Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg (Read 6824 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #1 –
Fantastic, finally one of the major broadcasters switched to Ogg Vorbis.
Now I can give their page as an example to other online stations that are afraid to use ogg since no-one knows about it...
My endian is bigger than yours.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #2 –
Weee!! Happy hour isn't that what they say?
Virgin Entertainment approving Ogg Vorbis as streamable format?
This is a milestone in Vorbis, isn't it?

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #3 –
best sounding net readio i have listened to... besides those 256kb MP3 shoutcast streams

i like how the bitrate goes down when it does not need it, smart bandwith saver
Chaintech AV-710

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #4 –
Too bad BBC didn't feel it necessary to continue their ogg streams.
They also had a great sound while it lasted.
I guess they felt their horrible On Demand Real Stream was more important,
so they quit development of ogg in Jan.

http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #5 –
Quote
Too bad BBC didn't feel it necessary to continue their ogg streams.
They also had a great sound while it lasted.
I guess they felt their horrible On Demand Real Stream was more important,
so they quit development of ogg in Jan.

http://support.bbc.co.uk/ogg/

Why don't you do like I did and let them know that Virgin Radio is now  streaming ogg , perhaps that will influence them to start again.
Dave

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #6 –
I received a response to my message to bbc about this:

Quote
From: Brandon Butterworth <brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk>
Message-Id: <200306170823.JAA06715@sunf10.rd.bbc.co.uk>
To: <address deleted>
Subject: Re: Virgin Radio switched on two new Ogg streams at 12.15pm today, 16 June 2003.
Cc: brandon@rd.bbc.co.uk

We saw that

They must have heard we were thinking about bringing
ours back

regards,
brandon


I don't know if this is a serious reply, but perhaps we should keep an eye on bbc as well.
Dave

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #7 –
It seems that in Poland they are far ahead.
VBR streams and better quality.
(Zlote Przeboje = Goldies Oldies)

[playlist]
numberofentries=5
File1=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje.ogg
Title1=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 128 kb/s kb/s, 48kHz, stereo)
Length1=-1
File2=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje2.ogg
Title2=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 96 kb/s, 48kHz, stereo)
Length2=-1
File3=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje3.ogg
Title3=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 48 kb/s, 44 kHz, mono)
Length3=-1
File4=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje4.ogg
Title4=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 32 kb/s, 22 kHz, stereo)
Length4=-1
Version=2
File5=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje5.ogg
Title5=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 26 kb/s, 16 kHz, mono)
Length4=-1
Version=2

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #8 –
YEAH MAN
I love Virgin radio

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #9 –
Quote
best sounding net readio i have listened to... besides those 256kb MP3 shoutcast streams

Best sounding?? It's mono-stream at the moment or at least very monoish. Not very enjoyable if you ask me.
Weird that immediately when some radio is using Vorbis, people go deaf and it's the best sounding net radio.. 

I think it will be nice when they get proper stereo stream out though.

Edit: They claim it's stereo, and it sounds like it's not mono. But it sounds very monoish, even more than normal Vorbis at 96kbps nominal. Anybody agree?

Edit2: Weird. I heard very monoish (new) songs, but then some songs are much more stereo. Maybe it's just the radio pre-processing.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #10 –
Quote
It's mono-stream at the moment or at least very monoish.

They were broadcasting mono-in-a-stereo-stream until sometime this morning. See this thread.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #11 –
Actually listenable net-radio, who woulda thought. Hah. This sounds pretty nice. In the end, I'm just glad to see OGG getting some more support, it's been a while since something like this happened.
"We live as if the world were as it should be, to show it what it can be..." - Angel

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #12 –
Excellent streaming sound - especially as I can use crossfeed DSP to get a pleasant stereo image on headphones when listening via FB2K (or Winamp). Being on 1215 AM (mono, 4.5 kHz lowpass + hiss) in most of the UK, I don't often listen to Virgin (it's FM in/near London and it's on some digital TV audio feeds too, I believe)

