Radio 3 being broadcast in FLAC

[Bryn]

I have not managed to capture the raw FLAC stream, but Audacity set to 48kHz sampling is not too bad. It uses 32 bit float quantization while recording, but exports to WAV with 16 bit. I have noticed a few brief hiatus but no audio seems to get lost. It's just a matter of carefully deleting the resulting silences. I'm not sure why, but I lost Hear and Now after about 20 minutes last night. For the rest, the 320kbps aac option will have to suffice.

[jayne lee wilson]

Coming up Live This Week, as HS used to say...actually not live, but evening concerts.....Xavier-Roth/LSO with Bruckner 4 on Tuesday; Unusual combination of the stunning Gubaidulina Offertorium with the Vaughn Williams Pastoral on Friday. (Sinaisky/BBCPO).... good work-out for the stream.

Soon after that it leaves us, until the Proms First Night (and a rather good first weekend for Orchestral works in lossless...).
It's not yet clear if it will remain firefox-only - is it? Fine by me, but one of two people have asked...

[french frank]

It's not yet clear if it will remain firefox-only - is it? Fine by me, but one of two people have asked...

No promises - just a hope

http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-04-radio-3-high-quality-flac-dash

[Bryn]

Coming up Live This Week, as HS used to say...actually not live, but evening concerts.....Xavier-Roth/LSO with Bruckner 4 on Tuesday; Unusual combination of the stunning Gubaidulina Offertorium with the Vaughn Williams Pastoral on Friday. (Sinaisky/BBCPO).... good work-out for the stream.

Soon after that it leaves us, until the Proms First Night (and a rather good first weekend for Orchestral works in lossless...).
It's not yet clear if it will remain firefox-only - is it? Fine by me, but one of two people have asked...

Not forgetting Bernard van Dieren's Chinese Symphony in Ao3 this very afternoon.

c.3.45pm
Dieren: Symphony No. 1, Op.6, (Chinese)
Rebecca Evans (soprano)
Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano)
Nathan Vale (tenor)
Morgan Pearse (baritone)
David Soar (bass)
BBC National Chorus Of Wales
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
William Boughton (conductor)

[Dave2002]

johnb

re msg 57 - Thanks a lot for this. I'll probably find time to do that tomorrow - shouldn't take too long if things actually work - but there are no guarantees that it'll work straight off. It'd be good to get that working, if I can.

The software updates and server installation appear to have worked - though can't test them yet.

Unfortunately have now hit a hardware issue. Perhaps my SB3 has died on me - though it might (hopefully ...) just be a PSU failure. I'll try other devices to see if there's any life in the system. Hopefully one of them will work.

Does anyone else have experience of SBs which don't seem to power up? I have heard of people frying them with a 12V psu, rather than a 5V one, but I don't think I did that - sad if I did by accident - usually non recoverable. I'm sure the SB3 used to have a flash screen for a few minutes, before asking for inputs and responding to the remote control.

[Bryn]

Rather belatedly, here's a link to a short term download of a clip from last night's Creation. There is a switch between the two sources (FLAC and iPlayer) part way through. The change is pretty stark. However, which is which? Does it start with iPlayer or FLAC? Which sounds 'better' to you?

https://we.tl/oUmptOTJjR

Oh, it's short and in 48/16 WAV format.

[Dave2002]

Tricky! Both parts have problems - at least in your recording of it. Did you manage to over record some of it? Sounds like digital overload (both parts).

At 26 seconds in there is a switch. The volume levels don't match up. The second part is quieter, and there is a narrower stereo soundstage - with more resonance. If I make a decision you'll probably tell me I'm wrong - I've been caught out before.

I think I generally get less distortion - with a smoother overall sound from both the FLAC and the HD streams.

[Bryn]

Neither recording was anywhere near saturation. The FLAC had a peak of -12.6 dB and the aac -6.5. After lifting the FLAC by 6.1 dB the average RMS of the two was within 0.2 dB. After editing, the clip was 'normalised' to a peak of -0.25 dB.

[johnb]

There is such a dramatic difference between the two examples that it's difficult to believe that it is purely due to the two different encoding methods.

I will do my own test and see whether I get similar results.

[Ardbeg1977]

Does anyone else have experience of SBs which don't seem to power up?

Hi Dave,

Have a read through this thread I came across on the Slimdevices forum ages ago:-

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?97577-What-can-I-do-now-Squeezebox-classic-died

I haven't experienced this problem personally (yet) but there are a couple of thing you can try mentioned in the thread.

Regards

Dave

[Bryn]

There is such a dramatic difference between the two examples that it makes me wonder whether one of them had additional processing by the BBC (that is, besides being encoded to ACC or FLAC) or whether one (or both) was affected by the capture process.

I must do my own test to see whether I get similar results.

Bear in mind that the source material may give quite different results. I will have a go with the Haydn sonata which followed The Creation.

[johnb]

Dave, if your SB3 is dead an alternative that comes to mind is to use one of the various Squeezebox player apps on your iPad. If you have a USB DAC you could feed the iPad's digital output to the DAC using (I think) the camera connection kit.

[johnb]

Bear in mind that the source material may give quite different results. I will have a go with the Haydn sonata which followed The Creation.

Very true.

(Apologies, I edited my post after you clicked the "reply with quote" button.)

[OldTechie]

Rather belatedly, here's a link to a short term download of a clip from last night's Creation. There is a switch between the two sources (FLAC and iPlayer) part way through. The change is pretty stark. However, which is which? Does it start with iPlayer or FLAC? Which sounds 'better' to you?

https://we.tl/oUmptOTJjR

Oh, it's short and in 48/16 WAV format.

The first section is stereo, the second is mono - it must have been mixed down somewhere in the process.

I did a comparison grab by capturing the AAC and FLAC sequentially, relying on the delay in the FLAC to swap from one grab to the next.

I grabbed at 96kHz 24 bit so any bit rounding by the volume settings in the two players would not cause any issues. The aac was from the shoutcast stream through foobar2000. That normally goes to my DAC without passing through the windows mixer by using the exclusive WASAPI interface, but then audacity cannot access the interface at the same time. So both the Firefox and the Foobar feeds had to go through the Windows audio processing. The the level mismatch between the feeds was about 0.18dB. I lined them up in Audacity to the nearest 96kHz sample, and then differenced them to listen to the subsequent errors. I have exports (all as FLAC files) so you can do ABX tests. So there is R3 AAC test and R3 FLAC test for the level-matched grabs. There are two difference files : R3 AAC-FLAC test, and another copy with 26dB gain to make it easier to listen. The difference seems to have some phase drift effects. I suspect this may be the result of the errors introduced by the Windows processing. I certainly think that the AAC feed sound better when I bypass it. Unfortunately I can't bypass it on the FLAC feed because foobar2000 will not play it, and VLC does not have bit-transparent output (it has been on their bug list at low priority since 2010.)

Here they are: https://we.tl/w9vzYJFuhM for 7 days

[Dave2002]

Dave, if your SB3 is dead an alternative that comes to mind is to use one of the various Squeezebox player apps on your iPad. If you have a USB DAC you could feed the iPad's digital output to the DAC using (I think) the camera connection kit.

Indications now are that the SB3 is probably OK, but the psu is caput.