I have heard rumors of digital radio broadcasting, on the same theory as CDs, which would allow far more stations and better reception. And that for a while stations will be required to also broadcast AM and/or FM. Is this in the near future, are their receivers available yet, has it been done in other countries? I ran across it in a complaint that this would subject us to more potentially harmful EMF radiation (can't imagine how, unless you live very near the transmitter). Anybody know more about the theory or practice?210 responses total.
I have not looked into the technology as currently proposed, but it *could* work the same way the web works, except via radio rather than via wires and fiber optics. In fact, I think the web is already using satellites, and you can now have web TV with sound (though limited by the speed of your link to the system). OK - someone - how will it really be done first?
Are you referring to the same system for the web as is being used for packet ham radio? What is web TV? Is that digital TV broadcast?
Jim asks, remember quadruphonic and AM stereo. He thinks AM stereo is still broadcast but was quadruphonic broadcast, or is it just the same as 'surround sound'. We have an old receiver that does stereo FM and quadruphonic for phono imput and for the builtin 8-track. ANybody interested in it? (It needs the FM tuner fixed, the rest works now.) Some formats flop, but FM stereo and color TV are still around. Any predictions on digital radio (or TV)?
Packet ham radio works can be done with the same protocol used by the web - TCP/IP. Web TV is motion pictures with sound transmitted in TCP/IP protocol for viewing with a computer. One could have digital TV with just a serial "terminal" protocol, but each station would require a separate band allocation as now. That would be the simplest. As I said, I do not know which technology is being proposed for first general digital TV broadcast.
Please explain in nontechnical English 'TCP/IP protocol' and 'serial "terminal" protocol. I am pretty computer-ignorant. Is Web TV real-time or do you download an entire 'broadcast' onto a large hard disk? What sort of hardware/receiver equipment is needed for digital reception not over the Web?
TCP/IP is Terminal Control Protocol / Internet Protocol. It is the one where digital data are subdivided into packetsl (1024 bits?) that also carry codes for order, origin and distination. These can be sent all mixed up with packets from other messages from other senders, and detected and put back into order and decoded by the recipient. This permits a large number of users to transmit simultaneously in the same band. This is what the internet/web uses. Terminal protocol is a serial transmission of the message starting at the beginning and running until the end. The message might also be divided into successive packets (to check transmission while it is occurring) but the packets are sent and received in the order in the message. If this is done it still causes delays since the next packet will not be sent until the previous one has been acknowledged. Web TV is about as "real-time" as ordinary TV - pictures are sent in frames and presented consecutively at a rapid rate. Web TV is a digital signal, however, while common TV is analog. Your computer needs a video board with the capabilities for fast decoding of the digital video signal.
Could this same system be used just for radio transmission? Is it being done anywhere yet? Does Web TV also have an audio component?
WebTV supports Realaudio.
What is that? Can you get classical music with it? If so, with or without commercials, is it different from the local broadcast stations? Is it a way to get distant stations, or something like what the cable TV company offers, which is a randomized assortment of taped music with no commentary and no schedule (it really is random)? I would love to be able to get other stations from around the country, espcially after losing WUOM and WQRS, and especially at hours when there is only news, and on weekends. Does WebTV cost much?
I tried the website for realaudio, it was mostly graphics, which I can't read, but seems to be something you add to website advertising. For digital radio broadcasting I found www.drb.crc.doc.ca/, about Canadian research and the fact that four cities will soon be broadcasting digitally at about 1.5 GHz, and that most of the equipment is being made and used in Europe, and the receivers will be sold in Canada. I think the US is rather far behind but something is happening in CA. Anyone want to read the site and translate it to me?
A friend said there are several radio stations which also send over the web,
including one in NYC that does Indian music only. He also said I need:
a 486 with a dx chip, a sound card, and an internet provider that will handle
real-time audio (I can't imagine listening to music at the rate grex handles
internet connections). I tried 'internet radio' and found that I also need
a 28.8K modem and some downloadable software, and probably Windows or Unix.
I have none of the above. Is anyone set up to receive internet radio?
I found several partial lists of internet radio stations, including three
classical (Seattle KING-FM, which is not very readable with lynx; and one each
in England and Netherlands), and stations from Poland, Czech R., Lithuania,
Russia, Greece, Istanbul, Hungary, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Israel (see my file
radio.txt). Sounds like this may rival shortwave some day. To get the links
for the stations go to www.gnt.net/~jones/radio.htm.
I would be very interested in a demonstration.
A separate phone line is also recommended highly. (Can you set up an
internet link so that someone can get through with call waiting?).
A friend of mine is connected to mediaone, has a pretty zippy machine, and realaudio. Last week he was listening to Radio Thailand via the net, loud and clear, in stereo. A couple of issues ago, Monitoring Times listed a bunch (two pages worth) of stations that broadcast over the web. Cutting edge, or bleeding edge, I don't know, but it sure is fun!
Has anyone put out a receiver for this that will let you just plug into the phone line and not need to tie up a computer? Would your friend mind if we came over and listened to realaudio? What is the absolute minimum system you need, other than a phone line and internet provider? (I had no idea this even existed a couple of days ago, and in stereo even!) Can you download things to listen to them when not connected to the phone line? What sort of storage capacity would it take to record off-hours? Do the foreign stations broadcast their usual local programs, or the short-wave type programs (with more propaganda or mostly news, actually I am not all that familiar with shortwave but got no classical and littel folk music).
It would still be a computer, but dedicated to decoding 'web' formatted audio. This item stimulated me to check in at Internet Radio. I had to upgrade from realplayer 4.0b1 to 5.0, but I'm now listening to King FM (classical) out of Seattle, while grexing. I am using a PowerMac 7200/150 with Netscape 3.0 Gold. I haven't used this before, but I would think it would be an enormous memory hog to record (except, I *could* attach a tape recorder - so yes, I could "download" music on tape). While I am connected to King FN I am also connected to Grex and another server and a web site looking for Windows comm programs....I would think a less capable machine than this one would serve to handle just the radio.
Does this mean you are doing everything on a single phone line?!!!! What do you think would be the minimum hardware requirements to get realaudio on a separate phone line (and the minimum for sharing a line, if that is what you are doing). I am expecting the last of the local broadcast classical stations to follow in the tracks of QRS and UOM and want to be prepared with something more than a tape library (from the public library CDs). Would you possibly have the time to demonstrate how your system works to a couple of novices (us) plus anybody else interested? (We can lend you our dowsing rod in exchange, or even give a demonstration. We had considered 'downloading' the 12-6 am. broadcasts by WUOM, but this sounds more interesting. Don't get any phone calls then, anyway. Have you managed to find the British and Netherlands classical stations?
Yup - one phone line. They are playing someone like Janacek now, and even that isn't crashing the system 8^}. The selection on Internet Radio is kind of limited, though - only KING FM is listed as a specifically classical music station. (e-mail me to arrange demonstrations).
I'd like to see that! I'll bring my own cord that only has two wires in it to check that you are not really connected to three different phone lines (with a 4-wire cord). You think you're skeptical, wait until you meet me! How does the internet radio sound compared to a CD when running simultaneously with other things, does it lower the fidelity? Are you multiplexing?
I don't have "hi-fi" amplifiers and speakers on my computer system, nor a sound card (if that would help - I don't know), so fidelity is something like a cheap small boom box. If other things are running, it sometimes skips, and now and then there is a net interruption. What it is doing is collecting packets of code that produce the music, which arrive erratically (and not necessarily in order!) into the top of a buffer, and take the ordered packets off the bottom. The buffer is about 20 KB. All the other things I am doing simultaneously from the net are also getting their data in packets, which are being sorted/stored/processed by other software. I am not sure which hardware/software spools the audio to the speakers so that it is not interrupted by other activity. Incidentally, I don't use Internet Radio as I don't like background music, much less voice, when I am trying to concentrate (even to the extent to grex....) - but it is a marvelous technology. The "panel" has a volume control, but no tone controls. One can have several buffers on the desktop, and switch between them to "dial", it it takes a few seconds for the new station to come on line.
We have a CD-ROM players with a sound card, both an external and an internal, wonder if that would fit into your system just as a test. We may bring them along (external 1X and internal 2X?). I prefer the music to the traffic noise. Does KING-FM have talk/news for part of the day? (If so, hopefully it is 3 hours off from here).
I should presume the computer has sound hardware of some sort as it has sound input and output ports. Whether the sounds is processed in parallel to the CPU, or requires continual CPU intervention, I do not know. Hmmm...the Tech Info manual says the 7200 has "custom sound circuitry, DAC and ADC conversion, and a sampling rate of 44.1 or 22.05 kHz. That doesn't answer the question, however. Anyway, the sound is continuous while doing other things, except for intermittent gaps, so either some of the sound processing is in parallel, or it is multitasked but too fast to introduce discontinuities.
