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Topic: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10 (Read 7448 times) previous topic - next topic
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xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Internet Radio stations I manage now have xHE-AAC streams in fMP4 HLS. The change from LOAS to fMP4 makes them compatible with Android 10 devices (and possibly some running Android 9). The streams are 40 kbps xHE-AAC 48 kHz sampling rate stereo. Until this change the only way to hear them was with StreamS Hi-Fi Radio on iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and iPod Touch devices.

My current web players with album art and ID tags aren't presently compatible with fragmented MP4 HLS, so for now I just have direct links to the audio streams without tags or album art. I have a pair of Android devices that are stuck at 8.1 so I can't test Android compatibility myself. Anyone here with Android 10 who wants to try them is welcome to and I'd appreciate confirmation that they work! I did try playing them in an Android 10 emulator in the Android Studio development platform but that emulator runs native x86 code and the streams didn't play.

Here are the links:

CKLG.CA 40k xHE-AAC

LG73 40k xHE-AAC

40k Max Radio xHE-AAC

New West Rock 40k xHE-AAC

Uptown Radio 40k xHE-AAC

On current Apple platforms the included xHE-AAC doesn't do live streams yet but it's possible to use ffmpeg to copy the fMP4 segments into a file which will then play natively on current versions of macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and watchOS. I'm hoping to see native support for xHE-AAC live streams next week at WWDC when Apple unveil the next generation of these operating systems.

If anyone's added the latest Fraunhofer FDK2 to their system that might also work with these live streams.


Cheers,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #1
Samsung Galaxy S8+ running Android 9:
I can't play any stream with either Chrome Browser or Samsung Internet Browser.

On the same device I can play USAC file (exhale) with Google Play Music (but seekar is buggy: it plays the next file when I touch it).

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #2
Samsung Galaxy S8+ running Android 9:
I can't play any stream with either Chrome Browser or Samsung Internet Browser.

On the same device I can play USAC file (exhale) with Google Play Music (but seekar is buggy: it plays the next file when I touch it).

I recall reading that the xHE-AAC capabilities in Android 9 were mostly commented out. Android 10 is the version I've been told should be able to play the streams.

Thank you for giving it a try!

Regards,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #3
Those streams don't play in chrome in Android 10.

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #4
Samsung Galaxy S8+ running Android 9:
I can't play any stream with either Chrome Browser or Samsung Internet Browser.

On the same device I can play USAC file (exhale) with Google Play Music (but seekar is buggy: it plays the next file when I touch it).

I recall reading that the xHE-AAC capabilities in Android 9 were mostly commented out. Android 10 is the version I've been told should be able to play the streams.

Thank you for giving it a try!

Regards,
Phil


Turns out Chrome has no native HLS playback capabilities. I’ve been advised that an app called ExoPlayer should be able to play the streams in Android 10 (and maybe 9).

Regards,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #5
I can confirm that the streams are working fine with ExoPlayer on my Android 9 Samsung phone :)

 

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #6
I can confirm that the streams are working fine with ExoPlayer on my Android 9 Samsung phone :)

Hi guruboolez,

Thank you for that xCellent (or should that be ExoLent) news that the xHE-AAC does work on Android 9 with ExoPlayer! It should be a sure thing then with Android 10 and ExoPlayer.

Cheers,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10 and More!

Reply #7
Internet Radio stations I manage now have xHE-AAC streams in fMP4 HLS. The change from LOAS to fMP4 makes them compatible with Android 10 devices (and possibly some running Android 9). The streams are 40 kbps xHE-AAC 48 kHz sampling rate stereo. Until this change the only way to hear them was with StreamS Hi-Fi Radio on iOS, iPadOS, tvOS and iPod Touch devices.

I've now added barebones web players (using videoJS) which have been tested and verified working in Firefox in Android 10. They should also work in Firefox in Android 9. Chrome won't work.

New as of Monday, June 22nd: the same xHE-AAC streams will now natively play in macOS 11.0, iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 betas in Safari (and with a slightly different URL in the Music app in macOS 11.0)! Here are links to the web players:

CKLG.CA 40k xHE-AAC

LG73 40k xHE-AAC

Max Radio 40k xHE-AAC

New West Rock 40k xHE-AAC

Uptown Radio 40k xHE-AAC

Working on getting album art and ID tags working with these web players. The audio works well.

Cheers,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #8
I confirm: streams are working fine with Firefox on Android 9 (Galaxy S8+)

(NB : joined picture is corrupted)

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #9
I've now added barebones web players (using videoJS) which have been tested and verified working in Firefox in Android 10. They should also work in Firefox in Android 9. Chrome won't work.

