Hi all: I am managing a radio station that has 7 streams. I am using icecast, ices and ezstream on the streams and overall it is working pretty well. One of the streams is an old time radio stream and I use ezstream to run the prerecorded shows. The streams are 128K mp3 streams. Also this station is running on a VPS using Ubuntu 14.04. My question: Is there a package or some sort of way I can apply dynamic compression to the stream? The old time radio stream plays many different old time radio shows and the volume is inconsistent. If you need more information please let me know. Larry Turnbull ACB Radio Managing Director -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/attachments/20160209/37e7e870/attachment.htm
Larry, if you have a mac laying around, a solution would be to try Nicecast from Rogameba. i?m not sure if i?m spelling this correctly but the point to me making mention of this is to say this, the effects aren?t all that accessible. so, if you were to do that, sighted assistance would be recommended. just a thought. hope it helps. Brother Timothy Clark http://www.reverbnation.com/brothertimothyclark On Feb 9, 2016, at 10:03, Larry Turnbull <larry at acbradio.org> wrote:> Hi all: > > I am managing a radio station that has 7 streams. > I am using icecast, ices and ezstream on the streams and overall it is working pretty well. > One of the streams is an old time radio stream and I use ezstream to run the prerecorded shows. > The streams are 128K mp3 streams. > Also this station is running on a VPS using Ubuntu 14.04. > > My question: > Is there a package or some sort of way I can apply dynamic compression to the stream? > The old time radio stream plays many different old time radio shows and the volume is inconsistent. > > If you need more information please let me know. > > Larry Turnbull > ACB Radio Managing Director > > _______________________________________________ > Icecast mailing list > Icecast at xiph.org > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/attachments/20160209/5291b85d/attachment.htm
On Tue, 9 Feb 2016, Larry Turnbull wrote:> One of the streams is an old time radio stream and I use ezstream to run the > prerecorded shows. > > Is there a package or some sort of way I can apply dynamic compression to > the stream?Ezstream really isn't designed for this. It's primarily meant for streaming files as they are, which is a very light-weight operation, with the ability to reencode for the case where files aren't at the same bitrate/format. Having said this, if you run it in reencode mode, it should be possible to pipe through a compressor like's sox's compand effect on the way to the encoder. If you're running in reencode mode, you should have something like this example from the documentation in your config file: <encdec> <!-- Support for MP3 decoding via madplay, and encoding via LAME: --> <format>MP3</format> <match>.mp3</match> <!-- Note: madplay uses host byte order for raw samples. --> <decode>madplay -b 16 -R 44100 -S -o raw:- "@T@"</decode> <encode>lame --preset cbr 128 -r -s 44.1 --bitwidth 16 - -</encode> </encdec> You could change the encode line to read something like this: <encode>sox -t raw -r 44100 -c 2 -b 16 -e signed - -t raw - compand 0.3,1 6:-70,-60,-20 -5 -90 0.2 |lame --preset cbr 128 -r -s 44.1 --bitwidth 16 -</encdec> Or the shorter version: <encode>sox -t raw -r44.1k -c2 -b16 -e signed - -t raw - compand 0.3,1 6:-70,-60,-20 -5 -90 0.2 |lame -r -</encdec> For the shorter version, 128 kbps CBR is default MP3 output format, and raw input defaults to 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo signed, so can be omitted if you want to use these values but must be specified if you want something else. If you hear loud static instead of the expected audio, you'll need to use the -x switch with either sox or lame, depending on which one isn't getting the bit order it expects. Note that I just grabbed this compand example from the sox manpage, you may want to tweek it to get the sound you want. I tried it on what I believe to be the stream in question and it did seem to make a difference without it being obvious, so maybe it will work nicely as is. You will need to install the sox and libsox-fmt-mp3 packages, or at least that's what they're called in Debian. finally, if you're not actually using reencode mode at the moment, this will consume significantly more CPU than your current setup. It's never occured to me to do this, I'd be interested to know how well it works. HTH, Geoff.
