Radio online

[Humpty Dumpty]

Sometimes, when I try to listen to streaming music from a radio station
online, or watch video from a TV station the music ot the video comes out
severely broken.

Except from the obvious advice "buy a faster computer", is there anything I
can do?
Thank you,
Humpty

 

[Guest]

What speed is your ADSL?

Are you streaming from a slow server?

What other Internet applications you have open when the video is choppy?

 

[Jose]

Sometimes, when I try to listen to streaming music from a radio station
online, or watch video from a TV station the music ot the video comes out
severely broken.

Except from the obvious advice "buy a faster computer", is there anythingI
can do?
Thank you,
Humpty

That is frequent advice (not the same as obvious) and not always
practical advice.

Different sites stream their content in different ways, so there are a
lot of variables. But you can figure out what it's not.

If you are talking about a home computer, determine your connection
speed in and out with some tests.

www.speedtest.net (Click the triangle on the map, wait)

http://www.bandwidth.com/tools/speedTest/

See what your speeds are. Call your Internet Service Provided (ISP)
and ask a knowledgeable human what they think their upload/download
speed is (don't tell them your results, or of course it will be fine)
and what site do they recommend for testing.

They will recommend a test that makes them look the most favorable.
Comcast likes speedtest. Try a few yourself.

If your testing does not meet or exceed their advertised rates, make
them live up to their claims or offer you free stuff for concessions.

If your testing is within their requirements, then you have to make
the best of what you have and start looking elsewhere, but you will
know what it's not.

My friend just had every piece of broadband cable, connectors,
splitters, couplers, etc. from the pole across the street, to his
pole, to the inside his house and his router replaced by Comcast and
got HBO free for a year.

He went from downloads of 6.7M to 12.5M. It was most amusing.

 

[Daave]

Sometimes, when I try to listen to streaming music from a radio
station online, or watch video from a TV station the music ot the
video comes out severely broken.

Except from the obvious advice "buy a faster computer", is there
anything I can do?
Thank you,
Humpty

Assuming your PC is fast enough, get a faster Internet connection.

 

[BillW50]

In Humpty Dumpty typed on Sat, 5 Sep 2009 12:33:51 +0300:

Sometimes, when I try to listen to streaming music from a radio
station online, or watch video from a TV station the music ot the
video comes out severely broken.

Except from the obvious advice "buy a faster computer", is there
anything I can do?
Thank you,
Humpty

Well besides all of the other three replies you got, I have one thing to
say. The odds are great it isn't on your end. As long as one of them
seems to play fine, it is most likely the others don't have fast enough
servers to handle all of the users trying to access the stream. This is
a very common problem and they don't often fix it because it costs lots
of money to fix it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Sometimes, when I try to listen to streaming music from a radio station
online, or watch video from a TV station the music ot the video comes out
severely broken.

Except from the obvious advice "buy a faster computer", is there anything I
can do?

The "obvious" advice "buy a faster computer" is very likely wrong.
There is very likely a speed issue, but the issue is probably with
your internet connection, not with the computer.

What kind of internet connection do you have: dial-up? DSL? Cable?
something else? How fast is it?

 

[Paul Randall]

Find a friend with a laptop who can listen to the same radio station from a
different location and verify that the radio station can play well on that
computer through the ISP at that location. Then have him connect to the
radio station through your internet connection and see if it still plays
well. If it does, you will know that the problem is in your computer.

-Paul Randall

 

[PA Bear [MS MVP]]

See
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/faq/playing_files.mspx
and http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/faq/radio.mspx

You'll find support for WMP in this public newsgroup:
microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player

Via the web-interface:
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie....aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player

Via your newsreader:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player

 

[Humpty Dumpty]

The "obvious" advice "buy a faster computer" is very likely wrong.
There is very likely a speed issue, but the issue is probably with
your internet connection, not with the computer.

What kind of internet connection do you have: dial-up? DSL? Cable?
something else? How fast is it?

My connection is ADSL. I just checked the speed using two sites suggested
above by José (thank you, José). One gave me 2.65 MB/s and the other one 2.3
Mb/s (download speed). I pay my provider for 2.5 Mb/s, so I suppose that
this is OK. I have noted that the speed decreases with time of use of the
computer. A reboot helps. I'd like to understand how this is explained.

I want to thank to all those who cared to answer my question. Thank you all,
Humpty

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My connection is ADSL. I just checked the speed using two sites suggested
above by José (thank you, José). One gave me 2.65 MB/s and the other one 2.3
Mb/s (download speed).

In that case, I would suspect that the problem is with the particular
site or sites you are downloading from. Try to do the same thing with
those sites on a friend's computer, with his ISP, and see if the same
problem occurs.

Also you might try it on your computer in the middle of the night. If
that eliminates the problem, it's very likely caused by more traffic
at once than the site can handle.

 

[Humpty Dumpty]

In that case, I would suspect that the problem is with the particular
site or sites you are downloading from. Try to do the same thing with
those sites on a friend's computer, with his ISP, and see if the same
problem occurs.

Also you might try it on your computer in the middle of the night. If
that eliminates the problem, it's very likely caused by more traffic
at once than the site can handle.

 

[Humpty Dumpty]

In that case, I would suspect that the problem is with the particular
site or sites you are downloading from. Try to do the same thing with
those sites on a friend's computer, with his ISP, and see if the same
problem occurs.

Also you might try it on your computer in the middle of the night. If
that eliminates the problem, it's very likely caused by more traffic
at once than the site can handle.

