Radio Paradise Update

[Man in a van]

On 1/13/2018 at 11:15 PM, bobbmd said:

 

i had never heard of RP before- just started listening but it only played through my internal speakers on my mac mini

any help would be appreciated

bobbmd

 

 

Sorry about the  delay in responding to this post, but I have good news for @bobbmd (maybe).

 

I have successfully installed LogitechMediaPlayer  on a Mac-Mini, added the Squeezelite player, done a bit of configuring with "Terminal" and I'm now playing the Radio Paradise flac stream through a NorthStar Essensio USB dac connected to the Mac-Mini; running it headless and using Google Chrome  Remote Desktop App from a Windows 10 Desktop to configure the Mac-Mini and SqueezePad on an iPad Pro to control the playback (other apps are available; also for Android).

 

I know this might sound a bit complicated but actually it only needs a bit of patience (and paracetamol).

 

Link here to where I got my help and advice from

 

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?108575-Mac-OS-Squeezelite-Radio-Paradise-flac-problem

 

Link here for the LMS download

 

http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/7.9/sc/cb6bb26/LogitechMediaServer-7.9.1-1516197805.pkg

 

and a screen shot here

 

1 by Man in a van, on Flickr

 

Hope this helps

 

Ronnie

[bobbmd]

@Man in a van thanks-will try that-I tried something similar with a pseudo Logitech player called iPeng to stream Deezer lossless from my first floor to my 3rd floor vintage Pioneer Elite M-90 power amp using my iPad Air 2

it was/is kinda of 'buggy' but worked

i have lots of patience and patients!

what do you know about the Bluesound Node 2?

i have gotten RP to work on my iPhone and iPad and i use AQDFRed Dac via Apple camera kit-it sounds ok it says i am getting FLAC but doesn't sound as good as ROON/A+3/TIDAL or Qobuz desktop and OS apps and i now get RP on ROON's internet radio

thanks again for your response 

bobbmd

 

[look&listen]

On 1/16/2018 at 10:04 AM, Superdad said:

Speaking of front end/user software for internet radio, does anyone here have some favorites?

I like iTunes for inet radio. Discoverability is not the best, scrolling through many pages of stations within their genre categories (and stations can move betwixt them sometimes). But what I like is the ability to just drag a station from the genre list into a playlist to save it for later play. I have one for classical stations, and another for the rest.

While i-stations metadata is a bit weird, being unlike a music file, I was able to directly access the URL in the iTunes stored record and fix it, after an early version of Pure Music, destroyed all my saved radio stations data. And just for i-radio, the price is right.

 

[Cebolla]

On 1/16/2018 at 3:04 PM, Superdad said:

Speaking of front end/user software for internet radio, does anyone here have some favorites?  I don’t mind—and kind of prefer—if it is web page based, but it needs to be sortable, comprehensive (all the world’s stations listed) and informative.

 

SHOUTCast is the only one that comes to mind, though I have not looked for a while.

 

Thanks.

 

SHOUTCast is the other main internet radio streaming medium, so is a rival to Icecast (with a more commercial outlook and more popular due to better marketing). I assume all you were doing is accessing SHOUTCast's default internet radio station catalogue page. It's certainly much better presented than Icecast's default catalogue page.

 

Of course you'll never find Radio Paradise in SHOUTCast's catalogue, as RP is streamed using Icecast.

 

What you need is an application that looks up the catalogues of both Icecast and SHOUTcast. One such application is TuneIn, which is available via a web browser, as well as specific software for Windows, iOS and Android. The Android version is particularly good as it allows you to select a particular stream, if varying quality streams are available for a particular internet radio station.

[#Yoda#]

If I can avoid, I usually don't listen to music via a computer, connected with my DACs. At least, my front ends are in general Linn Kazoo or Auralic Lightning DS. Kazoo uses TuneIn and LDS vTuner as iRadio service. On both platforms there are options to add individual streams, if the station of choice in best possible quality is not available by default.

