Adding favourite streams not working on mysqueezebox.com

[Stratmangler]

Hi Nick

Nice to see you here. Welcome.
I've got http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/direkt/164-hi-aac.pls playing as I'm typing.

I spotted your post about Livebox, and I wonder if your problems lie there ?
Is your server connected wirelessly to the Livebox ?

I only ask as I too use a Livebox, but mine is physically connected to Squeezebox Server, albeit indirectly (my connection is Livebox to Netgear DG834G to server to device. The netgear is doing wirelss duties as it is more dependable than the Livebox, and both server and player, an SB3 in my case, are connected to the Netgear via Cat5e. DHCP is turned off on the Netgear. The Netgear is only acting as a wirless access point/wired switch).

It has never been recommended to run a Squeezebox player completely wirelessly from server to player, so your problems might be found there - as you can see, my setup is fully wired for maximum robustness and dependability.

Of course I might be barking up the wrong tree.......



Chris

PS - I moved away from the stream after posting this, then eventually came back to it, and my SBS is just sat there with no buffering messages or anything - there could well be wider internet problems with the stream.

PPS - now listening to the stream again - it does look to be pretty flakey as far as connecting goes, although it seems to be fine once it has connected.

[Stratmangler]

I've been playing around with the http://sverigesradio.se/topsy/direkt/164-hi-aac.pls stream again this morning, this time using the stream address as a playlist in Foobar2000.
It connects first time every time, and very quickly too.

So it looks as if SBS is the bit that's being flakey, not the stream.

Chris

[Nick_G]

Thanks for the help.

Just to clarify: it's not the Swedish station I've been having problems with, it's the 192k AAC+ stream of KZSU:

http://kzsulive.stanford.edu/audio/kzsu-1-192.pls

I've managed to add it to my Favourites and it connects and buffers but still won't play it.

The Swedish station plays fine although it tends to buffer a fair bit. However, it also does this on the computer so perhaps it's at their end.

Going wired isn't an option for me as the computer & hi-fi system are at opposite ends of the house. I wouldn't want 30ft of ethernet cable going through the hallway as it would look a right mess!

[Nick_G]

Well it seems that toby10 is sort of right. It's the difference between plain AAC and AAC+. The Squeezebox will play AAC up to & including 320 kb/s but it seems that AAC+ playback could be limited to 128 kb/s. The way I've found to tell the difference is to play the streams in VLC. The AAC+ streams have the AAC extension SBR (Spectral Band Replication) listed. I found a 192 kb/s Shoutcast stream that is in AAC+ according to VLC and if I try it on the Touch the same thing happens, the stream loads up but doesn't play.

So is this a hardware issue or could this be fixed in a firmware update in future?

[vinnielo]

You could ask why the station is using AAC+ at 192k in the first place.
Surely AAC is enough at that high a bitrate.