alienstream v3 helper testing

[waldy]

Hi,

I',m testing the compiled alienstream helper after installing the xine
library.

Currently I'm getting the following output

[root@lyn-media tmp]# /usr/local/bin/alienstream
rtsp://rx-wes-sea137.rbn.com/farm/*/radiofno/radiofno/live/radio.rm

mrl: 'rtsp://rx-wes-sea137.rbn.com/farm/*/radiofno/radiofno/live/radio.rm'
Buffering... [0%]
Buffering... [4%]
Buffering... [8%]
Buffering... [12%]
Buffering... [18%]

and no further. I've tried several other url's with similar results.
Can ayone give me a url that is known to work with this, so I know wether
the setup on my rehat 8 system is working or not?
Any other tips apreciated.

cheers

Waldy

[Peter Heslin]

On Wed, May 26, 2004 at 04:21:52PM +0100, waldy wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I',m testing the compiled alienstream helper after installing the xine
> library.
>
> Currently I'm getting the following output
>
> [root@lyn-media tmp]# /usr/local/bin/alienstream
> rtsp://rx-wes-sea137.rbn.com/farm/*/radiofno/radiofno/live/radio.rm
>
> mrl: 'rtsp://rx-wes-sea137.rbn.com/farm/*/radiofno/radiofno/live/radio.rm'
> Buffering... [0%]
> Buffering... [4%]
> Buffering... [8%]
> Buffering... [12%]
> Buffering... [18%]
>
> and no further. I've tried several other url's with similar results.
> Can ayone give me a url that is known to work with this, so I know wether
> the setup on my rehat 8 system is working or not?
> Any other tips apreciated.

Your URL
(rtsp://rx-wes-sea137.rbn.com/farm/*/radiofno/radiofno/live/radio.rm)
works fine for me (cajun music at the moment, with occasional
audio dropouts, but not too bad).

It looks like maybe the output is getting blocked. Check that you
have followed the instructions about setting up the fifo. Try running
lame and the mp3 player *before* alienstream.

Peter

[Waldy]

Hi Peter,

Used the following to set the fifo up;

mkfifo tmp.wav
export XINE_WAVE_OUTPUT=tmp.wav

as per your web page instructions. Tried setting the lame command before
the helper. Still seems to stall on buffering. I let it run all day today
out of interest, came back from work & it had reached 36%. btw the stream
plays fine in real player.

regards

Waldy

[Peter Heslin]

On Thu, May 27, 2004 at 11:02:25PM +0100, Waldy wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> Used the following to set the fifo up;
>
> mkfifo tmp.wav
> export XINE_WAVE_OUTPUT=tmp.wav
>
> as per your web page instructions. Tried setting the lame command before
> the helper. Still seems to stall on buffering. I let it run all day today
> out of interest, came back from work & it had reached 36%. btw the stream
> plays fine in real player.

As I said, it works fine for me, so I'm not sure what's going on.
Try this: in a new shell (i.e. one without the XINE_WAVE_OUTPUT
environment variable set) run the helper without lame. In the
current directory, you should see a file called xine-out.wav, which
will rapidly grow in size. Provided that you have enough disk space,
xine should not stall. If it still stalls, I'm stumped.

Best,

Peter

[Marty]

This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but this is
related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509 series
laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound drivers
installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the local HD, I
get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same thing in
both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these files all
play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing on my
laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in advance.

marty

[dean]

Hey Marty,

Kevin, our tech support guy, had a toshiba laptop a while ago and had a
similar problem. He never completely resolved it, but his best guess
was that his wifi card was interfering with the audio hardware. Could
this explain your problem?

-dean

On May 28, 2004, at 1:30 PM, Marty wrote:

>
>
> This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but this
> is
> related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509 series
> laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound
> drivers
> installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the local
> HD, I
> get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same
> thing in
> both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these
> files all
> play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing
> on my
> laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in advance.
>
> marty
>

[Marty]

First thing I tried after your posts, was to see if I could cause the
problem with and without my wifi card on. And as you would know, when it
was off, it never happened, yet when I turned the antenna back on, in came
the random choppiness again... It's interesting. Why would the wifi
cause interference with the sound card? Is it hardware conflict btw the two
devices, or a battle for cpu resources? Any other thoughts?

marty


----- Original Message -----
From: "dean blackketter" <dean (AT) slimdevices (DOT) com>
To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 5:06 PM
Subject: [slim] Off topic question


> Hey Marty,
>
> Kevin, our tech support guy, had a toshiba laptop a while ago and had a
> similar problem. He never completely resolved it, but his best guess
> was that his wifi card was interfering with the audio hardware. Could
> this explain your problem?
>
> -dean
>
> On May 28, 2004, at 1:30 PM, Marty wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but this
> > is
> > related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509 series
> > laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound
> > drivers
> > installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the local
> > HD, I
> > get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same
> > thing in
> > both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these
> > files all
> > play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing
> > on my
> > laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in advance.
> >
> > marty
> >

[dean]

The WiFi card is probably causing some RF interference (it's a radio
transmitter, after all...)

Your best bet is to move one of them off on a USB interface.

