Gagliarchives audio quality

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally posted by Avian
2. WBZC's server has a habit of bumping our stream (and assuming many others) down from 32k to 21k at least once in the four hour broadcast.

in the defense of the poor overworked server at WZBC, it's not entirely their fault. A good deal of what can cause it to bump down is network latency. That's not 100% of the problem, but a good portion of it.

I know Roger (and previously me) used to keep a close eye on it, and manually get it back to 32k when this happens. But sometimes he doesn't catch it, and the audio quality will go down for a significant portion of the show.

In my OWN defense this time [grin], I might catch it, but often times it will manifest itself during the interview section, or in the middle of a song. I'm VERY hesitant about restarting the feed during actual content, preferring to do it during PSAs and the like.

Unfortunately, this also affects the recording (which is recorded off the 128k stream) for rebroadcast.

Ain't that the truth.

There isn't anything we can do about either item. Most solutions would involve changes at WBZC, including sending us our own higher quality bitrate stream for broadcast, finding out why the server is doing this bumping, and so on. But as Tom would surely testify, we're lucky that we're able to get streaming at all from the station!

Avian

As far as bumping us down is concerned, I've got a very strong suspicion (based partially on experience, partially on cynicism, and partially on reading coffee grinds (since I don't do tea)) that it has to do with network latency. Our end negotiates with their end for 32k initially, and as time goes on, the signal slows down, buffers empty, and the timing of the streaming slows down. To keep the feed going, quality has to drop. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back up once the network latency goes away. Bummer that. So we have to reinitialize the connection. However, this leaves gaps in the show (like last week's five seconds of silence). I like to do that during PSAs, especially those that are local to the New Jersey listeners.

Another factor that one has to bear in mind is that the stream is mixed and put together based on setting for FM broadcast, whereas we tend to use different settings for MP3s. I'm no audio engineer, but I know based on my settings in iTunes during Gagliarchives vs. normal time, they're quite different. You might want to consider lowering the bass and treble and bringing the mid range settings up a bit. That'll improve the sound quality somewhat (at least it does on my Mac. Your mileage may vary).

Roger -Dot- Lee