[JayE]

Thanks big man!

[ianpwilliams]

Great stuff. I'll try editing it with that program when I get home. Just hope I can edit as quickly using that program, as I got the editing time down to half an hour with the last show using my program.

I'm going to keep recording the shows for now as a backup in case the server goes down.

[VMPhil]

Excellent! I accidentally turned off my alarm so missed the first half hour today.

[Nicola_Red]

I (again) had a brief glance at streamwriter this morning and it did look better. I'll be sure to see what it picked up later. I was getting ready to give up with the stream!

[neilt0]

Great stuff. I'll try editing it with that program when I get home. Just hope I can edit as quickly using that program, as I got the editing time down to half an hour with the last show using my program.

I'm going to keep recording the shows for now as a backup in case the server goes down.

To be honest, MP3DirectCut has a steep learning curve, but the benefit if you can wangle it is 1:1 original quality and zero time to encode. You just write out, which takes seconds.

And, yes, the more people recording, the better. So far, WOSB is waking up the PC, recording the stream and sleeping again. It has worked every day, but things can, and will, go wrong!

[modes98]

Anyone got a clean version of the new main jingle?
I was going to look at chopping it out but they all seem to have talking over

[Dreamxtreme]

ive only just found this thread among all the others Perfect to have the shows on archive since its a good quick server.

Thanks

[neilt0]

ive only just found this thread among all the others Perfect to have the shows on achieve since its a good quick server.

Thanks

If you dream, you can achieve.

[neilt0]

I just did a quick unscientific comparison of the raw output from the Sky box and the Radio X online stream.

The Sky box puts out MP2 (MPEG1 Layer II) files, at 160kbps, 48kHz.

The official Radio X web stream is MP3 (MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) at 128kbps, 44.1kHz

Because we don't know how many and what chains the audio goes through before it gets to the Sky box, any number of factors could affect it compare to the "official" stream.

To me, the Radio X web stream sounds better. I think the Sky audio is a little overdriven, causing mild clipping/distortion.
The web stream sounds cleaner and smoother.

Even though the Sky stream is at a higher bitrate, it uses MP2, which is less efficient, so the MP3 should be of higher quality:

A rule of thumb is that Layer II audio requires at least 192kbps or so while Layer III reduces bitrate demands to 128kbps, to achieve comparable audio quality.

This is all moot if the Radio X web stream falls over and we only have one source, but this may be of use for future reference.

[James H]

This is all moot if the Radio X web stream falls over and we only have one source, but this may be of use for future reference.

Exactly my thinking, until we can be sure the Radio X stream is bullet-proof Sky is the way forward, but apparently they've improved it. Although yesterday morning I was streaming it in a hotel and it fell over after about 30 mins.

[neilt0]

This is all moot if the Radio X web stream falls over and we only have one source, but this may be of use for future reference.

Exactly my thinking, until we can be sure the Radio X stream is bullet-proof Sky is the way forward, but apparently they've improved it. Although yesterday morning I was streaming it in a hotel and it fell over after about 30 mins.

I see all the various recordings of backups of each other. Today, we got one good recording from the web stream (Praise Jebus!)

There are timing issues with using the Sky recordings AIUI, as the raw recording has to be munged before it can be edited.

[ianpwilliams]

I've uploaded three versions of the same 44 second clip from today's show, one version being my Sky recording, then your download, then my edit of your download (which was re-rendered). They are all very similar in my opinion, although obviously you can hear a difference if you listen to all of them over and over:

Today's show is now on the Wiki. I tried using mp3 direct to edit the show, but it drove me mad. To be able to edit quickly I need to be able to jump around the file, and quickly place markers, do cuts, and add fades. And after messing around with mp3 direct for a good half hour I came to the conclusion that I can't really do any of that. Moving forward and backward is okish, and cutting out bits is ok, but fading seems all but impossible unless I want to fade the start or end of the audio, and nothing in between.

It did occur to me that maybe I should have edited the sky recording instead of your download, seeing as it is 160kbps instead of 128 kbps, but it's done now. I don't mind which one I use, but I'm not really sure that I can work with mp3 direct unfortunately. Unless there's something major I'm missing regarding fades.

[flyingbadger]

... the raw recording has to be munged before it can be edited.

Munged.

*Snigger*

[Jorden cassidy]

There are full shows missing on the site between 20th November 2007 and the end of that year. where can i find them please?

[neilt0]

It did occur to me that maybe I should have edited the sky recording instead of your download, seeing as it is 160kbps instead of 128 kbps, but it's done now. I don't mind which one I use, but I'm not really sure that I can work with mp3 direct unfortunately. Unless there's something major I'm missing regarding fades.

