Radio Paradise Update

[left channel]

48 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

NB: looks like our very own @left channel has already been playing with it!

 

Yes I have! It sound great, but still suffers from stuttering and dropouts from time-to-time. My posts about this have moved to the main bug reports thread on the RP forum. Some of us are seeing the same problem on all FLAC options since that url went up, including the RP website and the LMS plugin. The 320k and lower streams are fine.

Meanwhile in other RP news, only the Main and Mellow channels are available at this time. Bob recently posted this on the RP forum:

We just don't have the time available to properly program the Rock & Groovy channels and bring them up to RP standards. Rather than continue to offer something that is — in our opinion — too repetitive and lacking in creativity, we have decided to pull those two channels, at least temporarily.

[left channel]

 

13 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Does anyone here know if there is a way to play a RadioParadise stream with HQ Player (>NAA on NUC)?  HQ Player of course can handle FLAC, but I do not know if/how it can be made to playback a realtime stream.  I would LOVE that as it would enable me to play my favorite station on my main system instead of just on my desktop system.

 

TIA,

--Alex C.

 

Maybe via foobar2000 to HQ Player? 

 

[left channel]

7 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

@#Yoda#

 

Can I ask how you managed to get Radio Paradise playing in ROON?

 

There's a normal Internet radio url for the "Main Mix" FLAC stream now: http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac Still sort of in beta, but it's working quite well at this point.

[left channel]

Bill has released a new test FLAC url. (This is the link for direct internet radio access, not for the apps in LMS and BluOS.)

From the RP forum:

Bill G wrote:

Here's the new test URL. We've identified 2 issues. This URL should successfully address one of those. The other will be addressed tomorrow.

If you've posted the test URL anywhere, please update your post to the new URL. The old one will be discontinued shortly.

http://icy-8.radioparadise.com/flac

This is still subject to periodic outages — some brief (for software updates), some longer (due to failures caused by the second issue I mentioned above)

 

[left channel]

38 minutes ago, Hollypoint said:

Have been a supporting listener of RP for a while, but it took this thread to discover the mellow channel (habitually toggling sync without looking).  So, very happy until the last couple of days.  I was listening over a sustained period and seemed to hit the repeat point.  Happened once each day.  Never noticed that on main channel. 

 

Anyone else?

 

wayne

 

You reached the end of the playlist and heard it start over? Yes, I believe that's quite likely. The Mellow playlist seems shorter and less frequently updated than the one on the Main channel. More than once I've heard the same Mellow playlist and also the same tracks on new Mellow playlists.

Bill says the difficulty in creatively maintaining playlists for all the channels is why they dropped the Groovy and Rock mixes (temporarily or permanently, that's not clear), so I'm just happy the Mellow mix continues to exist at all.

[left channel]

22 minutes ago, Superdad said:

HQP does not pick up stream metadata--or the RadioParadise FLAC stream does not contain any.  Also the RP FLAC stream does not seem to be working today.  But I am listening to the Rondo Classic station as I type this.

 

 

The FLAC stream does not contain any meta data, and it may not be possible to do so. The 320 and 128 kbps streams do contain meta data, and are not in beta so more dependble at this time.

 

(The LMS and BluOS FLAC apps do include meta data, but lately even they are not as stable as the lower-res direct streams.)

[left channel]

Just saw this posted on the RP forum. I believe these are the final internet radio FLAC urls!

"We've sorted out the issues on our FLAC stream encoder, and these URLs should work fine now — bandwidth permitting, of course."
Main Mix:  http://stream.radioparadise.com/flac
Mellow Mix: http://stream.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac

 

They'll also provide "an API endpoint you can use to grab the current now playing metadata + the time until the next song starts", but apparently that is not yet available. Original thread: https://radioparadise.com/community/forum/topic/24857/3846994

[left channel]

2 hours ago, daverich4 said:

 

Roon says it can’t find a station at the Mellow Mix URL. 

 

It's working fine for me now. I don't have Roon, but perhaps that was just a temporary glitch at the source?

[left channel]

For those working on custom apps, the api to add metadata to these streams has been posted on the RP forum:

> BillG wrote:
>
> That's now available here: https://api.radioparadise.com/api/now_playing
>
> For alt mixes (currently 'mellow', others in the future) add ?chan=1
>
> The 'time' value is the time in seconds until the current song ends, to be used to calculate the refresh time.

[left channel]

17 minutes ago, daverich4 said:

 

I was trying to copy your link because when I clicked on it directly it would stop/hang about a quarter of the way in. However, before it stopped it very briefly flashed a different URL and that one did work. 

 

http://icy-6.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac

 

 

Interesting. I just clicked on the link a couple times. The first time it redirected to "icy-8", and the second time to "icy-6". So the "stream" subdomain probably just redirects to different servers as needed for load balancing. No guarantee icy-6 will continue to work, but if it stops then you know where to check. I'm concerned now that Roon doesn't allow that redirect though. Any other Roon owners seeing this?

[left channel]

On 6/2/2019 at 6:58 AM, Cebolla said:

Odd that a separate mechanism is required to obtain the metadata to identify the current track being played, given that the OGG FLAC streams should themselves be able to carry the appropriate metadata - presumably one of the reasons for Icecast servers having to use the OGG container for FLAC streams, instead of just pure FLAC.

 

Here's an example of a similar OGG FLAC internet radio stream (tested using  foobar2000, VLC & MusicBee players on Windows) that does contain the appropriate metadata and therefore no need for an API:

 

AI-Radio

http://ai-radio.org/44.flac

 

Interesting. I asked Bill why he's using an Ogg container, and he responded that it's necessary to relay via Icecast. I haven't bugged him about this further, as APIs seem to be the way he does the infrastructure for all his applications, and at this point Michael has it working in LMS. Michael has asked us to test via LMS Favorites for now, but I expect he'll add both streams to the plugin soon because it's working great!

[left channel]

1 hour ago, lasker98 said:

I've been streaming via LMS Favorites using this link http://stream.radioparadise.com/flac  since it was originally posted, which is the main mix and it's been working ok. The first couple days it would randomly stop, maybe once every couple hours, but would start again when I clicked play button again. I haven't noticed it stopping for the last couple days. No metadata at all unfortunately.

Flac streaming is a nice improvement soundwise over the 320 ogg stream I had been using previously, but the ogg stream always played back flawlessly with full metadata and cover artwork. With the new flac stream, I just use Radio Parasdise app if I need to know what's playing. This is all through Squeezelite/LMS with iPeng for remote control.

 

Try exiting Squeezelite and iPeng, waiting a bit, then retrying. Perhaps also restart LMS. Then the new metadata API should be synced up. This is working well for me via Favorites, and I expect Michael will add it to the plugin soon.

 

Edit: also update the RP plugin. I think Michael delivered the change in there, even though these two things aren't obviously related, and I just noticed you may not have done that.

[left channel]

On 6/1/2019 at 1:43 PM, daverich4 said:

 

I was trying to copy your link because when I clicked on it directly it would stop/hang about a quarter of the way in. However, before it stopped it very briefly flashed a different URL and that one did work. 

 

http://icy-6.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac

 

 

Bill just confirmed on the RP forum that if the "stream" subdomain isn't properly redirecting you for some reason, we can substitute one of these direct links: "icy-4 and icy-5 will directly call our servers in London, icy-6 or icy-8 in Texas, icy-7 in Virginia". So for example, http://icy-4.radioparadise.com/mellow-flac for the Mellow Mix via a London server. 

[left channel]

The RP Android app now includes the Main, Mellow, Rock, and Eclectic mix "channels". I've just received the update via Google Play.