New as of Monday, June 22nd: the same xHE-AAC streams will now natively play in macOS 11.0, iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 betas in Safari (and with a slightly different URL in the Music app in macOS 11.0)! Here are links to the web players:

CKLG.CA 40k xHE-AAC

LG73 40k xHE-AAC

Max Radio 40k xHE-AAC

New West Rock 40k xHE-AAC

Uptown Radio 40k xHE-AAC

Working on getting album art and ID tags working with these web players. The audio works well.

Cheers,
Phil


Today (June 28th 2020) while working on the album art and ID tags issues, I accidentally discovered a javascript player component that works on playing live xHE-AAC streams in Safari on macOS Catalina and iPad OS 13.x! Until now that has been impossible to do. The new players now work on those production operating systems in addition to the Apple beta operating systems and Android 9 and 10. One change for Android: with the latest players Chrome now works and Firefox doesn't!

Anyone with macOS Catalina can now hear live xHE-AAC streaming for the first time ever. iPad OS works as long as MSE is enabled in Safari. Previously iPad could play the xHE-AAC streams with StreamS Hi-Fi Radio but there's been nothing for macOS Catalina and live xHE-AAC streams.

The above URLs are still valid as I've replaced the videoJS players with the new ones.

Cheers,
Phil
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #10
Sorry, these streams are for Canada only.


Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #12
Ah. Then they're only not available in the US.

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #13
I think, the posts URLs are not correct. Here in Germany, plays the HE-AAC Stream fine in Firefox (Windows 10):
https://www.maxradio.ca/StreamsHiFi/MaxRadioPlayer/UptownRadio.html

Hi rowi,

Thank you for posting an updated URL. A lot has changed since I first posted about the xHE-AAC streams here. Last year with some help from some smart friends I developed new universal web players that work with full album art and ID tags on all modern devices including iPhones! The streams in the web players are fragmented mp4 HLS streams that meet Apple's preferred specifications for modern HLS. The players include 64k HE-AACv1 stereo, 160k HE-AAC 5.1 surround, 320k AAC 5.1 surround and 48k xHE-AAC for supported devices. The surround streams play in Spatial Audio on supported Apple devices and headphones. The web players are very fast at updating the metadata which is contained in-stream. They also allow switching streams and stations on-the-fly. Most devices use MSE except iPhones which don't support MSE so I use a different API for them. The players automatically deliver the correct streams for the devices.

I recently slightly upped the bit-rate on the xHE-AAC streams from 40kbps to 48kbps. I also have some 32k xHE-AAC Icecast streams as a demo of how amazing the codec is at low bit-rates.

Multi-station players are available on two of my websites: https://www.uhdradio.com/ and https://www.maxradiosociety.ca/. There's a lingering issue with the MSE version where sometimes after switching stations the metadata from the previous station continues to load into the player along with the metadata from the currently playing station. That's not an issue on iPhone. It's the only known issue I have and as soon as I get some time available I'll work on a fix for that. Refreshing the browser and reloading the stream is an easy instant fix.

The players also handle rotation on mobile devices and reformat to better fit the screens. On desktop browsers the players look best when launched from the Play buttons on the websites.

On Android devices the xHE-AAC streams play at a lower level than the other streams due to xHE-AAC including a loudness setting.

Sorry about the geo-blocking to the US. I did that to appease SoundExchange.





MOD edit: fix closing quote
Cheers,
Phil

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #14
I recently slightly upped the bit-rate on the xHE-AAC streams from 40kbps to 48kbps.
In my humble personal opinion, that's a wise decision. With my own Extended HE-AAC encoder, exhale, I have experienced that, to my ears, the 8-kbps jump from 40 to 48 kbps stereo results in a noticeable boost in audio quality, possibly even larger than the quality increase caused by the 12-kbps jump from 48 to 60 kbps.

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #15
Sorry You've Been Geo-blocked

Re: xHE-AAC Streams Compatible with Android 10

Reply #16
Sorry, I should have realized it was a royal pain to deal with royalties for the American licensing bureaucracy. When you're big enough to be noticed, you can't get away with simply not doing the licensing steps, that's how you get sued.

Though another option is to have non-geoblocked streams of music that doesn't require royalties, such as freely available material. I wonder if the Lofi Garden people would be interested in also running an xHE-AAC stream of their material? Not that they make their existing 128k MP3 stream available outside their tiny dedicated app, which is featured in Setapp. Gotta pay the bills somehow.

(I know the service they use for repeating their stream costs $16.95/mo for the bitrate level they use, so they have to make at least that much per month from subscribed users to simply break even. And I have no idea what the payout is like from Setapp, or how it's structured depending on whether you install and use an app, or whether all apps featured in the service get a cut of all subscriptions.)