BBC Radio in iPlayer - sounds even better, with more to come

Loving the work you guys are doing to improve the reliability, and audio quality, hopefully all the hard work will pay off shortly.

With regards to streaming live radio, its always going to be a few seconds out of live, due to processing, will there ever be a change in transmission, as DAB, internet, and other formats grow over FM?

ie will the studios be expected to be a few seconds behind live, so that when the 'beeps' are played on the hour, they are accurate?

The delay in internet streaming is dependent on many things, and indeed if you listen with a friend in the same room over the internet, your machines will be out of sync.

The question of whether Broadcasting House is in "a time bubble" a few seconds ahead of time, to even out broadcast delays on different platforms, was investigated quite some while ago, but was rejected because of the complications it introduced.

My understanding around the "pips" are that they're accurate within the second on all broadcast platforms.

Don't be silly. No one's a fan of Peter Levy.

Careful - that is essentially treason.

@James Cridland,

"I've read that the BBC wants to limit the audio quality of radio online, in favour of DAB. True? No. 100% false. We want to make sure that every single platform sounds as good as possible."


Well, you *have* been saying all year that you wanted to provide the live radio streams at lower quality than the on-demand radio streams, which is hardly consistent with your claim that you want the live streams to "sound as good as possible". And IMO the BBC has been very biased towards DAB for years, so I don't think it's unreasonable to connect the two things together.

And in case you're going to dispute that the BBC is biased towards DAB, I'd be very intersted to hear an explanation for the following:

* The BBC is supposed to be platform-neutral, yet the BBC is currently broadcasting its 21st TV advertising campaign for DAB, whereas the BBC has broadcast ZERO TV ad campaigns for Internet radio. How on earth is that being platform-neutral?

* The ex-BBC controller in charge of digital radio, Simon Nelson, admitted on Radio 4 Feedback around three or four years ago that "of course the BBC would prefer it if everybody listened to digital radio via DAB".

* Despite the BBC having 231,000 kbps of capacity on satellite, Simon Nelson refused to increase the bit rates of the BBC radio stations on satellite in order to provide higher quality. This would only require the re-allocation of about 0.1% of the total bandwidth. Simon Nelson refused similar requests to increase the bit rates on Freeview and cable. So the BBC has form for limiting the quality on platforms other than DAB, so you can't blame me for thinking that you wanting to provide the live Internet streams at lower quality than the on-demand streams was simply a repeat of what's gone on before.

* The audio quality of the BBC's Internet radio streams was absolutely diabolical until they were improved last year (I'm not blaming you for this, because you only joined the BBC last year). The live Internet streams for Radios 1, 2 and 4 were using a bit rate of just 32 kbps last year - this was in the same year that the iPlayer TV streams were launched, which started off using a bit rate of 500 kbps (the higher quality streams are now using 800 kbps), and the same year that around 60 of the bigger UK commercial stations started using 128 kbps Internet streams.

The BBC radio streams were - and still are - using the dire Real G2 audio codec, yet the BBC has had the opportunity to use AAC+ (which is the ideal codec to use for very low bit rate streams) on Real Player since January 2004 - at no extra cost to the BBC, I might add. And as you've mentioned in this blog, the Internet streams have been recompressed, aka 'transcoded', for the last six years or so, which is terrible audio engineering, because it seriously degrades the audio quality - all to save a few thousand pounds per year on a dedicated data link to Maidenhead, whilst the BBC is lavishing £9 million per year transmitting DAB. Also, the on-demand radio streams didn't even need to be recompressed anyway, because the BBC could have sent the audio to Maidenhead via the Internet - there are no real-time constraints for on-demand files.

The BBC's Internet streams could therefore have sounded *far* better than they actually did do for the last four (now almost five) years! So it's hardly unreasonable to be suspicious about your motives regarding limiting the quality of the live streams today.

* The BBC paid a design consultancy to design and produce a DAB+IP radio prototype last year, but the BBC told the design consultancy that the radio must only be able to receive DAB broadcasts - even though the radio would have Internet connectivity, so it would be able to receive Internet radio streams.

* Mark Friend, the current controller in charge of digital radio, told me earlier this year that he would prefer such DAB+IP radios not to be able to receive live Internet streams - although he said he didn't have a problem with such radios being able to receive the on-demand radio streams.