A little Off Topic, but three of the spoof radio advertisements mingled with the normal ads for loans and insurance on a lot of UK commercial radio are very funny. If you don't want to listen to hours of the Virgin stream until you hear them, you can just listen to the ads (630 KB each, 128kbps MP3, 48000 S/s stereo) from the pink panel low on the left at badjobs.co.uk

The MP3s have sibilant/flanging artifacts, BTW, probably reflecting an excessively high lowpass consistent with someone using 48 kHz. It's probably "dist10 encoder or other encoder", according to Encspot, and low (red) quality grade, but they're still amusing ads to listen to. The <96 kbps managed Vorbis stream from Virgin Radio sounded far better.

I particularly liked Fly By Night Finance, which was the first one I heard (on AM radio, not Virgin's excellent Vorbis stream), but I noticed that Dodd, Gee & Carrupt was being played a lot on the Virgin stream today.

Ugh, just listened to a bit more of the Virgin Radio's stream and just before 4pm BST they played Dido's Thank You, which is a good song I know reasonably well, so I thought I'd have a better chance to spot Vorbis artifacts by listening attentively on headphones.  But WTF!    It seemed to be pulsing up and down - the sound being modulated by the percussion instruments (snares etc) especially at the beginning and nearing the end, when there are no vocals. Clearly a case of an automatic gain control (dynamic adjustment) whose time constant was too short in a compressor in the station's signal processing line. "Better music and more of it" said the DJ as it faded out. I beg to differ!    It made me feel a little nauseous.  :x  Yet another station overusing dynamic compression to be comparably loud to other stations on the dial (and to normalise the volume of different tracks and presenters automatically).

Ok, for most other tracks it wasn't as annoying as this, and the station is largely a pleasant one to listen to, and for internet ratio it's far less annoying than those BBC.co.uk RealAudio streams that contain horrible aritfacts and just keep crashing my PC. (I never knew about the BBC's Vorbis trial til it was over, but some content is compelling enough for me to put up with the RA problems, especially with the "Listen Agan" feature!)

It's an unlikely dream, but I'd love to hear radio stations who'd use ReplayGain or manual control to standardise the volume while retaining dynamic variation and would only use AGC/dynamic compression to maintain the DJ's voiceovers and other speech content at a comparable volume level.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #13 –
Quote
It's an unlikely dream, but I'd love to hear radio stations who'd use ReplayGain or manual control to standardise the volume while retaining dynamic variation and would only use AGC/dynamic compression to maintain the DJ's voiceovers and other speech content at a comparable volume level.

I've tried it and the music sounds great. The problem is, it doesn't sound like a radio station. It sounds like some bloke talking and playing records. Or like Radio 3 with different music. It gives a whole different vibe!

To "sound" like a radio station, you've got to over-compress everything, add a million excitors, distortion etc etc.


I would love for someone to try it - but you must realise, they'll have to be very brave - there's a real danger that everyone listening will just think "that sounds weird" and turn off. If my ears have been trained to think that radio should sound overcompressed (and I hate it), then I'm sure that nearly everyone's have.


FWIW some of the early BBC DAB broadcasts were nearly processing-free. Now they're just crap, but even the higher bitrate BBC feeds (i.e. FreeView and DSat) have DRC processing. It's nowhere near as aggressive as on FM, but sometimes this just makes it worse. IN YER FACE LOUD ALL THE TIME does it's job - sometimes "gentle and subtle" just doesn't - it gives similar problems to the ones you heard with Dido. BTW the Dido album is already very compressed. It's quite harsh on a (very) decent stereo, and definitely not Hi-fi (or however you'd describe a good natural sounding recording).

Cheers,
David.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #14 –
Quote
Too bad BBC didn't feel it necessary to continue their ogg streams.
They also had a great sound while it lasted.

