Czech Radio upstages BBC [Archive] - The Art of Sound Forum

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Labarum

06-08-2009, 13:46

I have just written a letter to the London Times -l et's see if it gets printed.

----

Czech Radio upstages BBC

Our national humiliation is complete. BBC Radio Three used to lead the world in artistic and technical quality, but has been upstaged by Czech Radio. If you have the means to route a high quality audio output from your computer to your HiFi, tune in this Internet Radio Station

http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac

This world class. The BBC has only very recently made Radio 3 available at 128 Kilobits per second in compressed format that squeezes the life out of the music (WMA); but Czech Radio's Classical Music Station is transmitted at 7-800 Kilobits per second using the lossless free CODEC called FLAC. With a sampling rate of 48 KiloHerz this transmisiion betters a Compact Disc. The stream is also available at a slightly lower quality 224 Kilobits per second using the OGG compressed format - this still beats the BBC's best.

See the Czech Radio website in English.

http://www.rozhlas.cz/english/portal/

The BBC ought to be ashamed of itself.

Barry

06-08-2009, 13:58

The Vinyl Adventure

06-08-2009, 14:00

im confused... how do i get to listen to this station?

Labarum

06-08-2009, 14:35

im confused... how do i get to listen to this station?

I normally use a Squeezebox, but it will not receive this Station. The development team is working on it. It's a FLAC in an OGG container, and I don't understand all of that myself.

I am as I type listening on my laptop which has a Beresford 7520SE (Caiman) connected via USB.

I have the free player Foobar installed on the laptop - I dropped in the URL - File/Add Location - and off it went. Foobar is running in Vista Exclusive mode (WASAPI) which ensures a bit perfect transfer to the DAC, but that is an extra complication.

If you have a music player installed on you computer that decodes FLAC, you should be able to tune into the stream.

Tell what your hardware and software is. I may be able to help - or another member.

It's worth a listen.

The Vinyl Adventure

06-08-2009, 14:39

i have worked it out now... that is frankly astonishingly good for radio

Labarum

06-08-2009, 14:45

i have worked it out now... that is frankly astonishingly good for radio

It is. Enjoy it. Let the BBC weep. (But do they care?)

Labarum

06-08-2009, 18:04

I just realised I could do an A-B test:

This stream is one of my set Squeezebox favourites

Title: D-dur Czech OGG 224
URL: http://www.rozhlas.cz/audio/download/ddur_maxogg.m3u

And is carrying the same station as the FLAC

http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac

The FLAC is available on the USB input of my Beresford DAC, and the OGG on a COAX S/PDIF

Button One of the DAC gives me OGG at 224Kb/s and Button Four FLAC at 7-800Kb/s

The FLAC is clearer, but there is not much in it.

I rate highly the other East European stations that stream in OGG.

DSJR

06-08-2009, 19:02

Ashley james was saying similar eighteen months ago and ruined it by saying he liked 128Mb/s MP3's (so so I, but only on simple material).

Internet radio or streaming music via computer (and small, active, desktop speakers) is where it's going to go and LP (and also CD I suspect) will become even more niche sources.

Labarum

06-08-2009, 19:23

I listened some more to the A-B FLAC-OGG comparison. Some Opera came on. I was very obvious when I was listening to FLAC - it was much more "atmospheric" you could hear the ambience of the stage much better, and it handled the dynamics with much more competence.

I would want to compare some solo piano, a piano concerto and a violin or cello concerto.

Listening to the FLAC using Foobar I want to compare the three "bitperfect" routines - WASAPI, ASIO and Kernal Streaming - Foobar support all three - a remarkable achievement.

DaveK

06-08-2009, 21:08

Hi Guys,
Just a brief note to say that I followed the simple instructions, (thanks Labarum, keep it simple for the likes of me :) ), and I got the music playing through my system. Whilst the opera type music was not to my taste I could appreciate the quality of the sound - stunning for radio. The more this is put into the public arena the more likely someone at the BBC is to wake up, take their finger out of their arse ( or ears), and do something to get into the game - good luck with the letter to the Times.
Cheers,

Labarum

06-08-2009, 21:12

Hi Guys,
Just a brief note to say that I followed the simple instructions, (thanks Labarum, keep it simple for the likes of me :) ), and I got the music playing through my system.

Have you got Foobar working in WASAPI or ASIO mode for bit perfect streaming?

YOU DONT need a Mac for bit perfect streaming!