* Mark Friend is the chairman of the Technology sub-group within the Digital Radio Working Group (which is currently planning the future of digital radio). The work that the Technology sub-group has published up to now is, IMO, highly biased towards DAB whilst totally dismissing the possibility of using other digital platforms for live radio.

The group has therefore totally ignored technologies such as multicast and superfast broadband for fixed-line Internet, 4G and 5G mobile broadband, and eMBMS (evolved-MBMS - the 4G version of MBMS, the broadcast standard for 3G). It is absolutely incredible that any group that claims to understand digital radio technologies could - in 2008 - exclude the Internet as being a main platform for live radio over the next decade.

Furthermore, some commercial stations are opposed to transmitting on DAB due to the very high transmission costs, and they want to use the Internet instead - for which the costs will be effectively zero once multicast is widely supported by ISPs. If the BBC goes ahead and recommends to government that only DAB should be promoted for live radio, the BBC would be responsible for putting numerous commercial radio stations out of business. This is what we do.

* The BBC helps to pay for the inappropriately-named Digital Radio Development Bureau, whose remit is to ONLY promote DAB - more BBC platform-neutrality. Mark Friend sits on the board of the DRDB, and Tim Davie has presumably replaced Jenny Abramsky as its vice chairman. The DRDB has been responsible in the past for such gems as informing the public in adverts on commercial radio that FM portable radios are worth less than a half-eaten, out-of-date jar of pickles. The DRDB website also currently claims that DAB provides "digital quality sound", thus clearly trying to suggest that DAB provides CD quality sound, just without actually breaking any of the ASA's rules - but that is 100% disingenuous for anybody that knows the truth about DAB's dire sound quality. This is what we do.

* And your justification, James, for providing the live Internet streams at lower quality than the on-demand streams has been that you claimed that using higher bit rates would lead to reliability problems for people listening on "congested office networks". That's in spite of the fact that you had no problems with the on-demand streams using the very same bit rate levels you were saying would be unreliable for the live streams.

Then, in the same blog as when you said that automatic bandwidth detection was going to be implemented for the Flash streams, you reiterated that you were looking to provide the live streams at lower quality than the on-demand streams - even though automatic bandwidth detection, which we now know is actually going to be full-on 'dynamic streaming' *solves* the reliability issue that you've said was concerning you. You *cannot* blame us for questioning why you still wanted to provide the live streams at lower quality once the reliability issue had been solved.

Anyway, on this last issue there is *absolutely nothing* stopping you from using 128 kbps AAC for the live Flash streams now, so hopefully you'll do the decent thing in January. I've also suggested that you should use Microsoft Intelligent Streaming for the WMA streams - which is basically identical to dynamic streaming on Flash - so that Wi-Fi devices can receive 128 kbps streams as well.

@James Cridland

Since you’re reluctant to talk about codecs and bit rates, I’ll try and keep that side of my comments to the issue of sound quality. After all it is the sound quality that is important, and I think you me and others already know which codec and bit rate would provide good sound quality.

It is true that the new web streams are a big improvement. However I think it is misleading to compare the new streams with the old. The old streams sounded dreadful, so of course the new streams are a big improvement. Even a landline phone call would have been an improvement on the old streams. I would rather talk about the current quality of the streams, and what might happen in future.

The current streams sound dull, and lack clarity. Perhaps they are OK for a small kitchen type radio, but on a hi-fi system they just don’t sound good enough. They are still low quality streams, and describing them as stunning doesn’t change this. There are a number of streams from commercial stations that sound a lot better than the BBC streams. Without mentioning the B word, I think we all know the reason for this. Shouldn’t the BBC be providing better sound quality then the commercial broadcasters?

You keep on saying that quality is not being deliberately reduced to help DAB. However actions speak louder than words. Yes rebuffering would be a problem for some people, but there are ways around this problem. You give the flimsiest of reasons for not wanting to implement any of these solutions. So it’s hardly surprising that people doubt your word on this. So far it looks like one excuse after another to avoid providing good sound quality. If this situation continues once bandwidth detection is in use, then you would effectively have proved people right. I hope that you do eventually prove them wrong.

