Audiophile Style Podcast: Episode 16 | Radio Paradise Interview

Nifty.  My non-audiophile friend turned me on to RP a couple years ago and several of our buddies all listen frequently and even comment on the playlists on certain days.  I open a browser window for the playlist tracking and the wikipedia info and have been exposed to more great music than any other source including Pandora and Roon radio. Bill has just flat out great taste and we love that he plays b-sides and lesser known deep cuts.  A great resource for music lovers and good on ya for featuring him and exposing more people to what he does.  I'd like to add that the first cd-quality stream in the country was out of KEXP in Seattle and in the early 2000's I put together a USB dac so I could pipe it into my system.  It was a sad day when the legacy A/D broadcast unit they used gave up and the moved to lossy codecs.  So, Bill wasn't the first to do this, but he's still at it which is everything.

Talk about closing a polygon, in this case a triangle. I live in Hollister, California, about 12 miles from Gilroy, CA, home of the famous KFAT mentioned by Bill here. I also grew up on a farm (mostly canning tomatoes) and farmed myself until I moved on to 30+ years at a scientific software company. We were Goldsmith Seed customers, and I may have met Bill in the late 70's through a connection there. Move back to the to pieces that Gilbert Klein wrote for you. I enjoyed them thouroughly. Also bought his book and enjoyed that too. His tales were even more outrageous than what he heard on KFAT and that was unparalleled before or since.

I am now eagerly awaiting the next obscure, distant part of my life that you unknowingly reveal on AS.

Thanks,  Skip 

This and the Schiitty episode are my favs thus far.

1 hour ago, grinner said:

Radio Paradise is a fantastic "station". I've been listening for several years now and my musical horizons have broadened considerably in that time. It always astonishes me how many great bands are out there that I would not have even heard of without Radio Paradise. I love what Bill and Rebecca are doing. 

 

I hear more new music on RP in an hour than I would in a month of algorithm driven playlists on Pandora, Roon etc. 

 

p.s.   If you like what you hear, become a member. 

Yes!

Thanks @The Computer Audiophilei enjoyed this podcast. I am not much of a radio listener never was but at work I do. Usually it’s some Dutch classic rock station. Recently, a few months ago, a college of mine pointed me towards Radio Paradise and I really liked it. Like @grinner said discovering new music is a big plus. Really liked to learn a bit about the history of Radio Paradise so keep up the good work Radio Paradise  👍.

Thanks, I enjoyed it too. Bill is a good dude.

Great podcast. It's always fun to get the backstory to something like RP. 

When I listen, I'm always amazed at how many new artists I get introduced to, and even more amazing, many new favorites are artists from back in my young days that I just hadn't come across. 

Downloaded the Apple TV app, on our Sony 85” TV and Sound Lab surround system sounds great.  Thanks Chris.

Big fan and longtime supporter of Radio Paradise. Hard to imagine how I lived without them before, lol.

Subscribers have just received an email from Bill and Rebecca celebrating RP's "21st birthday". That message notes that BlueOS devices can now receive RP in MQA. The RP forum has erupted accordingly, lol.

I'll just keep listening to their CD-quality FLAC streams on my Schiit and NuPrime gear. The free RP app for LMS/Squeezebox works great!

Is it going well with them? Seemed there were more RP donations ads this week.

We are implementing native support for Radio Paradise FLAC in Lumin.  Is the FLAC streaming robust enough that people don't need to fallback to AAC?

Just now, wklie said:

We are implementing native support for Radio Paradise FLAC in Lumin.  Is the FLAC streaming robust enough that people don't need to fallback to AAC?

100% robust.

Then I need not worry about providing a UI setting to let people downgrade the quality.

By the way, about the next track / song skipping functionality, is that unique to Radio Paradise?  Or many radio provides that?  I assume it's not something generally available from others, e.g. BBC?

Does anyone know if there is there some sort of standard API to do the skip across different radio providers?

11 minutes ago, wklie said:

Then I need not worry about providing a UI setting to let people downgrade the quality.

 

By the way, about the next track / song skipping functionality, is that unique to Radio Paradise?  Or many radio provides that?  I assume it's not something generally available from others, e.g. BBC?

 

Does anyone know if there is there some sort of standard API to do the skip across different radio providers?

It’s unique to those who use a playlist for serving internet radio. 

I've been an RP listener for so long I can't remember when I started!

I have a little app that records it to my computer and enables me to have it in the car. It is always on.

Total of 50,000 listeners only , sign up, send some money, enjoy radio again.

Radio Paradise forever.

I put the app on my iPhone and just stream it in the car. 

11 hours ago, wklie said:

Then I need not worry about providing a UI setting to let people downgrade the quality.

 

By the way, about the next track / song skipping functionality, is that unique to Radio Paradise?  Or many radio provides that?  I assume it's not something generally available from others, e.g. BBC?

 

Does anyone know if there is there some sort of standard API to do the skip across different radio providers?

The song-skipping feature was custom-coded by Bill at Radio Paradise, and is a rare thing among internet radio stations. Soma FM for example, for all their many channels, do not offer this. I don't know about the BBC because some of their apps aren't available overseas, but I think their rewind and replay features are something entirely different and depend on maintaining a buffer in the app which is more common. At the heart of the Radio Paradise features I think you're asking about is the downloading of ~20 minute blocks of tracks which as far as I know is really unusual.

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I put the app on my iPhone and just stream it in the car. 

In FLAC?  I hope you've got an unlimited data cellular plan. 

On 9/14/2021 at 10:47 AM, wklie said:

This is Lumin Firmware 14.2 with built-in support for Radio Paradise FLAC.

Lumin Firmware 15.2 adds metadata for all four Radio Paradise FLAC stations, along with many other FLAC radio stations as well.

Radio Paradise FLAC - New logos shown in Lumin app

3 minutes ago, wklie said:

Radio Paradise FLAC - New logos shown in Lumin app

 

Nice! Looking good!