I found two listings of internet radio stations on the web. ontheair.com/brenta/citysort.htm Lists internet stations by city, mostly American cities but also Australia, Greece, Auckland NZ, Austria, Belgium, France, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Finland (2.4 k or 112 k), Ireland, Germany, South Thailand, Hungary, Turkey, Japan, Korea, London, Portugal, Managua, Mexico City (9), Osaka, Padova, Iceland, Rijeka Croatia, Rome, Taiwan, Tunisia. I think you can reach the actual music via links. www. gnt.net/~jones/radio.htm A shorter, more international listing (fewer US cities): Padova, Poland, Istanbul, Hungary, Argentina, Malaysia, Brazil, Sweden, Bolivia, Holland, Lithuania, Radio Prague, Israel, Greece. I don't have the equipment to check these out.
ontheair.com is a bigger collection than internet.radio. Trying a little... d'Faya?..from UK. There are 3 Michigan stations in the list (none of them public radio, though). www. gnt.net/~jones/radio.htm is Internet Radio
Last night Rane demonstrated his internet radio system, which can, indeed, let you do several things at once (with a slight pause in the music while loading other things). We heard KING_FM and a British classical station, plus a lot of western pop type stuff from around the world (even the South Thai station is western sounding). The only problem was severe net congestion around 8:30 p m. King FM in Seattle has traffic reports at 8:30 EST. Radio Rijeka played love songs in Croatian, Poland had night music. But we did not run across anything particularly ethnic sounding. Today the friend e-mailed me: Sindi, I tried the Internet Radio last night ... with interesting results. 1. Shonon Beach, Japan has classical. 2. Radio Slovenia had Slovenian Polkas. 3. British virgin.net had classical. 4. Radio Egypt, the most interesting, has an attractive green & gold web site, with selections of Egyptian classical music ... among many other radio selections. I listened to part of Abou Simbel Conc No. 1 www.sis.gov.eg ) It took 5 mins to download the newest version of RealAudio software. Don't think I'll use it much, as both of my Internet services are limited. That was fun, though. Steve Will Japan be the last bastion of classical music?
((( radio #203 now linked as music #115 )))
Interesting. Pity I'm stuck on a lowly Mac IIsi...
(way back in #6: the "T" in TCP/IP stands for "Transmission", not "Terminal")
Thanks (I sometimes wing it when I can't recall....).
re # 25 An IIsi should be able to atleast deal with 8 bit sound if you can find an old sound card for it. Thge other question is do you have ppp/slip web access ie using netscape, mosaic, or I.E. as your browser?
What are the absolute minimal requirements to listen to internet radio? One Finnish news or talk station allowed I think a 2400 baud modem, but how fast a computer, etc. (I have an XT clone, myself, would a 386 dx work?) Does anyone have other good 'stations' to suggest?
It might depend on how you were listening to it and what format it was in -- some of the audio formats that are heavy on compression require much more CPU power to play (because the player programs usually want to decompress them on the fly and if they can't keep up then you either start and stop a lot or just skip parts, either one of which makes it quite difficult to listen to..) 2400 baud is probably way too low to get any sort of intelligible real-time sound quality, especially if you add TCP or some other protocol overhead on top of that. Most streaming sound formats (play as you download..) require at least 19.2kbps for decent sound quality. if you're not using a streaming format of some sort but are downloading big sound files (compressed or not..) then speed doesn't matter (as long as you're willing to put up with the wait..)
I've got Netscape, and a 33.6 modem - but the speed at which I can recieve is limited by the speed of the IIsi, not the speed of the modem.
How many formats are there? Rane could play Realaudio, with Realplayer, at 28.8, and there was one other (I don't recall the name) on a long list of stations with links. Are there others? I am supposed to ask if it is enough to have a 4 M (K?) cache rather than a high-speed computer, we have a 386 dx and can get a sound card. (Then there is the need for an ISP other then grex, and another phone line...). Should somebody link this item to micros or hardware?
It's already linked to someplace...
((radio and music conferences))
I have a IIsi too. I've never tried RealAudio simply because I do not have a connection to the internet from home. (I do from work and only eat and sleep at home these days, so why pay for it?) The IIsi has audio built in, like all Macs, and will even do stereo if you use the connector on the rear of the machine. I pulled the CPU clock, in my IIsi, and replaced it with one so that machine runs at 25 MHz instead or 20 MHz. I had a 60 MHz clock in it (30 MHz for the machine.) but it would not power up reliably. Once running, however, it ran fine at 30 MHz. I brought it back down to 50 MHz to be on the reliable side. (If I ever get some time I may put a VCO into so I can ramp up the clock after I start up the machine ;-)
What is the cheapest internet provider around that will give you unlimited time and allow the use of Realaudio? What does unlimited time cost? (I have only grex and m-net.)
Well, realaudio is a program you have on your machine, not a service your ISP provides.
The system requirements for Realplayer/realaudio are in http://christie.prognet.com/products/player/sysreq.html
'The page you requested does not exist on this server'. Rane, could you post the requirements in this item, if they are not too long (or in a file somewhere otherwise) for those of us dependent on lynx? Thanks.
There is a table there with requirements vs connection type for Windows, Macintosh and Unix environments. The requirements for Windows with a 28.8 connection are 486/66 DX CPU, 8M RAM, 2M HD (available), and SLIP/PP connection with TCP/IP. In effect, you have to be able to run a full browser.
Thanks, what is all this likely to cost used?
Have you visited Computer Renaissance?
No, it is much cheaper to buy directly from people, such as grexers. And what would the cheapest Internet Service Provider cost which would support unlimited connection time and allow RealAudio? I might be willing to pay $20/month for three more radio stations which play music during rush hours, and the extra phone line would be useful for other things (such as getting phone calls on my original line).
You won't get both an extra phone line and an ISP for $20/mo. Maybe ca. $30 for both. It is cheaper to buy directly from people, but you won't have the same level of startup assistance and service. Anyway, I was suggesting Computer Renaissance to obtain an idea of a reference point for the cost of used but guaranteed equipment.
With the micros conference, who needs to pay for startup assistance? Maybe I will wait on this one until the house is built, and I can use the phone line there for radio instead of calling Jim to lunch, and by then 486s should be discarded in the alleyway where we found a 386. And there may be more radio stations on the Internet, too. Thanks for all the info, everyone.
If you have the ganas (desire) you can build your own, I was doing that until this computer fell into my lap. I can probably build one for about $200 inc hard drive and 8MB of memory, and beleive me, you'll probably need every bit of that 8Megs for Netscape. I still will build my 486, just because I have the desire and a bitchin 486DX66 chip that I'm dying to use. I don't have the cash available yet, but I'm waiting patiently.
Omni, would you like to link this item to 'micros'?
Not really. It's already linked to the music conference, and I think that is suffiecient. I'm not one to overlink items. I've done less than 20 in 7 yrs.
It is just that most of this discussion has been on hardware.
so start discussing digital radio and try to get back to the original topic..
Fine, but nobody seemed to know any more than I did about the broadcast form of digital radio, and I spent a couple hours browsing the net for it before I entered this item. What do you know about digital broadcast radio?
Digital radio seems to be a nice alternative for stations that can't yet afford an FCC license. The student radio station at Central Washington University, where I attend, does not have an FCC license as of yet. Two options are available: listen to the station by coaxial cable (the station is broadcast simultaneously on a cable information channel) or listen to it through RealAudio (I believe) on the 'Net.
as was mentioned before, digital radio can often provide an alternative selection to market-dependent FM radio.
Last I knew, all legal radio in the Netherlands was by cable, and you paid
an annual fee for each receiver hooked up. The 'pirate' stations anchored
off the coast and broadcast commercial radio.
Are there any cable radio stations in this area? The cable TV company
here makes you pay the full fee for cable TV in order to have the privilege
of then paying them additional for some canned music provided in random order,
including 2 classical 'stations'. About $30-35/month total, I would rather
invest in the extra phone line and ISP for internet radio and get more
choices. I can use them for other things, too.
"all legal radio in the Netherlands was by cable?" This would imply no car radio? (Or else a really long tangle of cables on the highway...)
Philips Radio and Electronics is a Dutch firm. I doubt very much that ordinary radios are not operable for regular Dutch stations.
Well, my friends there said all the radio was by cable. Maybe all the state
radio stations transmitted by cable. NO idea about car radio. In
Czechoslovakia in the dorm and in hotels there was always a radio with one
station, which I presume was cable. You could get sevral stations on a
transistor radio. Belgrade had at least 3 stations. Macedonia, Bulgaria,
and Greece all broadcast very powerfully at the same wavelength. (They did
not want you listening to anyone outside the country, and Macedonia was
strongest because of gastarbeiters in Germany.