DaveK

06-08-2009, 21:35

Hi Brian,
Don't have WASAPI (I don't think :) ). I have a 3year old Vaio MM PC which came with XP loaded but I persuaded Sony (with great difficulty) to give me a free upgrade to Vista Home Premium. I have managed to install the ASIO4ALL plug-in for FooBar, with help from Stratmangler (Chris). If there are advantages to running WASAPI, and you are prepared to hold my hand on the installation process, I would like to give it a try.
I have played around with PCs since the days of the 48K Spectrum and by now I know just about enough to be dangerous.
Cheers,

SteveW

06-08-2009, 21:45

Thanks for all this guys...fascinating. Gives me huge optimism for the future.

However, I do run a mac...and whilst I somehow managed to get VLC playing the FLAC stream (sort of filling in the drop down boxes by guess work) the signal keeps breaking up.
I'm hoping that its my slow broadband speed, which may or may not be resolved by a new BT home hub arriving tomorrow. In the mean time, its back to the good ol steam driven tuner.

I also wonder when Apple are going to wake up to the fact that the world is turning FLAC. Could be a chink in their armour..

Labarum

07-08-2009, 06:55

[I] Don't have WASAPI (I don't think

It is part of Vista. Provided you have dowloaded the wasapi dll from the bottom of this page

http://www.foobar2000.org/components

and copied it into your Vista programs/foobar/components folder

you should be able to see the WASAPI option after restarting Foobar and looking in the Output pane. The buufer may need to be reduced to the minimum for WASAPI to work.

Use the same procedure for the Kernal Streaming (KS) option.
http://www.foobar2000.org/components

If you have done that and don't see the options I can't help you. I am new to this too.

WASAPI, ASIO and KS all promise bit perfect playback, but may sound subtlety different. Why? Don't know>

DanJennings

07-08-2009, 08:13

Cheers for the heads up on Foobar Brian, it's excellent.

DaveK

07-08-2009, 09:41

I would want to compare some solo piano, a piano concerto and a violin or cello concerto.

Hi Brian,
Just a brief note to say that I have been listening to Czech radio for the last hour or so, mainly piano music accompanied by Cello and/or violin (I think) and it sounds absolutlely wondefful to my (cloth) ears - could be better than CD IMO.
Cheers,

Krisbee

07-08-2009, 09:42

I have listened to the Czech internet radio station. My audio chain is:

Linux PC USB connection to TC-7520 (LM4562NMA) variable output to Rotel RA-01 and AVI Neutron 3 speakers .

I think the BBC will give Brian an argument about quality comparisons. There's no need for ASIO etc if you use Linux and the Czech radio station can be accessed via the mplayer plugin in Firefox or directly from the command line. Unless I'm hearing something different to the stream Brian gets through his squeezebox, the quality of the Czech radio stream is good but not exceptional.

In fact, mplayer reports the stream bitrate as 128 kbit/s, which may be incorrect :

mplayer http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac
MPlayer dev-SVN-r29417Can't open joystick device /dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
Can't init input joystick
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing http://radio.cesnet.cz:8000/cro-d-dur.flac.
Resolving radio.cesnet.cz for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: radio.cesnet.cz
Resolving radio.cesnet.cz for AF_INET...
Connecting to server radio.cesnet.cz[195.113.161.70]: 8000...
Name : Cesky rozhlas D-dur
Genre : classical
Website: http://www.rozhlas.cz
Public : no
Bitrate: 128kbit/s
Cache size set to 320 KBytes
Cache fill: 10.00% (32768 bytes)
[Ogg] stream 0: audio (FLAC, try 2), -aid 0
Ogg file format detected.
================================================== ========================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
Ogg : bad packet in stream 0
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffflac] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg FLAC audio)
================================================== ========================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A: -0.3 (unknown) of 0.0 (unknown) 0.6% 37%

MPlayer interrupted by signal 2 in module: play_audio

This seems to match the best you can get while listening to BBC Radio 3 Live if you use the recent 128kbit's AAC stream as listed at the Beebotron website.

http://www.beebotron.org/index.php?reload#BBC_Live_Radio_Links (http://www.beebotron.org/index.php?reload#BBC_Live_Radio_Links)

But, and it's a big but, these AAC streams seem only to be available via an iplayer console and not squeezebox.

I'm on Brian's side in his criticism of the BBC. There are quite a few Classical internet radio stations broadcasting in higher quality than the BBC, while we are left with the prospect of a useless DAB radio standard and at best 192kbit/s for listen again internet broadcasts.