[Superdad]

5 hours ago, look&listen said:

I like iTunes for inet radio. Discoverability is not the best, scrolling through many pages of stations within their genre categories (and stations can move betwixt them sometimes).

 

Thanks for the suggestion, but while I don't mind iTunes for music library management, I find it offers nothing to me for radio station browsing discovery.  And it is most always an incomplete list. 

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, Cebolla said:

SHOUTCast is the other main internet radio streaming medium, so is a rival to Icecast (with a more commercial outlook and more popular due to better marketing). I assume all you were doing is accessing SHOUTCast's default internet radio station catalogue page. It's certainly much better presented than Icecast's default catalogue page.

 

Of course you'll never find Radio Paradise in SHOUTCast's catalogue, as RP is streamed using Icecast.

 

What you need is an application that looks up the catalogues of both Icecast and SHOUTcast. One such application is TuneIn, which is available via a web browser, as well as specific software for Windows, iOS and Android. The Android version is particularly good as it allows you to select a particular stream, if varying quality streams are available for a particular internet radio station.

 

Thanks for that. Years ago, when WinAmp was still an app--and before whatever buyout they went through--the ShoutCAST web page was a huge database-style sortable listing, showing number of listeners online for every station as well as bit-rate, country, etc.  Now their web listing is some slick sponsored garbage.  And the Icecast page is worse--in the other direction.  Plus Icecast seems to have a fraction of the number of stations that ShoutCAST does.

 

Sadly, TuneIn, which I have used on my iPad, does not have a macOS app.  So I guess I will keep waiting for some site or desktop app that indexes all the world's internet radio stations.

 

I am looking forward to Radio Paradise's desktop player app--due in February.  And it will support their super-high rate FLAC stream! Right now the only way to tune to that is via their mobile app.  Sure hope their desktop app is as awesome as their iOS already is.

[look&listen]

23 minutes ago, Superdad said:

I find it offers nothing to me for radio station browsing discovery.  And it is most always an incomplete list. 

Yeah, but how many stations can you listen to ? RP is on there, I have it saved since I saw this thread. I'd think that friendly recommendations, like this thread, and browsing the genre/alpha lists would yield plenty of candidates for your attention.

Do any other the other radio softwares provide ratings or anything more then the station name, rate and description ?

 

BTW I like Groove Salad.

[Superdad]

3 hours ago, look&listen said:

Yeah, but how many stations can you listen to?

 

You are right.  Not many.  But my OCD for completeness and my sometimes desire to explore weird world "radio" stations from the other side of the globe is why I dislike the "curated" lists.  Sometimes its fun to look for the bizarre and obscure.    The rest of the time I just put on Radio Paradise or my own library of music.

--Alex C.

P.S.  Thanks for the Groove Salad recommendation.  I'll check it out!

[look&listen]

43 minutes ago, Superdad said:

my OCD for completeness

 

Completeness can't compete with my other obsessions

 

[Man in a van]

Awhile ago I found this post over on the RP forum

 

https://www.radioparadise.com/rp_2.php?#name=Forums&file=showtopic&topic_id=24853&x=3814434

 

It has been around for a bit but I thought it might be worthwhile adding to the 'knowledge bank'?

 

It's primarily a "proof of concept" but is pretty robust.

 

I have used it in in Firefox and Chrome browsers.

It also works on the rpi 3B+ running the updated Chromium Browser (full fat Raspbian Stretch).

 

Sometimes I have had a slight problem with no sound on starting the player.

Clicking the pause button and then the play works most times, sometime a refresh of the browser window is necessary.

 

Ronnie

 

 

[jriver]

JRiver added support for Radio Paradise a few weeks ago.  Its all FLAC.  Great station!  

 

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,115480.0.html

 

It's been very well received.