Rane, could you tell us about Dutch radio and cable?
I don't hink Rane is the person to ask...clees might have some idea, but I don't think he lurks in this conference much
Someone could email him and ask.
I listened to radio in the Netherlands, many years ago. All I know.
Clees e-mailed me back: From R.Vermunt@ubvu.vu.nl Mon Mar 16 11:41:33 1998 In the netherlands there is a devide between public broadcasting and the commercial stations. The first are supported by the government, and are entitled to broadcast at public channels. But since the number of channels is rather low, the hours available for broadcasting are limited. Now, most stations have their origin back in the thirties, when radio was first used. At typical trait of the Dutch is compartmentalization, and each movement (catholic, christian, socialist, liberal etc. etc.) had their own broadcasting organization. But since government ruled over the availability of the "air" they were forced to make use of that. So each organization started to acquire members, which eventually decided how many hours on air each organization had. In the sixties, a couple of pirates started to broadcast from ships just outside territorial waters. In the seventies these merged and gave the initiative for discussions about the possibilities for commercial roadcaing. Late eighties that was realized and the devide was there. At that time cable was being broadly installed all over the country (I guess that only a couple of isolated places are still not connected). Currently, both systems still exist and dicussions are being about the viability of the public system. I hope that answers your question. **************************************************************** * Love, Rick Vermunt - aka clees -the Netherlands * * phone +31 20 475 00 75 \|||||/ email: * * http://huizen.nhkanaal.nl/~rickdos |o o| r.vermunt@ubvu.vu.nl* **********************************uuu - uuu******************* For more questions, e-mail him again and maybe ask if he would mind joining the radio conference item 203.
From R.Vermunt@ubvu.vu.nl Tue Mar 17 19:06:07 1998 >> Clees, thanks for your information on radio in the Netherlands, which I have copied into radio item 203. Nobody believed me about the pirate radio from ships, which my friends told me about when I visited them in Amsterdam in the mid-seventies. << As a matter of act: one of these stations (Veronica) is now the largest commercial station, as a part of a conglomerate of more or less related stations. All belonging to the Holland Media Group. Name any pulp program, and you can find it there. The other one (North Sea Radio) had some misfortune. (stranding, fires etc. But any restart was doomed to fail. I think they restarted it again, but it leads a marginal existance, with cable and so on. >> They told me that had to pay a monthly or annual fee for each receiver they owned. << They still do. From these fees the government funds public tv. The BBC lives by the same processess. The mere possession of any equipment obliges any citizen to pay that fee, or else you are commiting a phelony. Unfortunately, they recently decided to allow an expansion of commercials at public tv. Still, it is way less than the comm. stations (not during the programs). >> I did not know about voting for the amount of air time, but that was the way BBC was operating too. << It's not exactly a voting system. It works like this: one can become member of a station. The number of members determines the hours on air. >> I am curious how the cable worked, and whether radios were equipped to receive both cable and broadcast signals, and what about car radios? << Depends on the equipment. (e.g. my tuner is that old-fashioned that it cannot connect to cable, but only receive air transmissions.) Car radios can only receive air, or else they'd be obliged to have very long plugs :) Cable is broadly distributed over our country. The companies taking care of that infrastructure asks for a monthly fee, which enables the viewer to get cable. >> Do you know anything about the Netherlands internet radio station or stations? << There is: try http://www.omroep.nl (Keesan has not checked this site yet, anyone want to report on it, espcially anyone such as Rane who can listen to the internet stations?)
That URL is a program web site for the five official radio stations of the Netherlands. They broadcast both by cable and "ether", viz "De etherfrequenties en de kabelfrequenties van Radio 4." No RealAudio.
Finally there. Ehhm, I know that Veronica has its own homepage, but never checked it out. I wouldn't be surprised if real audio can be found there. Now, reading this item, I can see the context of the mails I received from keesan.
Hi Clees, thanks for all the info. I am hoping that there is a classical music RealAudio station from the Netherlands.
The NY Times for Monday had a feature on a new Internet radio
project from Quincy Jones. Qradio began operation in February with
"an initial focus on South African musicians. He hopes to broaden
the site to embrace other music." Http://www.qradio.net
The article mentions two other pages for Internet radio stations:
-- www.imagineradio.com, "a group of 20 original radio stations created
just for the web."
-- www.audionet.com, "offers 260 radio and television stations from
around the country, plus some 400 special events each day."
What now? RealTV?
Item 203 from oldradio has been linked to radio at the request of keesan.
From krj@netsun.cl.msu.edu Mon Apr 20 13:54:50 1998 Date: Wed, 15 Apr 98 00:09:12 EST To: keesan@cyberspace.org Subject: (fwd) Re: Need list of Classical Real Audio broadcast URLs Newsgroups: rec.music.classical On Sun, 05 Apr 1998 20:10:31 -0400, Gary Goldberg <76236.3302@CompuServe.COM> wrote: >Would those who read this thread (particularly those outside the US) >please post the URLs of classical radio stations which broadcast >in Read Audio? Also, if schedules (and a list of the music to >be played) are available, please indicate that, too. > >I've installed RA and am enjoying listening to classical music >from stations around the world, but know my list is not complete. > >By the way, does anyone know what format KLASI, the 24-hour classical >Internet-only "station" uses? It SEEMS like RA from their page, but >the extension is .asx, not .ram and Netscape doesn't know what it >wants, only that Netscape can't play it (I'm using the 68K Macintosh >version of RA). > >Thanks in advance, everyone. Here it's my list. If you have another RealAudio or even non-RA (MPEG on-line streaming or another technology) on-line radio stations, please post it here or e-mail it to me. TIA. pnm://204.236.16.2/kingfm28MI.ra pnm://198.234.70.254/wksu.ra pnm://206.190.32.134/wfmt.ra pnm://206.190.32.31/krts.ra pnm://209.113.172.19:7070/wbach.ra pnm://ra.n2k.com/wqxrny.ra pnm://206.98.156.234:7070/wtmilive.ra pnm://raf.cbc.ca/cbcstereo.ra pnm://pn1.netradio.net/cl.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/baroque.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/chamber.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/chant.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/opera.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/piano.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/quiet.ra pnm://pn6.netradio.net/symphony.ra pnm://media.radio-canada.com/livefm.ra pnm://195.33.2.225/wrn3eu.ra pnm://realaudio.byu.edu/fm.ra pnm://flannery.wqed.org/onair.ra pnm://206.156.73.61/wmuu.ra (I received this recently and cannot help. Can you?)
(Actually I thought you might find these interesting sources of programming. But thanks for entering it in the item for archival purposes.)
Thanks for the list, I will tell a friend with the proper hardware and ISP to check it out, in fact I should e-mail him the list now.
This weekend I heard on the radio that Canada and the US have finally come to an agreement on standards for broadcasting digital radio. New receivers (or at least tuners) will be needed to receive it. Stations will continue to also broadcast analog (similarly to BW and color TV, or mono and stereo FM). I wonder if there will be devices sold for attaching to your old analog radio to convert the incoming digital signals to analog. What sort of hardware would be involved in receiving digital signals? Could a combination CD player/digital radio be built?
Digital radio transmitted via RF? OK, so I'm not keeping up with the latest. It would take a a new tuner. One the receives the signal, selects whatever you want to hear and then runs it through an D to A converter so you can plug it into the accessory connector on your stereo. There would be no problem in building a combination digital radio / CD player. Really only the source for both of these devices is digital. It all becomes analog by the time it hits the loud speaker, usually just before the tone control circuitry and power amplifier. However, it would not surprise me in the least if the next step in digital radio includes all sorts of digital, uh, filtering to do whatever to the the original digital signal, including amplification. Your computer could become a extremely sophisticated audio processing center capable of doing all sorts of interesting stuff too.
I was wondering about an add-on digital receiver that converted the signal to analog and then fed it into the receiver, where it got amplified enough to be able to feed into the amplifier. If anyone buys a digital receiver we would love to come look at it. Kiwanis is unlikely to get any for 10 or 20 years after they are made. We are just starting to get a few CD players now. (I mean fed the digital-signal-converted-to-analog into a standard analog receiver, without amplifying it).
There have been FM receivers that convert the signal to AM, for car radios. But I'd figure people would either buy a tuner with audio out, or else new Walkmans. Not much convenience in carrying two boxes around...
My radio just sits there, I don't carry it around.
The real reason to get a whole new receiver will probably be cost, or rather, pricing. To get you to buy a new receiver (radio, tuner, etc.) they'll likely set the price of conversion units high, at least at first (until competition heats up, assuming there is a market for converters). Seems that's the likely route for digital TV convertors, too. Of course, they may also set things up so that the sound/image/whatever of a convertor is *not-quite* as good as the new full unit, and that may influence a lot of buyers to junk their old sets (even if the quality difference is not noticeable).