Labarum

07-08-2009, 11:07

I am not sure if I understand precisely your points, Chris.

When listening to the FLAC stream Foobar reports a bitrate sometimes dipping below, but mostly in the 7-800 Kb/s range. That would seem to be about right for such a FLAC. Squeezebox will not play it.

I compared it to the same radio Station accessing it on the Squeezebox via an OGG stream at about 224Kb/s.

Both are excellent. The FLAC is, as you might expect, better, retaining more of the ambience and the dynamic excitement of the performance.

In practice I guess the best we can hope for is an AAC or OGG stream of around 200Kb/s. Listening to various stations on the Squeezebox the OGG and AAC streams seem better than the MP3 or WMA streams at similar bitrates. I hope it will become possible to listen to the BBC AAC streams on my Squeezebox.

This theme is also running on the Squeezebox forum

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66393

The Vinyl Adventure

07-08-2009, 11:26

DaveK

07-08-2009, 11:33

listening through foobar/aiso in flac gives a variable bit rate that i have seen go as high as 1000kb/s . there is definatly a level of ambiance in the reproduction that i have never heard from broadcast. my only quibble with it is that there is the of slight click or pop... but that could as easily be my setup

Hi Hamish,
Ditto to ALL of your comments above, including the ocassional click or pop - if you have a problem with your setup, I have the same problem ;) . Let me know if and how you fix it and I'll do the same! :lol:
Cheers,

Labarum

07-08-2009, 11:45

Has anyone tried listening to this FLAC station using a different player?

It works immediately with VLC

It did not with Songbird and MediaMonkey, both of which support FLAC out of the box.

Windows media Player will play FLAC if you install an extension, but I have not tried it.

But, of course, we are not dealing with a straightforward FLAC, but FLAC in an OGG container (or so I am told)

So, has anyone tuned this Station on a Windows machine without using Foobar or VLC?

Stratmangler

07-08-2009, 12:05

WMP won't play the station on my machine, and I have the flac plugin installed.

XP Pro / MP11

Chris:)

Labarum

07-08-2009, 12:32

WMP won't play the station on my machine, and I have the flac plugin installed.

XP Pro / MP11

Thanks. I guessed that would be the answer.

Phileas

07-08-2009, 13:21

Has anyone tried listening to this FLAC station using a different player?

So, has anyone tuned this Station on a Windows machine without using Foobar or VLC?

I followed the instructions in this thread:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65553
and can listen through SoftSqueeze on my Windows PC or my Squeezeboxes.

Phileas

Phileas

07-08-2009, 13:27

But, and it's a big but, these AAC streams seem only to be available via an iplayer console and not squeezebox.

See here:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65897
The BBC AAC streams can be played through the SqueezeBox now using a beta iPlayer plugin.

Phileas

Krisbee

07-08-2009, 17:22

Brian,

I wasn't wowed on my first listen to the Czech radio D-dur station. I swear i didn't have cotton wall in my ears, but I guess it must just have been the wrong track.

After playing around with various audio players in Linux (Xine based, like Amarok and Kafeine and VLC and mplayer) trying to get some useful stats on the FLAC stream in the OGG container I now appreciate the audio quality of what they have done. I'm just listening to a bit of Mozart right now, excellent sound quality.

For anyone interested in the technicalities of their streaming you should read this

http://www.cesnet.cz/doc/techzpravy/2008/using-flac-encoding/

It's driven by servers running Linux and using open software. BBC, eat your heart out.

Labarum

07-08-2009, 17:46

For anyone interested in the technicalities of their streaming you should read this

http://www.cesnet.cz/doc/techzpravy/2008/using-flac-encoding/

Thanks for this. I have just emailed it to a member of the Squeezebox development team who emailed his thanks straight back.

Edit:

Having read the link I see I have identified the only two Windows Players that handle the FLAC stream - Foobar and VLC, the latter running on Macs too.

Krisbee

08-08-2009, 08:07

Today's radio D-Dur schedule:

http://www2.rozhlas.cz/program/digital/2009-08-08

Well I hope the sueezebox team can get it sorted for you. Not surprisingly, Linux users have a wider choice of audio players for FLAC files/streams.

Brian, what about trying one of the many Linux live CDs on your laptop/PC ? You can run the operating system from a cd/dvd drive without it touching your Windows install.