You are right, Ken. I am listening right now to the same station and no
problem.
Humpty

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

You are right, Ken. I am listening right now to the same station and no
problem.

Great! Glad to have helped.

 

[credalter]

A slightly different problem...

I also have a Dimension 2400 with Soundmax integrated audio. Some radio
stations have horrible sound even when broadcasting at 128kb/stereo. I can
improve the sound by sliding the volume balance to either left or right. That
is an easy solution except that if I listen to the same station over the same
dsl connection and network on my laptop (Dell Inspiron with a different sound
card) or my itouch, it sounds fine. I'm using the most recent soundmax
driver. Obviously the problem is not with my isp, network, or the radio
station. Any ideas?

 

[Roy Smith]

A slightly different problem...

I also have a Dimension 2400 with Soundmax integrated audio. Some radio
stations have horrible sound even when broadcasting at 128kb/stereo. I can
improve the sound by sliding the volume balance to either left or right. That
is an easy solution except that if I listen to the same station over the same
dsl connection and network on my laptop (Dell Inspiron with a different sound
card) or my itouch, it sounds fine. I'm using the most recent soundmax
driver. Obviously the problem is not with my isp, network, or the radio
station. Any ideas?

Have you tried using a different set of speakers? Or you could try
plugging the 2400's speakers into the laptop's headphone jack and see if
it still sounds the same.

 

[Paul]

A slightly different problem...

I also have a Dimension 2400 with Soundmax integrated audio. Some radio
stations have horrible sound even when broadcasting at 128kb/stereo. I can
improve the sound by sliding the volume balance to either left or right. That
is an easy solution except that if I listen to the same station over the same
dsl connection and network on my laptop (Dell Inspiron with a different sound
card) or my itouch, it sounds fine. I'm using the most recent soundmax
driver. Obviously the problem is not with my isp, network, or the radio
station. Any ideas?

Would the right and left channels of the stereo content, be reversed ?
I don't really know how bad reversed channels would sound. You would need
an audio editing program, that has the ability to change which channel a
track is assigned to.

( A free sound editor - when a stereo sound file is loaded, you can change
the left and right channel assignments. )

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Paul

 

[Bill in Co.]

That bitrate is plenty high enough for radio. That doesn't mean that all
radio stations have good fidelity, however).

I can
Sounds like a hardware or software/driver problem with your Dimension 2400.
If your system sounds good on some sources of music, then it's likely some
driver issue, and not a hardware problem (otherwise it would sound bad no
matter what you're listening to).

Would the right and left channels of the stereo content, be reversed ?
I don't really know how bad reversed channels would sound.

It wouldn't be "distorted" if simply the channels were reversed. It's just
that it wouldn't be faithful to the original performance (like the violins
or bass drums, etc, would appear on the opposite side of how they were
actually recorded)

 

[Paul]

That bitrate is plenty high enough for radio. That doesn't mean that all
radio stations have good fidelity, however).

I can

Sounds like a hardware or software/driver problem with your Dimension 2400.
If your system sounds good on some sources of music, then it's likely some
driver issue, and not a hardware problem (otherwise it would sound bad no
matter what you're listening to).


It wouldn't be "distorted" if simply the channels were reversed. It's just
that it wouldn't be faithful to the original performance (like the violins
or bass drums, etc, would appear on the opposite side of how they were
actually recorded)

What I was trying to make sense of, is why moving the balance slider to
right or left, causes the sound quality to improve. I can only think of
channel reversal, and switching from stereo to mono, or something along
those lines. Otherwise, I don't see a mechanism by which moving a balance
slider, should change anything.

I ripped a track from a CD, pulled it into Audacity, swapped channels,
and there wasn't an appreciable change in what I heard, so I have
to conclude that isn't the mechanism.

Just for kicks, I tried inverting one track of the stereo content, and
it seemed to shift the stereo image a bit to one side. But other than
that, the "quality" of the audio remained the same.

So my test isn't showing any changes significant enough, to correspond
to the report of the original poster.

If the volume *level* was moved up, until the amplifier connected to
the speakers started to clip, that might make a difference. But
moving a balance slider to one side or the other, shouldn't be
changing the levels.

Paul

 

[Bill in Co.]

What I was trying to make sense of, is why moving the balance slider to
right or left, causes the sound quality to improve.

I think his statement (that particular statement) is too ambiguous. He
needs to clarify what he meant.

I can only think of
channel reversal, and switching from stereo to mono, or something along
those lines. Otherwise, I don't see a mechanism by which moving a balance
slider, should change anything.

Same here. It needs further clarification, because as its written, it makes
little sense.

I ripped a track from a CD, pulled it into Audacity, swapped channels,
and there wasn't an appreciable change in what I heard, so I have
to conclude that isn't the mechanism.
Right.

Just for kicks, I tried inverting one track of the stereo content, and
it seemed to shift the stereo image a bit to one side.

THAT will make a difference, however. And not exactly a pleasing
one, either.

But other than that, the "quality" of the audio remained the same.

Right, althought the stereo spatial effect can get pretty messed up. And
that effect is particularly noticeable if you're listening on headphones!

So my test isn't showing any changes significant enough, to correspond
to the report of the original poster.

If the volume *level* was moved up, until the amplifier connected to
the speakers started to clip, that might make a difference. But
moving a balance slider to one side or the other, shouldn't be
changing the levels.

Paul

Right. Again, he needs to be more specific. It's too ambiguous, as
written.