Finally a few questions about what and when.

How long is it likely to take before bandwidth detection is implemented?

How long is it likely to be before the new vanilla streams (as you call them) are available? For people who don’t want to listen on their computer.

Will there be high quality versions of these streams? I would think that people who know how to use these streams would also know about rebuffering, and when to use a lower bit rate stream.

Can you explain why all BBC streams delivered via Internet Radio are only about a quarter of the volume of all other online streams?. It plays absolute havoc with a radio that uses a BBC station on the sleep timer and another station on the alarm or vice versa>

I have a signed photo of Peter Levy.

@hacker100

I actually find there is a lot of difference in volume levels between different commercial stations. Not just between the commercial stations and the BBC. Almost all stations process their audio before encoding, to control the sound levels. Some stations use a lot of processing, in order to keep their levels as high as possible, all the time. Others use less processing, and hence have to use lower levels on average, to prevent the occasional loud bits from being distorted.

The BBC apparently use less processing on their streams than many commercial broadcasters, hence their broadcasts tend to sound quieter over all. I think this is actually a step in the right direction, as I hate over processed music. In fact I even find many of the BBC streams sound over processed to me.

I don’t think there is an easy way around this at the moment. I think manufacturers ought to build into their receivers a way to deal with this problem. One way would be to be able to set a volume adjustment level for each station, when it is saved as a pre-set. Another way would be to put dynamic compression into digital receivers, so that listeners could have the option of making everything come out at the same volume. Although I wouldn’t use something like that very much, as I don’t like dynamic compression on music. (This probably shouldn’t be used for analogue reception, as it may cause noise modulation problems).

Glad to hear it's all coming together nicely.

I'm interested to hear new audio streams are coming for internet radios - there have been quite a few problems recently with existing Internet radios not being able to pick up the existing Real streams properly in the last few weeks (presumably since Copoya was let loose) - any plans to make sure the manufacturers actually test their shiny new products this time before the entire country buys kit that turns out not to work reliably?

Just to clarify this is no criticism of the Beeb, but rightly or wrongly you'll probably end up getting the blame if Joe Public gets a new wifi radio and finds it doesn't work reliably!

PS - whilst you're at it now you've got Copoya out of the way can you fix all the missing views on the /programmes XML feeds!

Andrew

@hacker100's point is adequately explained by @RichardEvans67 - we use less audio processing on our streams, so you may find that we sound subjectively quieter as a result. The high dynamic range of Radio 3, incidentally, is one of the reasons why that station gets higher bitrates than the others.

@adancy brings a sensible point. Until recently, we didn't support wifi radios at all. That situation changed earlier this year, and we look forward to working together with receiver manufacturers.

@digitalradiotech is clearly in need of some charity work or something else to fill his time; repeating false allegations is doubtless a good use of his time, but I don't plan to repeat my replies.

Are there any plans to stream through the iPlayer on ipod? I cant get DAB in work and would like to stream though my iPod on the workplace wireless.

@DWDuck We'd love to do that. Live streaming is available in a number of mobile handsets, but not yet the iPhone.

@James Cridland,

"The high dynamic range of Radio 3, incidentally, is one of the reasons why that station gets higher bitrates than the others."

That's a common misconception that Radio 3 listeners frequently use to justify why Radio 3 should use higher bit rates than other stations - although I support the use of higher bit rates for Radio 3, simply because I support the use of higher bit rates wherever possible.

The reality is that dynamic range is irrelevant when you're talking about compressed audio - the dynamic range argument only applies to uncompressed audio, because the dynamic range that can be covered increases by 6 dB with every additional bit used per sample.

Audio codecs use 'block floating point' number schemes to represent audio samples, though, where a group of samples share a common exponent (so that fewer bits are used), which typically represents the approx amplitude of the group of samples, then the accuracy is provided by each sample using its own mantissa value.

On the subject of my charity work, I already donate a lot of consultancy time free of charge correcting the errors that BBC digital radio staff make on engineering matters - see above for an example - so I'm afraid I'm rushed off my feet as it is.

Forgot to mention (the important bit) that because audio codecs use floating point number schemes, and, like with programming languages, floating point numbers cover a very wide range of numbers, the dynamic range catered for by audio codecs is far higher than the 96dB dynamic range of 16-bit linear PCM as used on CDs. So the dynamic range of R3 is irrelevant.

