BBC R3 Lossless Stream

[simoncn]

Thanks for sharing this. Have you tried to transcode the live FLAC stream using flac:wav or flac:L16? This might allow you to stream directly to the StreamMagic player.

[JohnT]

(22-08-2017 14:50)simoncn Wrote:  Thanks for sharing this. Have you tried to transcode the live FLAC stream using flac:wav or flac:L16? This might allow you to stream directly to the StreamMagic player.

Hi Simon. Yes I have tried transcoding but to no avail. There are several posts during the last few years from forum members with Cambridge players (NP30, SM6 SM6v2, CNX, Azure 851N) all of which don't work with streams - you diagnosed the problem being that the player is sending byte-range requests as when playing from a file in a music library. Sadly, Cambridge don't seem to have any plans to update their firmware which is a great shame as sonically, the players are excellent pieces of kit.

Regards,
John.

[trevorausten]

I run Minimserver/Minimstreamer on a Melco N1Z connected to a Exogal Comet DAC. Bubble UPnP is the CP. (Recently changed from DS to allow 96/24 and 192/24 streaming from Qobuz)
I normally listen to R3 using Minimserver and the URL as a playlist.
I have added to the playlist per Post 82 and am able to play the DASH and Binaural streams but not the FLAC.
The "Now Playing" screen shows tech data "FLAC|48.0kHz|16 bits" and indicates playing, not stopped but the time counter remains at 0.00. There is no timeout.
I have tried with and without transcoding to WAV and have changed the PrecisionStart Latency on the Melco but to no effect.
I attach the debug log.
Could you please point me in the right direction?

[simoncn]

The log shows that you are trying to play a FLAC stream without transcoding. When you do this, the FLAC header has the sample count set to zero, which means "unspecified" (as one would expect for a live stream of unknown length). Unfortunately, most renderers (including the N1Z USB-DAC renderer) interpret this as a stream length of zero samples.

The fix for this is to transcode the network stream to WAV. On the N1Z, this requires installing a suitable FFmpeg static binary in the share/MinimServer/opt/bin folder (see the second paragraph from the end of this section). Have you done this? If not, you won't be able to do WAV transcoding of network streams (only FLAC files in your library).

As a workaround, you could run MinimServer/MinimStreamer on another computer or NAS that has FFmpeg preinstalled. Do you have a Synology or QNAP NAS that you could use for this?

[trevorausten]

Thank you for this Simon.
I run MinimServer/MinimStreamer on my desktop with FFmpeg installed and was able to stream the FLAC by selecting the desktop as library with melco/exogal as renderer.
I do not have any experience with Linux and the interchange between you and Bubblegum is above my head so it looks like this will have to do for now.
The sound is superior to the AAC R3 stream as was the stream from my PC to my Audiiocom modified Oppo 205 using the Taster Radio 3 concert sound webpage but the melco/exogal is a touch more refined.
I hope everyone in the forum who has liked the new service has posted comments on the R3 websites. Positive feedback will encourage the BBC to make this permanent.
If the melco cannot stream FLAC, why does the Qobuz stream show as FLAC?

[simoncn]

If you are streaming a song from Qobuz, it is a recording with known length and the FLAC header would contain the exact number of samples, just like playing a local FLAC file.

[Cebolla]

Sad to see that the BBC R3 lossless (MPEG-DASH FLAC) stream trial is ending today (according to the BBC Taster page), presumably with the Last Night of the Proms broadcast. Hopefully they'll make the stream a more permanent feature soon.

Many thanks to Simon for providing us with the MinimStreamer prototype to allow us to successfully play both the experimental BBC R3 MPEG-DASH FLAC stream and the standard BBC MPEG-DASH AAC streams (all available BBC radio stations)!

[Cebolla]

Hope I'm not tempting fate, but the lossless stream is still up!

[DavidHB]

(10-09-2017 11:17)Cebolla Wrote:  Hope I'm not tempting fate, but the lossless stream is still up!

The FLAC stream was still playing last night, but was not playing a few moments ago. The DASH stream was still playing, however.

David

[NickSW]

I know the FLAC stream has finished, with the end of the Proms. In view of post 99 from DavidHB, perhaps someone can suggest what causes my BBC Radio playlist, to play all stations as far as and including Asian service, but not WS or the three additional BBC3 streams.

During, the last two weeks of the proms I tried each of the BBC3 streams being DASH/FLAC/binaural and never once got a stream. Apologies that I haven’t been able to post sooner.

Neither WS or DASH (or of course FLAC/binaural) plays today - all other BBC streams do, per the attached BBC Radio-all.m3u - which is attached as a text file.

My set up is QNAP439 and Naim NDX renderer, Minim Server (0.8.4.5 u/d 104), Minim Server 0.6.4

stream.converter set as ‘/share/Public/ffmpeg’ and file updated
stream.transcode set as ‘*:L16, flac:wav24;176’

copy of error log from last Friday also attached, which shows Bad Request / Not Found

Any help would be much appreciated and thanks in advance.