Labarum

08-08-2009, 08:53

Brian, what about trying one of the many Linux live CDs on your laptop/PC ? You can run the operating system from a cd/dvd drive without it touching your Windows install.

Yes, I know. I probably tried Linux too soon - quite a few years ago I had a copy of SUSE.

I am in the process of retiring - a little project?

I have a full size desktop PC and a Shuttle in the house - both XP, but they have been known to run various flavours of Vista and ebven Widows 7 (my son knows a lot more that I)

I need:

A browser. (Used Firefox for years)

A Word Processor. (MS Word or Open Office Writer (I don't care which)

I run Picassa, but don't have to.

I run Thunderbird in IMAP mode (but usually access www.fastmail.fm through the browser)

I need to run Squeezecentre and something to play audio files.

I might get into video streaming.

OS? Don't much care, so long as it keeps itself to itself.

Krisbee

08-08-2009, 10:45

Linux distros have certainly progressed in the last few years to offer all the "point & click" type configuration you'd find in Windows. The lastest version of the KDE dekstop environment (kde 4.3) has settled down and has all the eye-candy and more of Windows 7 and is not a resource hog. There are version of Linux around that have a light(er) resource footprint and are suitable to run on older hardware. A P111 will zip along with the right choice.

All the apps you've mentioned exist in Linux including logitech's squeezecentre, although google's picassa is a beta version only. VLC provides video streaming across a (internal) network. If you really want to, its pretty straight forward to run a version of Windows inside Linux using a virtual machine with "Virtual Box " software. You can have your cake and eat it.

For audio, Linux provides all the choice and control I need without worrying about ASIO etc.

Good luck, with the big project.

Back to D-dur and Beethoven.

Labarum

08-08-2009, 11:09

Linux distros have certainly progressed in the last few years . . .

I once ran OS2 on a 486 with Windows 3.1 able to run in an OS2 Window. That was amazing - so was trying to install it from floppies.

I think IBM have a lot to answer for - the big firm woke up too late to the fact that desk top computers were going to take over from mainframes, so they rushed at the hardware - the IBM XT (yuk) and bought an operating system off a student called Bill Yates. Biggest technological mistake of the 20th Century. The world was stuck with Microsoft when there always were better alternatives.

I never owned an '86 box till Windows 95 came along, even them my Atari ST would do things Windows would not. (The Army owned the 486 running OS2 and Windows 3.1)

Apple played the "we are better than everyone else" and nearly lost altogether. They have increased their margins over generic PCs again, and seem to be getting away with it at the moment They all want their heads banging together.

Yes, I know, a modern Linux will beat MS and match the Mac (Which runs Free BSD Unix anyway!!!! The graphics is just shell!)

But isn't this thread well off course?

DaveK

09-08-2009, 14:05

It is part of Vista. Provided you have dowloaded the wasapi dll from the bottom of this page

http://www.foobar2000.org/components

and copied it into your Vista programs/foobar/components folder

you should be able to see the WASAPI option after restarting Foobar and looking in the Output pane. The buffer may need to be reduced to the minimum for WASAPI to work.

Use the same procedure for the Kernal Streaming (KS) option.
http://www.foobar2000.org/components

If you have done that and don't see the options I can't help you. I am new to this too.

WASAPI, ASIO and KS all promise bit perfect playback, but may sound subtlety different. Why? Don't know>

Hi Brian,
Just got round to following the above instructions, with the folowing results: -
WASAPI: -
Loaded everything smoothly and persuaded foobar to play it. Limited to 16 bit output but sounded OK.
Kernel Streaming: -
Read the notes and recoiled at the description "experimental" so didn't go any further.
This allowed me to compare WASAPI and ASIO4ALL. Whilst WASAPI was fixed at 16 bits playback (anything else was met with the error message 'Unsupported file') ASIO4ALL played quite happily with playback set at 32 bit. It also sounded better to my ears so I'll stick with ASIO for now.
Any comments would be welcome 'cos I'm new to this too and always ready to learn.
Cheers,

Labarum

09-08-2009, 14:13

Any comments would be welcome 'cos I'm new to this too and always ready to learn.

I am barely one step ahead of you. Kernal streaming works OK for me. Others report a preference for ASIO. When using ASIO I think you need to set Foobar's Volume to Max (Windows volume too?). With WASAPI no volume control, nor anything in Windows mixer will do anything - the bitstream is passed through with no messing.

Edit:

There is a Foobar forum here

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=SF&s=&f=28