I'm currently using this 128k R3 stream

mms://wmlive-acl.bbc.co.uk/wms/bbc_ami/radio3/radio3_bb_live_ep1_sl0

on my Squeezebox. I notice that the stream supplied via Alien is at 64k.

Is this a test stream & are there other 128k R3 streams available?

Will all R3 streams eventually be at 128k?
Will there always be several streams of different types/bitrates and where do I go to get the urls for them?

The URL you are using is the first item in the Radio 3 asx format playlist:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx

You can enter this in either your SqueezeCenter Favourites or your SqueezeNetwork Favourites.

If you put it in your SqueezeNetwork favourites you don't even need your SqueezeCenter server on as the Squeezebox can natively decode these playlists.

If the BBC change the bit rate within the playlist items these will also change dynamically and you won't have to update.

Most other BBC Radio playlists in this format usually lead to the appropriate BBC Radio channel in 96kBit/s (Radio 1, 1Xtra, 2, 4, 6, 7 and Asian Network)

Radio 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra are at 64kBps.

The playlists can be found by tuning into the channel on your PC (if your running Windows) and right click on the Now Playing bar on Windows Media Player bar where you will see the playlist for that channel in the properties box.

Finally if you are in UK you should use the iPlayer plugin - not Alien BBC as this is intended for non-UK users.

If you need any further help IM me on the SlimDevices forum where I have the same user name.

@ian_heys

Thanks - very useful.

I do not have a degree in nuclear physics or internet technology so I find a lot of the stuff on technical advice impossible to understand.

All I want to know is how to improve the volume on Iplayer!!

It goes ip to no.11 which is just audible. How can I improve it please?

Thanks
Tony Hicks

Peter Levy - I'm sure he's very good but so is James Phillips who provides the Barrow commentaries on BBC Radio Cumbria.

Thing is these are invariably on AM in-county and obviously not available when at an away game. I akso like to keep up with local news when working away. However I have been able to access the online feed on iPlayer via 3G on the 3 network on my Nokia N95 8Gb ....until recently!!!

I now get a message "To play please first install Real Player" - but Real Player is already installed (and the link in any case takes me to computer versions of the Real Player download which I guess may not be appropriate)

Has something changed as part of recent improvements at the BBC end of things which causes this problem or have I inadvertently altered someting at this end.

@Tonyh2,

Have you made sure that the volume level in Windows (assuming you're using Windows) is set to maximum?

Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > double click Sounds & Audio Devices > Volume tab

Yes, thanks I'ved checked all volume tabs on the control panel are up full so I'm at a loss to know how to improve things

Tony

I also find the BBC IPlayer TV streams sound quiet on my lap top. If however I open up my volume controlls, there are several sliders. If I turn them all full up, then it sounds just about loud enough.

Richard.

I've been thinking about the day (coiming soon we hope) when AAC+ streams become available in the iPlayer and the vanilla URL's are published.

I currently listen to these streams either on my PC or through my hifi/squeezebox using the PC as a transcoder to WAV format to get the best possible output.

I cannot seem to find any streaming radio or hifi device that will decode AAC+ natively - although some can decode the AAC part without the (+) enchancements.

Is anyone aware of any streaming radio or hifi component with full native AAC+ decoding? (So that the PC does not need to be on).

One or two postings on the Squeezebox forums, on the subject, have been met with little more than apathy.

Hi, I am newbie to this and have been tinkering over the festive period. I was wondering do you know why some RealAudio files contain audio distortion
on playback? Echo, overplay...

I managed to download a RealAudio RAM file from rmv8.bbc.net.uk:554/bbc7coyopa/ to my PC.

I noticed blocks of distortion periodically during playback. I wondered what caused this and if it could be corrected?

Many Thanks.

Aha this site is a real find.

I love streaming Radio especially Listen again. The good news is that with the new iPlayer the quality is good (OK not 128kbs ;-) ) but stable at about 64kbps.

The bad news is listen live is a nightmare, it starts off at 64kpbs but quickly drops to between 20 and 11kbps.

Why!!! listen again works perfectly why is live a problem for me?