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Shoutcast station playing but with sound artifacts

I've had the Third Wave Ska channel playing for over a year. The station is hosted on Wavestreaming.com and is broadcast via Shoutcast. The other day I received a message that Wavestream had an issue with the latest Shoutcast update and is reverting to a previous version. Since that time, there have been pops and clicks on the Roku channel as if it had an encoding problem. This issue is only audible on the Roku channel. Playing via Shoutcast, Wavestreaming, and all other players is fine.
I submitted an update to the Roku development team hoping that the update will require a reconnection to the stream.

There was an issue with the DNAS having an incorrect authhast. Also, the channel also used to be able to display the correct album art and song information.

I'm sure it's all connected but I need to find the point of failure, Wavestreaming, Shoutcast or Roku in order to resolve the situation. The sound issue is over 2 weeks old now.

Any help is appreciated but at the most basic level, Is there a way to stop a shoutcast stream and reconnect?

Thanks
Dan
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1 REPLY 1
belltown
Roku Guru

Re: Shoutcast station playing but with sound artifacts

I ran a few tests. The stream I used was: http://knight.wavestreamer.com:9097/stream/1/

If I play the mp3 stream on my Windows 7 laptop using VLC then stream the resulting decoded PCM audio to my Roku using my SimpleAudioStreamer program to re-encode it and play it on the Roku using SimpleAudioPlayer, then it plays just fine, no artifacts at all.

However if I play the mp3 stream directly on the Roku then I hear the artifacts that you mentioned very noticeably.

So the Roku cannot play the same stream the same way that VLC can play it (and possibly the other players you've tried).

It sounds like there's non-audio bursts of stuff embedded in the mp3 audio stream (possibly the Icecast headers or artwork or something used by the Shoutcast stream). The Roku seems less forgiving of malformed audio than other players.

I'm no audio expert (someone like RokuDale might be able to give a better explanation), but I'd guess there's a problem with the Shoutcast stream, especially considering that you say they already switched streams because of some problems they were having.
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