Baslinux mailing list

["David Moberg" <davidjmoberg AT lycos.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
 
> > wget -O - http://audio.ibiblio.org:8000/wdav-24k| mpg123 -   works
> 
> 
> Much of the time, even in the middle of the day, I still get 504 
> busy messages at this site but if I 'attack dial' after 2-3 tries I 
> get through.  I just keep hitting the up arrow to repeat my 
> previous command but one time I got a '404 not found'.  Odd.

That server's going to have a short lifespan, if it's _that_ overloaded.
It must be a very popular station.

I just tried using wget on that URL. I got a good connection on all three
tries. Perhaps ibiblio is trying to cut costs by hosting many things on
one server?

> The problem is that I keep losing the station - when there is too 
> big a cutout it seems to time out or something and I have to start 
> over.  1-2 sec is okay, it comes back.  Has been okay now for a 
> minute, no gaps.
> 
> It is not ideal to listen with frequent gaps but the quality is 
> quite a bit better otherwise than a hissy station from 75 miles 
> away broadcast over the air.

Do you know if it's mpg123 or wget that's timing out? wget has a
-T option which lets you adjust the timeout in seconds.

> 
> >
> > This approach does NOT work (nothing happens) with stations of the format
> >
> > http://www.live365.com/play/kcme, but plain mpg123 works on them.

I just tried that. It works here. For some strange reason, the server says
that it's a 44MB file, instead of an unlimited one.

> David, thanks for all the help with this and let me know if you 
> have other ideas for buffering.  This will help keep the office 
> temperature down slightly if I listen to streaming MP3 in the 
> summer instead of the radio.

I don't understand how this cools things down. Last time I checked,
a PC puts out more heat than a radio.

> I have a pair of nice Spacetech 
> battery-operated speakers that work without a battery and the 
> default volume (the battery is used to decrease vol) is fine for 
> this station

I can't stop listening to this station (kcme). :) Currently listening
to it on the stereo+subwoofer speaker set which I got for Xmas. You
can definitely tell that it's a low-bandwidth mp3, but it sounds nice.
I can hear all of the instruments (strings, cello, some kind of woodwind).
The higher pitched strings sound somewhat like white noise. The cello
sounds great.

> but does slackware provide some vol control and if so 
> in what packages?  Not in sox (which has play for wav files), or 
> mp3 (mpg123) or workbone (cd player), all in /ap1.

aumix is a good choice. You can use it in X11 or from ncurses. It
should be in some package. I'm not sure which.

> wdav has been behaving very nicely and plays only good music.  (I 
> spoke too soon, more frequent cutouts).

I got a couple of cutouts when I first started listening to kcme. It's
been playing perfectly ever since. ifconfig reports that I'm getting it
at 4KB/sec, give or take.

Woops. I take that perfect playback part back. About 30 seconds ago it
cut out with white noise for about a second. It's been perfect since
then.

David
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