On May 28, 2004, at 3:58 PM, Marty wrote:

> First thing I tried after your posts, was to see if I could cause the
> problem with and without my wifi card on. And as you would know, when
> it
> was off, it never happened, yet when I turned the antenna back on, in
> came
> the random choppiness again... It's interesting. Why would the
> wifi
> cause interference with the sound card? Is it hardware conflict btw
> the two
> devices, or a battle for cpu resources? Any other thoughts?
>
> marty
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "dean blackketter" <dean (AT) slimdevices (DOT) com>
> To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
> Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 5:06 PM
> Subject: [slim] Off topic question
>
>
>> Hey Marty,
>>
>> Kevin, our tech support guy, had a toshiba laptop a while ago and had
>> a
>> similar problem. He never completely resolved it, but his best guess
>> was that his wifi card was interfering with the audio hardware. Could
>> this explain your problem?
>>
>> -dean
>>
>> On May 28, 2004, at 1:30 PM, Marty wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but
>>> this
>>> is
>>> related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509
>>> series
>>> laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound
>>> drivers
>>> installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the
>>> local
>>> HD, I
>>> get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same
>>> thing in
>>> both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these
>>> files all
>>> play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing
>>> on my
>>> laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in
>>> advance.
>>>
>>> marty
>>>

[Pbox]

I would say, given that most recent WiFi cards are so called "soft"
cards (remeber soft-modems?), meaning that some of the processing is
dished out to the driver (CPU), instead of the hardware, the reason for
your choppy music, is that the WiFi antenna is picking up signals or
noise and requests the CPU to process the signal. This robs you from
having the CPU available for music playing. Unfortunately this will not
go away due to the Centrino architecture, where Intel decided to move
the WiFi to the chipset. This can get better with a stronger processor,
which will have cycles to spare even when processing WiFi and music at
the same time...

Pbox


dean blackketter wrote:

> The WiFi card is probably causing some RF interference (it's a radio
> transmitter, after all...)
>
> Your best bet is to move one of them off on a USB interface.
>
> On May 28, 2004, at 3:58 PM, Marty wrote:
>
>> First thing I tried after your posts, was to see if I could cause the
>> problem with and without my wifi card on. And as you would know, when it
>> was off, it never happened, yet when I turned the antenna back on, in
>> came
>> the random choppiness again... It's interesting. Why would the wifi
>> cause interference with the sound card? Is it hardware conflict btw
>> the two
>> devices, or a battle for cpu resources? Any other thoughts?
>>
>> marty
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "dean blackketter" <dean (AT) slimdevices (DOT) com>
>> To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
>> Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 5:06 PM
>> Subject: [slim] Off topic question
>>
>>
>>> Hey Marty,
>>>
>>> Kevin, our tech support guy, had a toshiba laptop a while ago and had a
>>> similar problem. He never completely resolved it, but his best guess
>>> was that his wifi card was interfering with the audio hardware. Could
>>> this explain your problem?
>>>
>>> -dean
>>>
>>> On May 28, 2004, at 1:30 PM, Marty wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but this
>>>> is
>>>> related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509 series
>>>> laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound
>>>> drivers
>>>> installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the local
>>>> HD, I
>>>> get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same
>>>> thing in
>>>> both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these
>>>> files all
>>>> play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing
>>>> on my
>>>> laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in advance.
>>>>
>>>> marty
>>>>

[Marty]

but shouldn't a 2.8 ghz processor have the cycles to spare to do this
without losing sound quality?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Pbox" <slimdev (AT) peterlada (DOT) com>
To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 7:38 PM
Subject: [slim] Off topic question


> I would say, given that most recent WiFi cards are so called "soft"
> cards (remeber soft-modems?), meaning that some of the processing is
> dished out to the driver (CPU), instead of the hardware, the reason for
> your choppy music, is that the WiFi antenna is picking up signals or
> noise and requests the CPU to process the signal. This robs you from
> having the CPU available for music playing. Unfortunately this will not
> go away due to the Centrino architecture, where Intel decided to move
> the WiFi to the chipset. This can get better with a stronger processor,
> which will have cycles to spare even when processing WiFi and music at
> the same time...
>
> Pbox
>
>
> dean blackketter wrote:
>
> > The WiFi card is probably causing some RF interference (it's a radio
> > transmitter, after all...)
> >
> > Your best bet is to move one of them off on a USB interface.
> >
> > On May 28, 2004, at 3:58 PM, Marty wrote:
> >
> >> First thing I tried after your posts, was to see if I could cause the
> >> problem with and without my wifi card on. And as you would know, when
it
> >> was off, it never happened, yet when I turned the antenna back on, in
> >> came
> >> the random choppiness again... It's interesting. Why would the
wifi
> >> cause interference with the sound card? Is it hardware conflict btw
> >> the two
> >> devices, or a battle for cpu resources? Any other thoughts?
> >>
> >> marty
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "dean blackketter" <dean (AT) slimdevices (DOT) com>
> >> To: "Slim Devices Discussion" <discuss (AT) lists (DOT) slimdevices.com>
> >> Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 5:06 PM
> >> Subject: [slim] Off topic question
> >>
> >>
> >>> Hey Marty,
> >>>
> >>> Kevin, our tech support guy, had a toshiba laptop a while ago and had
a
> >>> similar problem. He never completely resolved it, but his best guess
> >>> was that his wifi card was interfering with the audio hardware. Could
> >>> this explain your problem?
> >>>
> >>> -dean
> >>>
> >>> On May 28, 2004, at 1:30 PM, Marty wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> This isn't related to my SB, it's working well and I love it, but
this
> >>>> is
> >>>> related to audio playback on my laptop. I've a toshiba P25-s509
series
> >>>> laptop with windows xp pro installed. I have the most recent sound
> >>>> drivers
> >>>> installed, yet for some reason when I play an mp3 located on the
local
> >>>> HD, I
> >>>> get random choppiness. It's not the player, for it does the same
> >>>> thing in
> >>>> both windows media player and in winamp. Rest assured that these
> >>>> files all
> >>>> play beautifully over the LAN via the SB, this is just local playing
> >>>> on my
> >>>> laptop. Any suggestions on what the issue may be? Thanks in
advance.
> >>>>
> >>>> marty
> >>>>