I saw a web news article which was from the same source as what keesan heard in resp:72 . Alas, I have been unsuccessful in finding the article again. This article mentioned the frequency bands which would be used for digital radio: what I found discouraging is that the two countries are going to use different frequencies. No more of this sloppy cross-border broadcasting!
What bands are these, and will receivers be able to receive both bands? We listen to CBC a lot.
It's highly unlikely that you'll be able to purchase an adapter to use your analog radios to receive digital radio signals. The modulation schemes are so different that the converter would probably cost just as much as the entire radio.
How long are stations likely to continue broadcasting analog? Perhaps we should have a half-price sale on radios at Kiwanis. Looks like everything is going to end up being digital - CDs, digital tapes, digital radio. Mono radio is still around, possibly because it comes in more clearly from a distance than stereo, or is it something that has to be broadcast in order to broadcast a stereo signal?
Stereo is two signals broadcast separately in such a way they can be demodulated apart from one another. With the analogue modes that means broadcasting on different frequencies. With digital modes the packets just have to be coded 'right' and 'left', and can be broadcast on the same carrier. I've been wondering if spread-spectrum is going to come into use. It is used in the GPS network. All the satellites broadcast in the same frequency band but the different (digital) channels are separated not by coding the packets but by modulating them with a pseudo-random code, which is used to separate the channels in the receiver by cross correlation. This way, essentially any number of channels can be broadcast on the same band. At the frequencies used the cross-correlation can be done fast enough and accurately enough to produce perfectly respectable audio. The advantage is extreme resistance to interference and noise.
With an infinite number of channels, are we likely to have any new classical radio stations? What will it cost to set up to broadcast digital? Rane, could you expand on your second paragraph for the technically challenged? Pseudorandom code? Cross correlation?
Pseudo == fake random == random Pseudo-random means "as random as computers can get, cheaply".
The GPS signal is PM - phase modulation: the carrier is a 1575.42 MHz sign wave that is flipped + to - and - to + depending on whether the message bit is a 1 or 0. In addition, the carrier is also flipped +/- *randomly* with a random succession of 1s and 0s that is generated as a pseudo-random binary signal. Pseudo means that the random sequence is generated deterministically using a "seed" number to start it. With the same seed, the same sequence of random 1s and 0s are generated. You can do this simultaneously with a larger number of different pseudo-random sequences for different messages to be broadcast simultaneously on the same band. The signal is recaptured by multiplying it by the same pseudo-random sequence as was used to generate the message you are interested in. The multiplying and averaging is called cross-correlation. The cross correlation of all different pseudo-random sequences approaches zero, leaving only the auto-correlation of the pseudo-random sequence with itself. This will be the original carrier coded with the message.
I will be able to listed to digital radio just fine on my 1970's vintage component stereo system. I will just have to add a digital tuner to it. It already has a CD player attached to it. Doing this with a all-in-one radio would not be worth the cost and time required to do the modification.
Any suggestions on how to convert a CD player to a digital tuner by adding parts from an obsolete analog radio?
Is a "sign wave" the same as a "sine wave"?
In a way. A sign wave is one that shifts in sign. A sine way does that, but not in the way a phase modulated carrier does. Therefore that carrier is not a sine way but a sign wave.
r.e. #87. I doubt that your average person will have the knowledge to do something like that. The width of the IF, the effect it has on the phase of the signal and the frequency of the LO are all different. Not to mention trying to figure out where to inject the signal into the CD player and at what level. I think they do the sign wave at the stadium?
Also at political conventions. These are all examples of phase modulated signaling.
Well, you could inject an audio signal at the volume knob; that tends to be a pretty good place (I've put CD jacks into car radios that way).
How does that create a digital tuner (which is what #87 asked, if I am not mistaken)?
Could you possibly just get the signal from the antenna and inject it at the volume control, or should be be amplified a bit first? How strong a signal does a CD player deliver to the volume control (of the amplifier?). Would it help to inject the signal into the phono input, which usually has a preamp attached? I presume the signal from the antenna has to go into the CD player somewhere - I don't recall any volume control in a CD player. Where would it be injected and does it need processing first? (Sorry about any dumb questions, I never did understand radios).
er, getting the signal from the antenna to the volume knob has been quite complicated for decades now. It's been a long time since the "cat whisker" days of receiver design. How good are you at creating your own IC chips? Cause that's where you'd have to start for digital radio, most likely.
Found it!!! I got this from the FCC's web site, by searching on the
terms "digital radio canada". The actual URL is too long and painful
to type in... I am reformatting it for 80 column width.
It sounds like the USA and Canada are going to implement two different
services.
----------
Report No. IN 98-50 INTERNATIONAL ACTION September 3, 1998
THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA AGREE ON CONDITIONS FOR
IMPLEMENTATION OF
U.S. SATELLITE DIGITAL AUDIO RADIO SERVICES (DARS)
AND
CANADIAN TERRESTRIAL DIGITAL RADIO BROADCAST SERVICES (T-DRB)
ALONG THE U.S./CANADA BORDER AREA
The United States and Canada have agreed on technical conditions
for implementation of Terrestrial Digital Radio Broadcasting (T-DRB)
services in Canada in the 1452-1492 MHz band and Satellite Digital
Audio Radio Services (DARS) in the United States in the 2320-2345 MHz band.
As a result, T-DRB service can be implemented immediately, and the
launch of DARS can occur after a transition period.
Coordination discussions regarding DARS are continuing with countries
other than Canada.
These agreed upon conditions are the result of negotiations that
took place over several years and involved complex inter-service
frequency sharing considerations unique to the U.S. and Canada
in these two bands. Although these bands are used for different
services in Canada and the U.S., new applications of digital technology
will be introduced by Canadian and U.S. providers. It is important to
note that the continued operation of U.S. aeronautical telemetry
stations was a paramount concern in these discussions.
Looking to the future, FCC Chairman William E. Kennard, stated,
"This successful negotiation will provide U.S.consumers access to
innovative CD quality audio programming and will promote new
communications services using innovative satellite-delivered
digital technologies."
U.S. Ambassador Vonya McCann and Canadian Assistant Deputy Minister
Michael Binder exchanged letters that will allow both countries to
begin to implement by September 1, 1998 the technical conditions for the
introduction of these new digital sound broadcasting services
on either side of the border. Both the United States and Canada
have pledged to work swiftly to convert these technical
conditions into binding international agreements.
In the interim both countries will implement these mutually
agreeable conditions on an interim basis, beginning on September 1, 1998.
Details of the conditions are available on the FCC internet
site for the International Bureau (http//www.fcc.gov/ib).
For further information, contact Ronald Repasi, (202) 418-0768,
Rosalee Chiara (202) 418-0754 or
Larry Olson at (202) 418-2142, of the International Bureau.
- FCC -
Re #94: keesan, get an old Radio Amateurs Handbook, and read the elementary explanations in that of how radio works.
You can't inject a digital signal at the volume control, Scott. All you would get is buzzing. Besides, the digital signal would be at least 8 bits. Where would you put them all when tapping into a stereo receiver? (The signal that comes out of your CD player is really analog. The digital signal on the CD didn't spend much time being digital once it was read by the laser. from there it goes to a digital to analog converter (A to D) and the rest is all old fashioned analog circuitry.) Cool! 2320-2345 MHz is not far from the 2.4 GHz microwave oven band! Perhaps I can re-tune the cavity on my $5 garage sale special microwave and be the first on the block transmitting digital audio! ;-)
Er, I wasn't the one asking about putting digital signals into the volume knob. I was the one saying you could tap a digital tuner into the volume knob, though.
Sure. Back when I was a teenager I was tapping audio signals into the volume controls of (tube) radios, as a convenient amplifier. Had to watch out, though, as those radios had no power transformers and plugs weren't polarized, so the 'hot' side of the line could be on the chassis and circuit ground.
I'm sorry, Scott. I misread #92.
So can you somehow pick up digital signals with some sort of antenna and then feed them into the CD player, at the point where it is about to convert the digital to analog? Would it be efficient to make a combination CD player cum digital receiver? Maybe also combined with a digital tape reader?
You could if the coding were identical, but I bet is is greatly different.
Sindi: "digital" is just a generic description for the technique of sampling data and storing it as a computer file. There are lots and lots of digital formats out there; the audio CD standard is just one. Each format has its own software for decoding and playing the computer files -- in a home CD player, that's usually packaged in a chip. But a CD player chip is going to be useless for decoding the Real Audio format, or a .WAV file, or a MP3 file. It's only good for decoding the CD Audio format. It's unlikely to be easy or cost-effective to build a digital radio receiver by hacking a CD player and a conventional radio. It's not likely to be possible at all; you'd probably be better off buying the chips, when the standards are announced, and assembling the radio yourself as a hobbyist project. The chips are going to be very cheap, if digital radio gets off the ground..
