the radio address Adrian.
Btw, how do we get the icons to show with the radio stations in the app?