[Cebolla]

Having been spoilt by LMS's support of Radio Paradise's proprietary mechsnism for obtaining their FLAC streams, I missed the announcement of this bog standard Icecast provided OGG FLAC internet radio stream, added about a month ago:

http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac

 

So just requires the streamer to support OGG FLAC or the supporting media server to transcode to 'normal' FLAC, PCM, etc, as required.

 

Apparently it's still experimental. Let's hope it's a success and becomes a permanent feature - source:

https://radioparadise.com/community/forum/topic/24857/3845173

 

NB: looks like our very own @left channel has already been playing with it!

[left channel]

48 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

NB: looks like our very own @left channel has already been playing with it!

 

Yes I have! It sound great, but still suffers from stuttering and dropouts from time-to-time. My posts about this have moved to the main bug reports thread on the RP forum. Some of us are seeing the same problem on all FLAC options since that url went up, including the RP website and the LMS plugin. The 320k and lower streams are fine.

Meanwhile in other RP news, only the Main and Mellow channels are available at this time. Bob recently posted this on the RP forum:

We just don't have the time available to properly program the Rock & Groovy channels and bring them up to RP standards. Rather than continue to offer something that is — in our opinion — too repetitive and lacking in creativity, we have decided to pull those two channels, at least temporarily.

[Superdad]

Does anyone here know if there is a way to play a RadioParadise stream with HQ Player (>NAA on NUC)?  HQ Player of course can handle FLAC, but I do not know if/how it can be made to playback a realtime stream.  I would LOVE that as it would enable me to play my favorite station on my main system instead of just on my desktop system.

 

TIA,

--Alex C.

[left channel]

 

13 minutes ago, Superdad said:

Does anyone here know if there is a way to play a RadioParadise stream with HQ Player (>NAA on NUC)?  HQ Player of course can handle FLAC, but I do not know if/how it can be made to playback a realtime stream.  I would LOVE that as it would enable me to play my favorite station on my main system instead of just on my desktop system.

 

TIA,

--Alex C.

 

Maybe via foobar2000 to HQ Player? 

 

[Cebolla]

1 hour ago, Superdad said:

Does anyone here know if there is a way to play a RadioParadise stream with HQ Player (>NAA on NUC)?  HQ Player of course can handle FLAC, but I do not know if/how it can be made to playback a realtime stream.  I would LOVE that as it would enable me to play my favorite station on my main system instead of just on my desktop system.

 

TIA,

--Alex C.

 

I'd be very surprised if Miska didn't provide HQPlayer with support for OGG FLAC 'endless' streams - I remember him even mentioning OGG FLAC as example of such:

 

Why don't you create an m3u8 playlist file containing a single line of the stream's URL and see if HQPlayer can actually play it?

It would certainly save you the hassle of using foobar2000 as the go between.

[#Yoda#]

I'm frequently listening to the Radio Paradise FLAC stream via Roon for more than two weeks now and it's working, with some interruptions and dropouts, quite well. I hope they'll fix the issues and offer it as regular service, soon. 

[Cebolla]

I've had the stream being directly played by a Chromecast Audio for the past 6 hours and it's still working!

[Superdad]

1 hour ago, left channel said:

Maybe via foobar2000 to HQ Player? 

 

Thanks, but my desktop machine (and server to HQP NAA) is a Mac.  Foobar is N/A on Mac.

 

16 minutes ago, #Yoda# said:

I'm frequently listening to the Radio Paradise FLAC stream via Roon for more than two weeks now and it's working with some interruptions and dropouts quite well. I hope they'll get it stable as regular streaming offer, soon. 

 

Thanks, but I'm not yet a Roony. 

 

30 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

Why don't you create an m3u8 playlist file containing a single line of the stream's URL and see if HQPlayer can actually play it?

 

Thanks.  I'm a bit stupid when it comes to these things so bear with me.

In HQ Player I dragged a single local track into the player window just so I could use the save playlist function to create an m3u8 file and see its format.