Sounds fun. Does anyone know how DVD works? And what is .WAV or MP3? Besides a chip, what would you need for a digital tuner? Some sort of preamp? Or could you feed a weak signal into the phono input, which will be obsolete in amplifiers by then? A think analog radios use variable capacitors to select the frequency, would digital ones do the same? Are there any digital tuners built already, or schematics around to look at?
Gack! (Excuse me.) Read that Radio Amateur's Handbook - there is probably an old one in the Kiwanis books for sale. All radios use variable capacitors and/or inductors to "tune", but there is a wide variety of ways to do this. You'll find schematics in - YES! - the Radio Amateur's Handbook.
Well, to bridge the knowledge perception gap a bit here... Sindi,the construction questions you are (quite innocently, I assume) asking are sort of like asking "Well if I need a car, can I hook a muffler to a shopping cart?" ;)
schematics for a digital tuner? In an old handbook? omni gave us one. Kiwanis tends not to get such valuable books. I made an AM radio once in physical chem lab, with a 9 volt battery in it. What are the parts for a digital tuner likely to cost new, and which ones are available in used tuners? Maybe Kiwanis could be the first in town to sell digital tuners!
First, someone who works at Kiwanis will need to get a degree in RF engineering. Or, perhaps, you have one hanging around there already.
I know a radio engineer from Bosnia who could help by email. We don't plan on actually designing the tuner, just following a schematic and maybe modifying it a bit to use the parts we already have (dead receivers, an occasional dead CD player, VCR, must be something useful in them). Seriously, would someone want to take a crack at explaining how tuners work? We have been repairing only the amplifier parts of receivers. I could not understand enough of the vocabulary in several books I looked at to figure out the tuner part, other than that somehow the carrier signal has to be subtracted to leave the information part, and I think the signal got amplified a bit before reaching the volume control. And how would digital tuners differ from analog?
We are rapidly learning why it is easier and cheaper to buy the darn thing than spend years piddling around learning how to put one together, or how to adapt older technology to some new (mostly incompatible) technology. Unless you have the time, energy, money, and ambition to do it the hard way, of course. You might even turn out to be a great engineer in the process :)
My prediction is that a complete tuner will be cheaper than the individual parts. THere are precendents for that... Seriously, unless you plan to become an electronics engineer with computer engineering skills, the most you'll be able to do is an easy change like adding a line out to a digital "walkman" style portable tuner.
Cheaper than the individual parts _new_? Kiwanis was given its first (for us) walkman style CD player (dead). Anyone want to suggest what to check first? (I had better do this one in diy).
Yup, cheaper new. You'd be suprised what economies of scale vs. cost of small parts distribution adds up to. For a laugh, try addingup the cost of a new transmission for acar vs. cost of all the parts to build the same tranny.
But if most of the parts were standard stuff we would not need to get them new. I know a radio would cost a fortune to buy all the parts for, retail.
In part because many of the parts are custom made for the manufacturer and pinouts and specifications are not available to the public. In part because the part you salvage may be out of spec., physically of the wrong size, or have leads too short. Because the equipment to test and align what you made will cost many thousands. Because the parts you need may not be available form the surplus on hand. Heathkit went out of the kit business because it was cheaper to buy all done and ready to play than to build it from a kit. To top it off, often what you wound up with was an inferior product.
Okay, we will wait twenty years for digital radios at Kiwanis. We are just starting to get CD players, mostly not working. CBC announced that it is broadcasting on ReadlAudio. I don't recall seeing them on a list. One more somewhat classical station.
Don't feel bad. I have a pretty extensive knowledge of electronics and even I will wait to buy one rather than build one. If you want to listen to more free audio, look into one of those 6' to 8' dishes used to receive satellite TV. Many of the TV channels carry audio on one of several subcarriers. All you need to decode them is a stereo decoder, designed for the task, or a good HF receiver added to the TV system. BTW, does Kiwanis have used satellite TV equipment?
Jim is curious what sort of radio they broadcast. Classical?
We went and listened to what the cable TV company carries on its cables, and
they have two classical 'stations', with selections repeated in random order
without any announcer. It was about $8 a month plus the basic cable fee, and
we don't feel like paying $30/month for what we can get free from the library
on CD, no explanations or even a schedule of broadcasts. For the cost of an
extra phone line and ISP service (about $30/month) plus a new computer we
could get RealAudio instead. Jim still has the pieces for a slow pentium.
Any idea when digital radio will start being broadcast?
I have not noticed satellite equipment at Kiwanis and electronics would
be the place it would come. We are occasionally offered satellite dishes,
nobody seems to want them now. A friend is making one into a solar oven by
pasting mylar over it and putting a black pot at the center, covered with a
large glass bowl, to pressure can his tomatoes during hot weather.
If you want any, try Freebies wanted. People will be grateful if you take
it away for them.
See there? You could do this for free! There are hundreds of audio programs on satellite. (I'm not talking Digital Cirect Satellite, I'm talking about the big dish satellite. Not the same as cable either.) A colleague here at work does a lot with satellite equipment that he picked up for very cheap. He showed me the book on satellite audio the other day. You could put one of those dishes on the house you are building and the neighbors would be absolutely convinced that you are really building a rocket ship ;-)
Kiwanis has at least one large satellite dish (I cannot get Jim to answer my question about them). What kind of electronics do you need to decode satellite radio? Would a metal roof affect the signal reception? We get nice radio reception running an antenna up into the cupola.
Today (Wednesday's) USA Today has an interesting article on two companies which are planning to start satellite digital radio broadcasting in late 1999. I'll hope to get back with a summary of the article later; it's on page 4D if you can grab a copy of the paper.
Thanks, we are not near a paper and await your summary.
I have been unable to find the newspaper, or to make the USA TODAY web site work with my browsers. Sigh.
I hope you're using Netscape? Internet Explorer sucks.
We were treated to an evening of laptop classical music. In addition to the
few classical stations that broadcast (Yahoo has links to six of them, two
of which are Internet only, and these do not include WKAR, Seattle or London),
there is now something called netradio (www.netradio.com) which stays in
business by selling the CD's it plays, and claims 120 channels. Some are not
yet working (Baroque is broke) but we found about four classical stations:
piano, symphony, chamber, and easy listening, plus a classical talk channel.
And a host of genres I had never even heard of before, plus Native American.
I don't recall anything ethnic apart from this. We also managed to find the
Macedonian National Anthem (with a bad translation).
I wonder if you can at least read this site with lynx.
You can read about Lalo, see the list of genres, and see instructions to look at the list above (it is below, with lynx) or to the left (it is below), but to purchase a CD your browser must accept cookies (lynx does not). They have Holiday Music in several genres.
Was on eof those station WCPE?
Yes. WCPE Raleigh NC, WFMR Milwaukee, WFMT Chicago, WRR Dallas, KRTS Houson (why K not W?), also internet only Diskjockey and Operadio.
K west of the Mississippi River, W East of it. (With a few exceptions for very old callsigns) There was a good article about WCPE in the Jan issue of Monitoring Times.
(Such as KDKA in Pittsburgh Pa, and surrounding vicinity)
And how about the radio & TV stations who have three letters in their call sign rather than the usual four?
I think the three-letter radio stations were the original "clear channel" stations, like WJR. They were originally the only station on their frequency, though that's not true any more, and most of them still don't have to cut power at night.
3-letter stations tend to be older ones; at some point fairly early on the FCC started expecting 4-letter signs but let the existing 3-letter ones remain. There was not, I believe, any specific relationship between number of letters and type of station. Some versions of lynx do accept cookies.
As far as I know, though, no current version of lynx saves them from session to session.
We now have RealAudio going at Kiwanis. Why is it that some stations sound weaker than others? What causes the long breaks? Do some stations allow more people to use them at once? I had much better luck connecting to Bulgaria and Turkey than to US stations Saturday evening. Eastern Europe was about 4 am and people were probably sleeping. Do you really need 16M RAM to run RealAudio and if not, why was I told on a computer with 8M RAM that I had insufficient bandwidth? (same speed computer as the one that works). What versions of Netscape does RealAudio work with? Do you need an older version for older Netscapes?
I can't answer all your questions, but the long breaks occur because all the packets needed for continuity have not arrived yet. The system stockpiles them so that there are enough, in order, to give you a reasonable piece of music.
...and the problem with 8M RAM may be that RealAudio then can't stockpile as many packets-worth of music as it would like to.
Is this 'buffering' and 'network congestion'? We will try with 16M RAM and the old version of RealAudio that came with bruin's computer when he gave it to me.
