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| Author |
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| 17 new of 210 responses total. |
dbratman
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response 194 of 210:
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Nov 30 22:55 UTC 2000 |
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.
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keesan
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response 195 of 210:
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Dec 1 23:42 UTC 2000 |
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?
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dbratman
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response 196 of 210:
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Dec 14 19:26 UTC 2000 |
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".
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keesan
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response 197 of 210:
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Dec 15 02:56 UTC 2000 |
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.
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keesan
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response 198 of 210:
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Dec 15 02:58 UTC 2000 |
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.
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keesan
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response 199 of 210:
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Dec 18 03:50 UTC 2000 |
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?
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keesan
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response 200 of 210:
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Dec 20 16:25 UTC 2000 |
I could find only Winplay3 for Win95.
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dbratman
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response 201 of 210:
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Dec 30 16:48 UTC 2000 |
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.
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n8nxf
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response 202 of 210:
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Dec 31 13:56 UTC 2000 |
Not even your fingers?
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keesan
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response 203 of 210:
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Jan 2 23:01 UTC 2001 |
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.
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dbratman
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response 204 of 210:
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Jan 3 21:19 UTC 2001 |
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.
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keesan
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response 205 of 210:
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Feb 1 21:07 UTC 2001 |
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.
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dbratman
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response 206 of 210:
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Feb 1 21:16 UTC 2001 |
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]
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keesan
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response 207 of 210:
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Feb 2 02:57 UTC 2001 |
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.
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krj
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response 208 of 210:
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Feb 22 01:56 UTC 2001 |
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.
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mcnally
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response 209 of 210:
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Feb 22 04:29 UTC 2001 |
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.
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krj
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response 210 of 210:
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Feb 23 03:13 UTC 2001 |
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.
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