The "Beeb"- Stream Has Gone Dry

[dB Cooper]

Hello everyone I am a relatively new member here. I'm hoping to get some answers on a streaming problem: I like to listen to the BBC Radio Three radio stream which is 320 kb per second AAC; it sounds great (or used to until it stopped working on all my players a few days ago).

 

iTunes won't play the stream anymore nor will any other players on my Mac. Was hoping someone here might know something or have some troubleshooting ideas.

 

Thanks

[AudioDoctor]

dB Cooper eh? Hold on, I will let you know after I get off the phone with the FBI...

 

 

Have you tried to find the link to the streaming service directly or only through third party apps? Perhaps they changed the link to the stream.

[mwheelerk]

Just wondering with the release of iTunes Radio if they nixed streaming anything else.

[AudioDoctor]

Did you go here and try? BBC - Radio 3 - Home

 

I can not get it to load from the website either, so something is up.

[Cebolla]

Nothing wrong with the link from the UK side of the pond. Also BBC stations via vTuner still working.

[dB Cooper]

Nothing wrong with the link from the UK side of the pond. Also BBC stations via vTuner still working.

 

Searching the topic on the Web, I see that in 2011 there were "outages" in BBC availability outside the UK. But all the avenues I have tried, including the BBC website, just 'hang' without providing an error message or anything like that. If all else fails, I guess I'd have to learn how to use a proxy server...

[dB Cooper]

Doing a little Googling, I found the following url which actually works. Does someone know how to verify the bitrate? Don't believe this is the hi bandwidth stream.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/listen/live/r3.asx

[Cebolla]

Just remembered about the radiofeeds UK radio stations site which maintains a very good up to date list. That link is actually one of BBC radio 3's 320k feeds according to their info:

UK Radio Stations webcasting in Windows Media Player format

 

Its links to the BBC AAC feeds appear to be ok too.

[dB Cooper]

Found this url which works but appears not to be the 320K stream:

BBC Radio 3

 

And it turned out that while Safari and Chrome will not play the stream from the Beeb site (BBC miniplayer says 'loading' but never does and volume slider will not budge off minimum), Firefox will. So that appears to be my only option at the moment. Just wish I knew why as I usually don't use FF.

 

Update: Cebolla- that link does indeed seem to work; thanks! However pasting in Snowtape (a mac radio app), it displays as 56K AAC+ (but sounds way too good for that to be correct).

 

Going to use Audio Hijack to try and A-B the stream you gave with the known 320K stream on the Beeb's webpage.

[GregPQ]

This is my first post and I should state right from the get-go that I do not yet understand the many ways an audio stream can be "rated" for fidelity.

 

I have BBC Radio 3 (High) on iTunes with 320 kbps bit rate and 32 kHz sample rate.

 

Does this constitute a high-quality stream?

 

By comparison, France Musique in iTunes shows 128/44.1. Is this inferior to Radio 3?

 

Thanks!

Greg