It is 'buffering', done because of 'network congestion'. Incidentally, the packets may (will) arrive out of order normally, because of the processes for maximizing network capacity by continually rerouting them. So you can get hung up because just one packet went "round the barn".
I have been trying out RealAudio Player 3 and 4 for Win31. As promised, 3 works with 8M RAM and 4 with 16M. But most of the sites I try to listen at say that they require a newer version, or G2, or that they cannot play files of type vnd.rn-realaudio (and Netscape cannot find a plugin for this). Would 5.0 do any better? The later versions are only for Win95 or later. So far I have managed to listened to one station from Chile (with a lot of network congestion but good classical music) and one from the Czech Republic (very fine quality reception but loud American pop music). Netradio.com never works even on our Win96 computer with RealAudio 7 - why? How many different formats are being broadcast? One station offered Windows Media or Realplayer 5 (it would not do 4). I am tired of experimenting - has anyone compared 4 and 5? All RealAudio talks about is improvements in the video. It works without MS Video for WIndows if you don't mind frequent messages. (4 does not work with 8M RAM, there is a message about bandwidth).
RealAudio says to try version 5.0 but did not say whether it will play the files that 4.0 will not. They give very short answers.
WITR said Version 5 would work, but Real Audio keeps giving me error messages and crashing Netscape. I did get WKAR working, very clearly.
classicalwebcast.com is a very nice listing of about 50 classical stations around the world, including Estonia, Korea, and Bulgaria, with clear indication of whether you need Windows Media Player (for Win95 only), G2 (Win95) or 16K (etc. up to over 50K) mono or stereo. (WKAR does not need G2 and they listed it as G2). For my hardware (16M RAM) and software (RealPlayer 5) I have had the best luck with lower fidelity mono broadcasts (found one 8K, many 15 or 16K and 20K). Seattle KING works but with a lot of gaps in the sound while buffering. More RAM would probably fix this. Clicking on 16K mono takes you right to the broadcast, or you can click on the station name for its home page. I got Adelaide Australia (unlistenable quality), tried to get Radio Bartok (timed out, busy), and crashed on Czech Radio 3, which is classical, as is Croatian Radio 3. Another time I got Czech Radio 3, classical, jazz, ethnic, etc., and got some American popular tune of the forties (is this ethnic?). We will probably set up one FreeBSD (UNIX) computer with Netscape and Realaudio for Linux and lots of RAM. Is there a Windows Media Player for Linux? (Is there a RealAudio for Linux?) People have been complaining recently that my phone is busy all day.
Peter Ribbens, who runs this site, tells me that WKAR broadcasts FM in G2 and AM in something that I can hear with version 5. That explains why it was all talk. Some of the file compression and other messages may result from my using Win31 and not Win95, rather than dependent on the version of RealPlayer.
I have yet to try listening to radio on the web. After reading the account of sound quality in post #144, I feel disinclined to try.
Some stations have much better quality than others, and the statistics for them reveal 100% of the signal was received either when due, or soon enough afterwarsd for buffering to make up for that. The really bad ones lose what sounds like 50%. Probably listening to stations that broadcast at rates more than 20K, with a modem faster than 28K, would improve overall quality. Many of the stations broadcast at two or more rates, for people with modems or direct connects (up to 128K), in mono or stereo.
RealPlayer 7 basic is available for Win 95 or later, Mac 8, Solaris 2.6, or Linux 2.0. Does Linux come with a free dialer, or are there shareware dialers for it? Not much point in trying to listen with Win31/Shiva.
Linux does indeed include a dialer. (Linux doesn't have networking as an add-on like DOS and Win 3x. It's all part of the basic package)
Salon today has an overview article of the Internet radio scene, which they think is getting ready to explode in popularity: http://salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/06/internet_radio/index.html One little bit from the article: New Orleans jazz station WWOZ says it now has 50,000 online listeners to go with its 50,000 over-the-air listeners, and it is getting 10-15% of its financial contributions from outside its broadcast area.
There are now some 2500 stations listed on real.com's "Radio Tuner" website, and quality is very good (for broadcast radio with a reasonable-quality tuner; it isn't up there with my rooftop antenna and Linn Kudos tuner) most of the time in experience. Sometimes "Net Congestion" interferes with a specific station at a specific time, so I just go to another one. (I'm using a PowerMac 8600/300 and single-channel ISDN, for comparison purposes.) (Should we move the Internet radio part of this discussion to its own item?)
Sure, start another item if you think there is enough more to say about it.
Hey, move it to the 'radio' .cf
OOPs, it's already there.
http://www.inside.com today offers a nice story on the two competing satellite radio systems, Sirius and XM, which are rapidly moving towards market. These will be subscription services for about $10/month, intended for car drivers. They plan to distinguish themselves through the personalities of their DJs. Sirius plans to recruit serious and knowledgable people; XM plans to recruit wacky lunatics. XM's plans are driven by Lee Abrams, "a radio legend credited with inventing every calcified format in existence -- album and classic rock, urban contemporary, smooth jazz, Howard Stern." No mention of classical music -- sorry Sindi -- but each service is supposed to have 50 channels so maybe a classical service will be tossed in. http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,7859_9,00.html
Lynx will not let me view this site.
What is streaming MP3? Is it the same as RealAudio? If not, is anyone broadcasting it and how would one listen to it? What minimum modem speed would be needed? At 33K, it took me a lot longer to download a 1M MP3 file than to listen to it, but I don't recall the ratio.
Streaming in general is a technology better served by a connection which is fast enough to download data faster than the data can be handled and played back to you. A 33k dial-up connection is not likely to make for a worthwhile experience of streaming mp3.
Streaming MP3s are, I believe, Shoutcast streams http://www.shoutcast.com (although M$ is doing something similiar in another format) It is different from RealAudio in several ways, from what I understand. I admit to being self-taught in computer audio. RealAudio is another proprietary format, and although popular, still requires specialized encoding and server software. Shoutcast and streaming mp3s are making this quite a bit easier. I've been listening to several different "homegrown" streams lately. I do this by pointing WinAMP (not sure about cross-platform availability) to the URL for the stream. Granted, for full, deep, stereo sound a broadband connection is a definite must, but, as with mp3s themselves, the encoding parameters of the music determines the bandwidth required. For example, at work where I am stuck with a 56K dialup connection, I can listen to my favourite Celtic music stream, but only because the "D.J." encoded his music at a low bitrate suitable for dialup streaming. Most decent mp3s are encoded at a bitrate of 128 or 160 Kbps, with theoretically would require at least ISDN for decent streaming. I hope that helps. Again, I'm no expert; YMMV
Are any MP3s encoded at 28K? (mono) Some RealAudio broadcasts are.
Looked at that site. They offer a choice of players for Windows (Winamp), Mac, or Linux/X. Any chance that a DOS MP3 player could be made to work (QV, DOSAMP)? I looked up classical broadcasts, of which there are 18 (most are mixed with jazz or other things), and the bitrates are listed as 128 (very few), 56, 32, 24, 20 (Moscow) and even 18. Presumably a 33K modem could handle up to 32 (with some gaps).
Winamp requires Win95 or later. Hopefully Arachne or Newdeal will come up with some DOS-based way to hear streaming MP3. Does this sound any better than RealAudio at the same modem speed?
www.mpeg.org/mpeg/mpeg-audio-player.html has lots of links to mp3 info, including one to players for most operating systems - 3 players for DOS, some for OS/2, BeOS, Solaris, etc. I might experiment with streaming MP3 and Win31/Netscape. Can't be any worse than RealAudio. Shoutcast seemed to be implying that only their WinAMP for Win95 would work.
My gut feeling is that no streaming system is going to sound particularly good after it's run through a modem-speed connection, even a 56K one.
How much worse would the best streaming audio sound at 56K than the Toledo classical station as heard in Ann Arbor, 60 miles away?
Yeetch. Tough call, as the damage being done to the sound is different in the two transmissions. Streaming is going to sound tinny, sort of like AM radio, with dropouts. The FM signal from Toledo, particularly in the daytime, is going to have that nasty hash/static noise. Name your poison, I guess.
Since Toledo is at many times of the day and week the only classical station hearable in Ann Arbor, and at some times there are no classical broadcasts at all (6-6:30 pm) even a tinny internet broadcast would be welcome. Toledo is not as bad in mono - I almost never try to listen to classical music on the radio in stereo as we have no classical stations close enough.
WKAR is often classical, and usually hearable. The only place I regular lose it is on Packard at State.
WKAR is mostly talk these days. They do pipe in classical at night, I think around 8pm is when they change from talk to music.
It is? I get mostly classical during the day (though I listen infrequently - only when driving).
