Streaming Web Radio???

[57gold]

Understand that there are internet web radio channels...once heard a inaurgual speech on NPR live, but that was an easy couple of clicks. NPR click; Speech icon click and it started playing...on some kind of preinstalled player that popped up.

 

Now that I have a dedicated Mini, a WaveLink to hook up to my DAC ...how do I get great sound from web radio? Do I need a specialized player, are there hirez channels that play jazz, indie rock, blues...?

 

Had free sample of sattelite radio in my new car for a few months and enjoyed it from the first minute I sat in my car (hard not to like when "Bell Bottom Blues", then "Little Wing", then "Cry me River" come on as I drove home!) XM propaganda said they had deal on satellite for car, internet for home...but I couldn't understand the marketing mumbo jumbo...no clue if the internet sound would be good, hirez or what?

 

Thanks for sharing your research.

 

[sjsanford]

I got a dedicated Mac Mini over Christmas (auditioning currently through a V-DAC and PS Audio DL III, but that's a separate story!) and besides ripping CDs, I have had excellent success with Internet Radio, all using iTunes. Here are the 2 approaches I've used:

 

1) Using the "Radio" library in iTunes. "As-is", I found the Radio library to be a nightmare, and I couldn't access it with the Remote app I run on my iPhone. However, I found 2 tricks to help. First, you can find high-quality sources by adding the "Bit Rate" column to the column display, and then sorting to get the good stuff at the top. Try 89.9 WWNO 3, New Orleans Jazz, which I have found to be quite good in terms of music and sound quality. Second, create playlists and drag the stations you like into the playlists. That way you don't have to drill down to find the stuff you like - the Radio library links are very slow - and then you can categorize it using the playlists, etc. And most important, you can access the Radio library content in playlists on the Remote app.

 

2) Find streams from high-quality or favorite radio stations (poke around their web sites), and then open those streams in iTunes. (not all stations make streams available, but lots do.) I've had very good success with this. Many public radio stations offer streams in this manner. For example, AVRO Light Classical (out of the Netherlands) streams at 320kbps. Find the streaming URL, copy it, then go to iTunes and hit "Command-U" to open up an audio stream, and paste the URL. That's it. You can add meta data, add to playlists, just like any other music file.

 

I haven't found too many 320kbps stations, but the 128kbps stations sound great to me. I even listen to a local station at 32kbps (yes, 32 with no 0!) and it's comparable to over the air, without the static!

 

I used the above approaches because I didn't want to bother switching to other applications or buy separate hardware. Many other software and hardware solutions exist for internet radio, and others can probably weigh in those. I decided not to take that approach so I could keep everything simple in one interface through iTunes.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Cheers,

Steve