Then I opened that file in a text editor, could see the single track, and then added some Radio Paradise FLAC stream URLs that I found.  Here is exactly everything that is in the file--saved with m3u8 extension;

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:404,Bill Evans - Peace Piece
/Users/AJC/Music/06 Peace Piece.aif
http://stream-tx3.radioparadise.com/rp_192.ogg
http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac
http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac

 

But when I open that playlist, once the Bill Evans track shows up.  The URLs don't.  

Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

[Cebolla]

30 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

I've had the stream being directly played by a Chromecast Audio for the past 6 hours and it's still working!

 

Oops - looks like I've jinxed it - it's no longer working. The Icecast server's still up, but no streams are mounted

[Cebolla]

54 minutes ago, Superdad said:

In HQ Player I dragged a single local track into the player window just so I could use the save playlist function to create an m3u8 file and see its format.

Then I opened that file in a text editor, could see the single track, and then added some Radio Paradise FLAC stream URLs that I found.  Here is exactly everything that is in the file--saved with m3u8 extension;

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:404,Bill Evans - Peace Piece
/Users/AJC/Music/06 Peace Piece.aif
http://stream-tx3.radioparadise.com/rp_192.ogg
http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac
http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac

 

But when I open that playlist, once the Bill Evans track shows up.  The URLs don't.  

Can you tell me what I am doing wrong?

 

You should have just replaced the single track's file location with the stream's URL, after changing the #EXTINF directive to infinite runtime (-1) and a more appropriate title, ie:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:-1,Radio Paradise

http://audio-3.radioparadise.com:8000/flac

 

However, the stream is currently not available - you could try this working OGG FLAC stream instead (Rondo Classic - Klasu):

http://stream.iradio.fi:8000/klasu.flac

[Superdad]

@Cebolla: Thanks very much!  I’ll give that a try later when back at my desk (watching Game of Thrones with my wife now ;-)).

[Superdad]

@Cebolla:  Well I gave it a try with just the following in a text file with m3u8 extension:

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1,Rondo Classic
http://stream.iradio.fi:8000/klasu.flac

 

But when opening or dragging that file into the HQ Player transport window I get nothing (no stream title showing).

 

Whereas a file created and saved in the exact same way containing the following works fine--dragged or opened:

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:244,Nina Simone - Mood Indigo
/Users/AJC/Music/01 Mood Indigo.aif
#EXTINF:286,Louis Armstrong - St. James Infirmary
/Users/AJC/Music/01 St. James Infirmary.aif
#EXTINF:375,Brian Bromberg - The Saga Of Harrison Crabfeathers
/Users/AJC/Music/01 The Saga Of Harrison Crabfeathers.aif
#EXTINF:174,Peggy Lee - Fever
/Users/AJC/Music/03 Fever.aif
#EXTINF:211,Lizz Wright - Hit The Ground
/Users/AJC/Music/03 Hit The Ground.aif
#EXTINF:324,The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five
/Users/AJC/Music/03 Take Five.aiff
#EXTINF:398,David Crosby - Deja Vu
/Users/AJC/Music/04 Deja Vu.aif
 

Can you tell me what I am still doing wrong?

 

Thanks again,

--Alex C.

[Cebolla]

You mentioning dragging the m3u8 file into HQPlayer's window reminded me of another post by Jussi actually confirming that HQPlayer does indeed support OGG FLAC streams and it mentions a far simpler method - just drop the stream's link on the HQPlayer window!

 

No idea why the m3u8 file doesn't work for loading the stream and unfortunately I don't have HQPlayer to hand to test with. I got the method from point 3 of bogi's stream from foobar2000 to HQPlayer guide doc, as linked in that thread:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gkUNvSlgV_n82izd4vggyPQRhVB4tkB4vF0kx6YUZTg/pub

 

Perhaps it does literally need to be a single line, with just the URL. So you need to remove the #EXTM3U & #EXTINF lines.