WUOM *used* to be classical and is *now* mostly talk. WKAR is still classical when I switch to it, which is less often. I usually listen to WEMU, but lately I've been tuning W4 Country whenever WEMU is not broadcasting news. WKAR is the fall back when I can't stand any more jazz or twang.
Oops, right. I confused WKAR and WUOM.
Scott's resp:169 sounds like a description of WUOM, not WKAR, before WUOM dumped its remaining classical music to run BBC news overnight. WKAR-FM's web schedule says they run classical music from 8am - 4pm, with hourly news breaks, 7pm-11pm (except for the Friday jazz show), and then midnight through 5 am. That's Monday through Friday, the weekend schedule packs in all sorts of non-classical stuff like "Prairie Home Companion" and the Sunday night folk music shows.
(several responses slipped in. The price of research. :) )
Re 173 - this is why I was hoping to find some other source of classical music for 4-7 pm (Toledo comes back around 6:30, Windsor plays a mixture including some classical from 4-6), for Friday evening, and for Sat. and Sunday. Toledo plays more classical Fri-Sun than does WKAR. Canada is pretty hopeless for weekends. I really should not be tying up my phone line, though. When were low-power stations going to start using the frequencies not currently used in an area? Any updates on digital broadcasting over the air?
There are two subscription services for digital radio from satellites which are supposed to go live Real Soon Now. I'm not sure what's holding up the debut of the services; the last news article I saw talked about the radio presenters they were hiring and their differing programming philosophies. I thought the services were supposed to be up and running this year. Probably there are delays in getting the receivers -- mostly car-based -- to market. I have only heard rumors about vague plans for digital terrestrial broadcasting in the USA: the FCC would like to reclaim today's FM band by moving everyone to digital systems, similar to the planned shift to HDTV for television. My guess is that we are 5-10 years away from any such service. Canada is supposed to moving forward briskly on digital land-based broadcasting. Low power FM broadcasting is mired in political controversy. Congress, at the direction of the broadcast industry, is trying to pass a law to make the whole plan illegal. Clinton is vowing to veto any bill this is slipped into. I don't know what the next president's position on this will be. My suggestion for your gaps: do what I do, tape some broadcasts off the net onto any handy cassette recorder and use those tapes to fill up the empty time.
Thanks for the info and predictions. Regarding taping broadcasts, the quality is not good enough to bother. I have an LP collection and am also too lazy to put a record on, and recording is even more work. Why is low-powered broadcasting a political issue? It seems to be legal in dorms, so why could someone not, for instance, broadcast at a power that would be heard only within Ann Arbor city limits, at some frequency not received here? The Czechs and Dutch have cable radio. In the Czech dorm the radios got only one station. The Dutch pay an annual tax on each non-portable receiver and I think that, like the BBC, the taxpayers get to vote on what the stations will play. There are also rock stations broadcast from ships outside the legal boundaries of the country. I would appreciate cable radio that did not also require paying for cable TV service, and that was not just a random sequence (computer generated) of CDs, without comment or theme.
It's a political issue because it threatens to take audience away from the current broadcasters, who have spent money for the privilege of broadcast, are making money broadcasting, and so have money to give to legislators to make it a political issue. Last I heard, those off-shore broadcasters were violating international treaties on use of the electromagnetic spectrum. That could easily be defined as "piracy" and punished accordingly. (Earlier this evening, I (re-)read the U.S. Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to define piracy.)
Perhaps permission to broadcast low-power could be given only to stations with formats not already available in an area, which would appease current broadcasters. But I don't see how the current broadcasters have any right to complain about someone else being allowed to broadcast, when they themselves have that right and are not paying for it.
Low power broadcasting is actually a rather active topic currently. The National Association of Broadcasters is fighting low power licences, claiming intereference with their signals by amateur equipment. Advocates for low power licensing point out that it currently costs several million to get any kind of broadcast license, since all the currently allowable high power licenses are already owned.
Is the AM band considered to be full? There used to be several AM classical stations in the Detroit area. (I was wrong about Friday night, Canada is currently broadcasting Mahler and Beethoven, and Toledo something that might be considered classical. Why does WKAR switch to jazz on Friday evenings?)
In general, broadcasters are losing interest in the AM band. Most listeners seem to reject AM for music listening; almost all AM stations are now used for programs of people talking. Most AM stations have gone to the cheapest possible programming, nationally syndicated talk shows. What little music survives on AM seems to be mostly either swing-era pop, or ethnic music aimed at immigrant communities. For a while, WJR was playing Detroit Symphony shows on weekend evenings after the Detroit commercial classical station folded. But that seems to have stopped; there is no mention of it on WJR's web site. MSU's NPR station WKAR plays an evening of jazz for the same reason they play an evening of folk music; they feel a responsibility to cover some musical fields which have no commercial presence on the dial in Lansing. The underlying problem is that there is only one noncommercial channel in the market, but there are lots more noncommercial types of music needing an outlet; this is the problem that we're hoping some sort of digital radio system will solve.
A few months ago Boulder/Denver's NPR classical station was bought out (or taken over somehow, I don't remember all the details) and the classical programming forced to move to an AM station. It was rather a shock to hear exactly the same stuff in a lower quality medium. I don't know, but I think they've obtained another FM station more recently.
There is - or was, last time I was in its receiving range in the daytime, which isn't often - an AM-only classical station in San Francisco, but that's because they sold the FM outlet, closed themselves down, and then changed their minds and restarted on the AM station they still had. I was very impressed with WGUC when I visited Cincinnati, so that's the classical station I usually listen to when I want a web broadcast. I'm sure there are other good ones, but one at a time is enough for me. I actually prefer listening to music than voices on the web, and not just because they only place I like to listen to radio talk is in the car, where I have no web capacity. To my ear, voices tend to break up very audibly, while music is not so obviously low-fidelity. But I may just have a bad ear.
...or a differently sensitive ear. Some people seem to be very well attuned to the sound of peoples' voices, others to musical sounds, others to mechanical sounds, etc.
So why is UofM wasting its FM capabilities on talk? BigNet (formerly MichCom) is now selling DSL lines for $10 more than the cost of a phone line plus ISP service (if you contract for 2 years). This might be the solution - fast connection that does not tie up the phone line and has no dependence on a flaky Shiva dialler (which RealAudio said is what the problem was when I kept disconnecting while trying to listen). This ISP is now offering shell accounts that you can access either dialup from Michigan (as mich.com used to) or by DSL line from anywhere in the US. There must be some way to do streaming MP3 without Windows.
U of M dropped classical programming on WUOM because the station was in steep decline in both number of people listening, and in user contributions. These numbers have roughly doubled since WUOM dumped classical music, according to the news stories I've seen on the subject.
That's because there are administrators at UM that are more interested in quantity than in quality. What does "steep decline" mean? Good programming, adequately supported *by the institution* remains good programming. Reducing the quality of the programming and showing an increase in listeners and contributions doesn't mean anything, except that that is the nature of people - quality always loses to quantity, *unless one has a policy opposing that*. UM did not. One really should look at the number of people that *don't* listen to WUOM. By what percentage was that reduced by the change in programming? I'd say the change in programming made an almost imperceptible change in the percentage that don't listen, even though it brought in more $$$ to UM's coffers.
I don't know the details of WUOM; there was extensive coverage in the Observer as the massacre of classical music happened. My guess is that UM, like MSU, made substantial cuts in their direct funding to the NPR station and told the stations they had to make up the difference in public fundraising.
That is precisely what happened. That also gives us those seemingly endless, repetitive, fund-raising weeks. I'm surprised that those forced to do those don't commit suicide more often. What do they get out of being so upbeat and cheerful for a week or so? Their salary, presumably, but their real profession is usually not show business, and having to grovel and dance for their dinner must be demeaning to many of them. Do you really think they are all really doing it just for the "cause"? The "cause" being, being able to buy canned programming from NPR?
Here's another article about the two digital satellite systems: http://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/ttimes/lat_radio001026.htm The two competing firms have web sites: XM Satellite Radio: http://www.xmradio.com Sirius Satellite Radio: http://www.siriusradio.com The quote from Sirius: "We don't just have a classical music channel. We have three separate channels: symphonic, chamber and opera." Doesn't look like they'll have a folk music channel, though. Sirius says they'll be operating in January 2001. You can sign up for a mailing list for information if you want to be a charter subscriber. The quote from XM, the Lee Abrams operation: "XM's more traditional classical channel will, ((Abrams)) said, be 'very sensual, heavy with female voices.'" Their site mentions folk music, though. I got a suspicion they don't mean my sort of folk music.
