Rupert Brun wrote:
Some people have commented that we should make a "normal" surround sound stream available but I'm not at all sure what they mean by this. For live streaming you need a codec and a transport layer. Our "normal" transport layers Flash and Shoutcast. Flash won't support more than stereo, Shoutcast can but support for this is very limited. MPEG-DASH, on the other hand, is rapidly becoming the standard way to transport streaming media over IP with more and more companies supporting it.
I've not got anything against DASH, though I do find the analogy with FM a bit weak given the amount of time content was available on both AM and FM. So what is a normal stream -I doubt I am that exceptional as a Linux user in not using browser/flash to access BBC content. Take for example the R3 HD stream - I see nothing exclusively to do with browser/flash/Shoutcast. .pls is widely supported so all I would do is - mplayer -playlist http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3_aaclca.pls I could even download r3_aaclca.pls with wget look in it and download with wget using the long http:// url. Happily the stream is aac in adts over http many many players across all OSes will be able to play it. If it were 4 channel aac/adts then the decoder would see it as such.
If anybody would like to set up a demonstration of live streaming of surround content which will play natively in a browser using different technologies then please let me know. I'm not using MPEG-DASH to be difficult, I'm using it because we have figured out how to make it carry good quality surround sound reliably and play in the browser without third party plug-ins, and because it is an agreed standard which is widely supported. If any of you have a better way of doing that please share it!
I don't via browser - DASH is fine for your objectives, but I hope you see what I mean by normal stream - You could provide one - just via a link somewhere - the browser/flash requirement/restriction is your arbitary choice. I accept that that's the way things currently are but this is a trial, and not using flash is the point, so there's no harm if you wanted in providing a real link to a normal http stream just like R3 HD. As it's a trial that requires people to have their computer plumbed into a surround system I don't think you can argue that they would be incapable of directly using a player capable of surround output - I would speculate that they already have one and know how to use it. _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound - unsubscribe here, edit account or options, view archives and so on.
