New era has arrived again in technology, computering, networking and audio quality! The oldest original streaming technology called "RealAudio" has lost its popularity and gone
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too much commercial and annoying to the listeners. Now there's also better
audio fidelity offered by more progressive newer compression/streaming technologies
like OGG/Vorbis which performs more effectively and more naturally than other lossy
audio-packaging formats known today (among them mp3, wma, and of course realaudio).
& another good reason to go with OGG/Vorbis is its free open-source non-proprietary
nature. So it was easy to make a decision for us... And so now we have finished the
setup of new OGG/Vorbis streamer "IceS2" and broadcasting server "IceCast2" to work
in connection with our own original track playing scripts and track data MySQL base
plus also with the current realaudio encoder-streamer located in separate computer.
We decided to set up two independent OGG/Vorbis streams, a higher quality (192 kbps
which equals to 256 kbps usual mp3 files) one for listeners having 256 kbps or more
ADSL or any other broadband connection and another stream (45 kbps) for those users
having ISDN or modem connection (but at least 56 kbps modem is necessary still). In
addition to ensure the best quality we use VariableBitRate(VBR) encoding technology
too. However there's a fine progress also on information side of the things - every
song title, artist and record label is now visible directly on media players screen
in real time! But still for more additional information about every track we invite
you to our station's web homepage where all that information is displayed as it has
been during last two-and-half years. Also we will continue with realaudio streaming
some time from now, hopefully as long as possible. But someday we will take it down
because of costs and economics.
More exact details about our new audiostreams and also several good recommendations
for client players to use can be found on the new created webpage "listen HowTo" on
our station website here - the link is just at the bottom of the main index page!