Sirius has three classical channels, gosh. Netradio (www.netradio.com) has at least eight. Besides an opera channel, they have two chamber music channels (one for piano music, one for everything else), two symphonic channels (one for actual symphonies, one for other stuff which appears to be mostly light classics), two early music channels (one called "Chant", god help us, and one more general), and something called "Quiet Classics". There was an article in _The New Republic_ recently, at http://www.tnr.com/online/goldberg071000.html, complaining that the proliferation of micro-market net radio stations is destroying a sense of general community. I can't see that as a wholly bad thing: "general community" too often means "lowest common denominator", though to be fair the author had stations like KPFA in mind. Still, I never listen to stations like that, because they're too damn eclectic: I have no idea what kind of thing I'm likely to get. The article mentioned sonicnet, in a disparaging way as the ultimate in solipsism for its support of personal stations, but I was intrigued enough to go over and check it out. I have to say I liked what I saw, and set up my own station for my non-classical tastes. If you haven't seen it, they give you a list of a couple dozen genres and subgenres (I had no idea that "East Coast Rap" and "West Coast Rap" were different subgenres) which you can use to make a rough choice, and then you can adjust individual artists in those genres on a 0-5 scale. I tinkered with a few (up with Renaissance, out with Rod Stewart), but otherwise left it alone, mostly because most of the performers are people I've never heard, or even heard of. So what I like about this setup is not so much my control over the music as the opportunity to hear new music that I might like, without either having to tread through broadcast pop radio sludge, or hunt down things on the web for myself. If I like or dislike something new, I can change the settings, and any given song that annoys you, you can just press the skip button and get on to the next one. How I wish I could do _that_ on broadcast radio!
What is sonicnet and how do you make it work?
There is a link to sonicnet from the New Republic article, but I should have put it in. The home page is radio.sonicnet.com. You can choose from pre-set stations or invent your personal station. You do this by picking a couple favorite genres from a list (I'd advise against more than that: it waters down your selection too much), which then generates a list of performers at 1-5 stars, which you can then adjust to personal preference. (For instance, I love folk but I hate Dylan, so zero stars for him.) You can also add other artists individually, even ones not on the pre-set list, if they're in the database. Every time you log on, the system creates a playlist from your current list of artists, weighted by current number of stars. You can skip to the next selection at any time. There's no choice of individual albums or songs: in practice you hear mostly recent releases or re-releases (putting Thompson at 5 stars means I'm getting a lot from "Mock Tudor"), punctuated by occasional Office Depot and Slim Jim commercials. I think it's pretty cool, though I wouldn't want it to be my only web station. Fidelity at 56K is not too great.
I tried to put together my own personal classical station. After following all the instructions, it told me I had successfully added Blues (sic) and then displayed below that one line where I was to tell them if I wanted to hear a little or a lot of Bach, Mozart and Tchaikovsky (all spelled right). I get the impression you are not supposed to be a classical fan if you are using their 'stations' - classical is something you might want to mix in with the real stuff. Then I tried to find out the hardware requirements and after loading all the graphics (can't see anything otherwise, it is all images instead of text) I got a page with a lot of bullets and nothing after them. At this point I concluded that I probably did not have what it took to use their services. I informed them of my experience in response to an automated e-mail that arrived shortly after asking for broken links, etc. Is this 'station' something that utilizes RealAudio?
Keesan - Possibly your connection is too slow, though I use Sonicnet on a 56K modem without any problem about things loading. Maybe it was just a bad day. Try again? I don't quite follow why you think you accidentally added "Blues" when you then got a list of Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky, which suggests you did indeed get the classical section. They have some pre-set classical stations on the service, too: you can find them under a link labeled "Radio Sonicnet Stations" at the top of the page, or from a pull-down menu labeled "Choose a station." But if your classical tastes are as picky and idiosyncratic as mine, and you still want to create your own station, let me try to describe the process in more detail. What you get when you log on and ask to create a station is a list of genres, with a set of radio buttons labeled 0-5 after each of them. To create an all-classical station, leave all the other genres at 0 and put the one classical genre (called "Classical and Romantic") at 4 or 5. Clicking OK at the bottom should, as I recall, take you to the page listing a bunch of composers of the 1750-1900 era, each with 0-5 stars after them. You can edit your preferences by clicking on a name, which causes another little window to pop up with a set of the radio buttons on it. Pick your choice and confirm. Then, if you want to add composers from outside this period - there are a lot of performers/composers from all genres in the database who are not in the genre lists - do a "Search by Artist" and type in the composer's name. A list of names fitting that word string will come up, and you click on the name as above. As for technical requirements, the only ones I know of are in "Player Settings", which offers a choice between "Modem" and "DSL/ISDN Cable Modem/T1", and another choice between Windows Media Player, RealPlayer G2, and "I don't care".
Thanks for all the info. Is RealPlayer G2 the one that will not work with Win31? I don't have room on my hard drive for Win95 (or a whole lot of interest in learning to use it). The site told me, on the same page, that I had successfully chosen Blues, while just below that it displayed Mozart etc. I may try again some day, after getting the neighbor to come over with his Win95 CD and install it on an empty computer with a CD-ROM drive. Possibly my browser (Netscape 3) could not handle the site properly. (Netscape 4 takes up too much space). Hopefully other grexers will benefit from your instructions.
My modem is 28K - works on a few RealAudio stations. I think I was using Realaudio 4. Crashed so often that I gave up. RealAudio blames it on the Shiva dialer. I really need different hardware and software if I am going to continue this experiment.
From: tuomas leikola <tobo@sci.fi> if you want to stream with windows, you can use winplay3 16bit, if you still can find it somewhere.. the 16-bit version is a lot faster than the 32-bit version, and it supports m3u files (not pls files, you will have to extract the url yourself.) the key number should not be hard to find, at days mp3 players were a new thing (back on 486) winplay3 was the only considerable player there was :) ------------ ------ What is a m3u file? A pls file? A key number? Has anyone in this conf listened to streaming mp3s with win31?
I could find only Winplay3 for Win95.
I have come across more comments (I think they were on Usenet somewhere) by people who found the Sonicnet interface hard to understand and impossible to use. I have no idea why they (and you) are having problems while I, with an Athlon chip but only a 56K modem on an ordinary phone line, find it works perfectly every time. I've been on the other side of disputes like this (for instance, I can never get superglue to stick to anything), so I know how frustrating it can be.
Not even your fingers?
Maybe you need a 56K modem to get it to work? I used my fastest, a 33K. It probably would not have sounded so good anyway.
It doesn't even sound so hot at 56K, its biggest problem. I think of it as AM radio, which doesn't sound terrific either. Having found on occasion that songs I enjoyed on the car radio sounded terrible with CD quality and no background noise, I'm not upset about this.
Sonicnet just replieed (my help equest went astray). Their online system rquirements (under Help) call for Realplayer G2, which I think requires Win95, which I do not have. They also suggest a DSL line, a fast Pentium, 64M RAM, etc. Will see if Arachne will play streaming MP3 - there are hints to that effect in the latest version. The tech support also suggested hooking up the computer to my stereo system for better-than-radio sound.
DSL you don't need. I know that because I don't have it at home. I have those other things, though (except I have an AMD Athlon, not a *ych pfu* Pentium) [religious wars, never mind]
It sounds like all you really need is Win95 (to handle RealAudio G2) and 16M RAM and a 28K modem, and a fast 486. We were listening to Realaudio G2 on this combination before. I hate to bother installing 60M Win95, then Dialup Networking, then 15M download of Netscape 4 (expands to 28M), but we have enough comptuers that I could sacrifice one just for that. Or listen to LPs.
News item from zdnet.com and wsj.com. A company called "Supertracks" has an idea for improving the profitability of Internet radio. According to the article, Supertracks claim that the costs of streaming radio are so high that a user who listens to high-quality sound for 1.5 hours per day costs the webcaster $81 per year. Their solution? They figure you listen to the same songs over and over again anyway, so they download a library of 400 songs to your computer and then only the play order has to be sent out from the central office. They say they'll swap out 100 songs per month. This is supposed to cut the cost to $15 per listener.
I've only recently been experimenting more with Internet radio but so far I find it dramatically preferable to broadcast stations.. While Supertracks' suggestion may be technically sound, I can't imagine it working out very well with clearance from the record labels.
Just finished up two evenings of streaming Real Audio world music programs onto, um, cassette. How low tech, but I have the hardware and it plays nice in the car. I find that the stream speed which Real Audio negotiates varies with the time of day: during the business day I can't get much better than 11K, which is sub-AM quality, but starting around 4 or 5 I can usually get 96K, which is just a little sub-FM with artifacts, and after 7 pm I can get 96K reliably. I don't know if the bottleneck is at my end, at the program source, or on the network backbones. Approximately eight more CDs which I must find. Now I'm looking for a source for Italian political rap CDs. This stuff is at http://www.wen.com, and the best shows are hosted by Ian (not jethro tull) Anderson and Charlie Gillett. I've ranted about how wonderful this stuff is before.
You have several choices: