NP30 plays AAC from BBC but not from Minimstreamer unless transcoded to MP3

[FakePlasticDunk]

Riddle me this: my Cambridge Audio NP30 happily plays the old and soon to be switched off BBC Radio 3 AAC stream as AAC 320kbps. But now I have set up Minimserver and Minimstreamer to locally stream the newer BBC HLS streams as AAC, the NP30 will only play them if I transcode AAC:MP3;320k. What's going on?

[simoncn]

Please post your complete exact .m3u playlist entries for both streams.

[FakePlasticDunk]

Hi Simon, thanks for getting back to me.

I don't have an .m3u for the existing but soon-to-be-defunct BBC stream - that's coming from whichever internet radio service provider Cambridge Audio have set up for the NP30. I've lost track of who that is.

I think the HLS stream entry is the sample one provided on the MinimRadio site, but just in case, this is the one I'm using:

#EXTINF:-1,[+R3;aac,48000] BBC Radio 3
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/bbc_radio_three.m3u8

Cheers,
Duncan

[Peter StreamMagic]

(01-03-2023 17:31)FakePlasticDunk Wrote:  Hi Simon, thanks for getting back to me.

I don't have an .m3u for the existing but soon-to-be-defunct BBC stream - that's coming from whichever internet radio service provider Cambridge Audio have set up for the NP30. I've lost track of who that is.

I think the HLS stream entry is the sample one provided on the MinimRadio site, but just in case, this is the one I'm using:

#EXTINF:-1,[+R3;aac,48000] BBC Radio 3
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/man...three.m3u8

Cheers,
Duncan

There have been former discussions about CA players not playing radio streams. I would be surprised if the NP30 is able to play the BBC streams.
See this thread

[FakePlasticDunk]

(01-03-2023 17:43)Peter StreamMagic Wrote:  There have been former discussions about CA players not playing radio streams. I would be surprised if the NP30 is able to play the BBC streams.

It can, and does, I got it working this weekend, but for some reason I have to transcode the HLS sourced aac to mp3, whereas it plays the old aac stream as aac quite happily. This is what is puzzling me.

I think the former discussions centred around trying to get CA players to play radio streams via the UPnP music library, whereas with the NP30 at least, this has to be done via its internet radio preset function.

[simoncn]

I think the following is the probably the URL for the legacy 320k AAC BBC Radio 3 stream:

http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_three_hd

This stream is different in some respects from the 320k AAC stream that MinimStreamer decodes from the HLS stream. It uses HTTP chunked encoding and has some ICY headers. My guess is that one of these differences is a factor in making the stream playable on the NP30 but I can't be sure about this. It is also possible that the NP30 treats this specific URL specially.

[FakePlasticDunk]

OK thanks Simon, I'll have a fiddle around with that and see what I can see, if anything. Given the fervency of Radio 3 listeners I suppose it's possible they made it a special case. It's unfortunate that there seems to be no way to get diagnostic info from the NP30. I've asked Cambridge Audio about what format radio streams the NP30 should be able to play, and I'm awaiting their reply.

[FakePlasticDunk]

I've just come across an old post on hydrogenaudio that claims that the NP30 can only play MP3 and (rather surprisingly) FLAC live streams. I've just discovered that transcoding *to* FLAC isn't an option with minimstreamer, is that something that could be added? I suppose I'd better find a FLAC stream to test that with before going any further along that line of enquiry.

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.p...opic=92930

[FakePlasticDunk]

(01-03-2023 22:54)simoncn Wrote:  I think the following is the probably the URL for the legacy 320k AAC BBC Radio 3 stream:

http://stream.live.vc.bbcmedia.co.uk/bbc_radio_three_hd

This stream is different in some respects from the 320k AAC stream that MinimStreamer decodes from the HLS stream. It uses HTTP chunked encoding and has some ICY headers. My guess is that one of these differences is a factor in making the stream playable on the NP30 but I can't be sure about this. It is also possible that the NP30 treats this specific URL specially.

Hmm, well I just plugged that url into an NP30 preset, selected it, and... it crashed the unit! So maybe that isn't the one after all.

[FakePlasticDunk]

This might be the one:

http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/5/select/version/2.0/mediaset/http-icy-aac-lc-a/format/pls/vpid/bbc_radio_three.pls

I entered that into an NP30 preset, selected it, and got what it claims to be a 320k AAC Radio 3 stream, does that help at all?