I don't agree. It didn't sound "great". In fact, i even wrote them an e-mail on how they could improve the sound. The 64 kbps version was plain horrible, the 128 kbps version wasn't that bad actually, if it wasn't for the clipping and overcompression.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #15 –
Quote
BTW the Dido album is already very compressed. It's quite harsh on a (very) decent stereo, and definitely not Hi-fi (or however you'd describe a good natural sounding recording).

I quite agree. I find it somewhat boring, possibly due to the constant level and tempo and the very dominant always-loud vocals (even when it's clear she's singing softly).

I know what you mean about the radio sound. I've noticed some changes with the Bob Harris Show on BBC Radio 2 FM over the years too, where the processing seems to have changed from one year to another on the same track, making it sound more "radio" (richer bass, less sharp cymbals) in more recent years. It's a bit anecdotal and with different recording equipment, so I'm only fairly sure it's down to the processing. I haven't listened to that show (more than the odd snippet) for quite a while now. It had a good eclectic range or music.

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #16 –
could be placebo, but for me sounds like something transcoded, horribly overcompressed + as allready mentioned monoish. (iam talking about ogg.smgradio.com/vr96.ogg)
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #17 –
It sounded like stereo to me.. didn't listen much tho, UK radio stinks (damn the way they talk). @_@

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #18 –
Quote
could be placebo, but for me sounds like something transcoded, horribly overcompressed + as allready mentioned monoish. (iam talking about ogg.smgradio.com/vr96.ogg)

Actually, I carried on listening and did hear one or two subtle flangy artifacts (perhaps a lack of de-esser/breath shield on the microphones contributed), which I think were on female speech during a news or travel bulletin, so it's far from perfect (but then it IS limited to 96 kbps maximum bitrate and averages lower, so you expect some subtle artifacts and a degraded stereo image). Dynamic compression only makes it harder to encode transparently at a restricted bitrate.

It's still way better than other internet streams of real music radio stations that I've heard, and FB2K doesn't crash like Realplayer, which I'm forced to use for BBC streams (and RealAudio streams also seem to get a bit atonal/non-musical at times and usually try to squeeze too much frequency response out of the signal at the expense of creating more artifacts).

Can't do anything about the accents I'm afraid, old chap ;)

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #19 –
Quote
Dynamic compression only makes it harder to encode transparently at a restricted bitrate.
could be, i mean, it is highly unlikely that they would broadcast some trascoded mp3 stream i guess.
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #20 –
Quoting 2Bdecided:
BTW the Dido album is already very compressed. It's quite harsh on a (very) decent stereo, and definitely not Hi-fi (or however you'd describe a good natural sounding recording).

Quoting DickD:
I quite agree. I find it somewhat boring, possibly due to the constant level and tempo and the very dominant always-loud vocals (even when it's clear she's singing softly).

Quoting myself:
Where boring is concerned, it's not as if the topics of her songs vary much at all.  Same old junk about the only social relationship needed for nice human living and survival is this _one_ romantic relationship, which satisfies all social needs, and nothing else matters.  Her album is consistently the best sociological example of this perspective that I've seen.  Interesting on that account, just because it's so blatant.  But I'm straying off-topic where audio quality is concerned...

edit: added "boring" to post
God kills a kitten every time you encode with CBR 320

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #21 –
Quote
Where boring is concerned, it's not as if the topics of her songs vary much at all.  Same old junk about the only social relationship needed for nice human living and survival is this _one_ romantic relationship, which satisfies all social needs, and nothing else matters.  Her album is consistently the best sociological example of this perspective that I've seen.

It's called being in love, isn't it? I think most people will find the sentiments have some relevance at some point in their life.


Cheers,
David.

instant EDIT: something tells me I might regret this post, don't know why, but...

Virgin Radio now broadcasts in Ogg

Reply #22 –
Quote
File3=http://cypress.man.poznan.pl:8000/zloteprzeboje3.ogg
Title3=Radio Zlote Przeboje 88,4 FM (Feed 48 kb/s, 44 kHz, mono)

It looks like it is in stereo...