Yes, all the clean recordings are "good enough", definitely.

The Sky box puts out 160kbps MP2, vs. 128kbps MP3. To get the equivalent quality compared to a 128kbps MP3, you'd need to be 192kbps for MP2, so in theory, the MP3 is higher quality.

I did warn you that mp3direct was a pain! I haven't tried fades in the middle of the show, that's a good point. It's definitely not a proper DAW, of course. I'm sure the edits you put out will be of sufficient quality -- certainly
with the music removed, we should have enough bits 'n' shiz for speech.

Thanks again for doing the edits, Ian.

ETA: I read a really good book about the history of the MP3 recently. It goes in to depth about the battle between MP2 and MP3, if you're interested! http://tinyurl.com/pr6ahrp

[ianpwilliams]

Yeah I would choose to go with the stream too generally speaking, not least because sometimes broadcast feeds can just be a wall of sound which been compressed and squeezed beyond reason. I really don't like hard compression, a more natural sound is so much easier on the ears, but all options are quite heavily compressed as it's the way things are now that it seems.

So was your capture a stream writer recording or a post-show download? Or are they essentially the same thing anyway? If the stream can be reliable enough and if pete keeps recording them as backups (which i believe he is) then I'd quite like to not have to leave my PC recording and then shutting down every morning. Then maybe I could download the stream after the show, and call on Pete or yourself if there's an issue?

As for mp3 direct, the fades thing is weird. You have to select a point (not a selection) in the audio, and then drag the little handle down to fade up to that point. But the handle is always right at the beginning, which means that you fade everything up to the point. If anyone can work out a way to fade a selection then I'd be interested to hear it. I know fades aren't essential (I listen to Radio 1 edits all the time which don't have fades and it doesn't bother me in the slightest), but I do like a good fade.

Looks like an interesting book. I haven't worked too much with mp2. The book title suggests that it talks about music being free (although the description talks about other stuff), and I've always found it a shame that people want music for free when people work so hard to create it (I compose in my spare time so I tend to sympathise). And it seems like stream writer can automatically extract and separate songs from streams for you, so maybe it's part of the problem, despite being very useful for our requirements!

[slaphead1982]

I'm not entirley confident that this is the right place to ask but it does have something to do with the downloaded shows:

I want to add a picture of the guests for that particular show but Paddys' picture does'nt seem to be on the radio X page (Main page or Facebook). Does anybody know id Radio X even took a picture of him there today?

[slaphead1982]

I know I'm going to sound like a pain Ian but the question I p.m'd you about yesterday: Can I ask the same for Monday (21-09-2015).

[neilt0]

I'm with you on compression. Doing my own podcast, I got a bit nutty about sound quality and got some good help from Paul Figgiani on the Google+ groups regarding this relatively new concept of loudness control. All my podcasts are now mastered at -16 LUFs! https://plus.google.com/communities/116 ... 8313720302

All my captures are live streams. The early shows on their "listen again" service were horrible (48kbps?)

Fingers crossed, the recording of the web streams is reliable, but I think it's too soon to tell. I'd say we still should keep plenty of sources at this point.

The book is half about the piracy of music, half about the development of the standard. I loved it!
The extracting songs feature of StreamWriter was the first thing I switched off. That was a little jarring to see. Hmmm.

[Frothy Bevvy]

Thanks again Ian and all those going to the trouble of recording via various failsafe methods. Thursday's show sounds great and my RSS feed worked for me this morning. YAY!

[neilt0]

Friday 25th September

Right click, Save As to download: https://archive.org/download/2015092506.00.01TCMSRadioXUKCED/2015-09-25_06.00.01_TCMS_Radio%20X%20UK_c_ED.mp3

This is an unmolested capture, losslessly edited (just topped and tailed) with MP3DirectCut, so no re-encodes. 128kbps, stereo.

Another clean capture!

Enjoy!

[ianpwilliams]

Cheers Neil. Was that a Stream Writer job or something else? And how was the stream today?

I left my PC recording the stream with Stream Writer while also recording Sky at the same time this morning! And it looks like I won't need either!

[Nicola_Red]

Mine hadn't worked today but that's cos my laptop decided to go into a scheduled update and shut itself down. It's pretty new and I hadn't thought to disable updates. Ah well.

[neilt0]

Cheers Neil. Was that a Stream Writer job or something else? And how was the stream today?

I left my PC recording the stream with Stream Writer while also recording Sky at the same time this morning! And it looks like I won't need either!

Streamwriter, no dropouts!

[bmstinton93]

Neil, can you copy and paste in links for each day please?