Thanks Geoff, I will give it a try. I am reencoding all files to a 128K mp3, 44100 sample rate stereo stream for consistency. So yes I have the decode and encode lines in the xml file as you outlined. I will check out sox and see how it does. I am also exploring mp3gain to run across the entire library and see if getting all files to the same level will help. Larry -----Original Message----- From: icecast-bounces at xiph.org [mailto:icecast-bounces at xiph.org] On Behalf Of Geoff Shang Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2016 3:44 AM To: Icecast streaming server user discussions <icecast at xiph.org> Subject: Re: [Icecast] ezstream question On Tue, 9 Feb 2016, Larry Turnbull wrote:> One of the streams is an old time radio stream and I use ezstream to > run the prerecorded shows. > > Is there a package or some sort of way I can apply dynamic compression > to the stream?Ezstream really isn't designed for this. It's primarily meant for streaming files as they are, which is a very light-weight operation, with the ability to reencode for the case where files aren't at the same bitrate/format. Having said this, if you run it in reencode mode, it should be possible to pipe through a compressor like's sox's compand effect on the way to the encoder. If you're running in reencode mode, you should have something like this example from the documentation in your config file: <encdec> <!-- Support for MP3 decoding via madplay, and encoding via LAME: --> <format>MP3</format> <match>.mp3</match> <!-- Note: madplay uses host byte order for raw samples. --> <decode>madplay -b 16 -R 44100 -S -o raw:- "@T@"</decode> <encode>lame --preset cbr 128 -r -s 44.1 --bitwidth 16 - -</encode> </encdec> You could change the encode line to read something like this: <encode>sox -t raw -r 44100 -c 2 -b 16 -e signed - -t raw - compand 0.3,1 6:-70,-60,-20 -5 -90 0.2 |lame --preset cbr 128 -r -s 44.1 --bitwidth 16 -</encdec> Or the shorter version: <encode>sox -t raw -r44.1k -c2 -b16 -e signed - -t raw - compand 0.3,1 6:-70,-60,-20 -5 -90 0.2 |lame -r -</encdec> For the shorter version, 128 kbps CBR is default MP3 output format, and raw input defaults to 44.1kHz 16-bit stereo signed, so can be omitted if you want to use these values but must be specified if you want something else. If you hear loud static instead of the expected audio, you'll need to use the -x switch with either sox or lame, depending on which one isn't getting the bit order it expects. Note that I just grabbed this compand example from the sox manpage, you may want to tweek it to get the sound you want. I tried it on what I believe to be the stream in question and it did seem to make a difference without it being obvious, so maybe it will work nicely as is. You will need to install the sox and libsox-fmt-mp3 packages, or at least that's what they're called in Debian. finally, if you're not actually using reencode mode at the moment, this will consume significantly more CPU than your current setup. It's never occured to me to do this, I'd be interested to know how well it works. HTH, Geoff. _______________________________________________ Icecast mailing list Icecast at xiph.org http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast
Hi Timothy: Thanks for the idea. However the radio station is on a remote vps running the linux Ubuntu 14.04 operating system. We use to use another automation package prs but it hasn't been updated in quite some time and it was becoming unstable and I kept having to reboot the automation to make it follow the server clock because it kept drifting and shows were not starting on time. Now I have all of the streams using the ezstream and ices combination along with Icecast and everything is running much smoother because the prerecorded shows are being launched from scripts via cron jobs. I am going to try Geoff's suggestion and also I am going to see how well mp3gain does with the mp3 files we have on the server. I'll let everybody know what I decided to go with. Thanks for all of the suggestions. Larry From: icecast-bounces at xiph.org [mailto:icecast-bounces at xiph.org] On Behalf Of Timothy Clark Music Sent: Tuesday, February 9, 2016 11:06 AM To: Icecast streaming server user discussions <icecast at xiph.org> Subject: Re: [Icecast] ezstream question Larry, if you have a mac laying around, a solution would be to try Nicecast from Rogameba. i'm not sure if i'm spelling this correctly but the point to me making mention of this is to say this, the effects aren't all that accessible. so, if you were to do that, sighted assistance would be recommended. just a thought. hope it helps. Brother Timothy Clark http://www.reverbnation.com/brothertimothyclark On Feb 9, 2016, at 10:03, Larry Turnbull <larry at acbradio.org <mailto:larry at acbradio.org> > wrote: Hi all: I am managing a radio station that has 7 streams. I am using icecast, ices and ezstream on the streams and overall it is working pretty well. One of the streams is an old time radio stream and I use ezstream to run the prerecorded shows. The streams are 128K mp3 streams. Also this station is running on a VPS using Ubuntu 14.04. My question: Is there a package or some sort of way I can apply dynamic compression to the stream? The old time radio stream plays many different old time radio shows and the volume is inconsistent. If you need more information please let me know. Larry Turnbull ACB Radio Managing Director _______________________________________________ Icecast mailing list <mailto:Icecast at xiph.org> Icecast at xiph.org <http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/attachments/20160226/5ff9fb03/attachment-0001.htm -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 332 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast/attachments/20160226/5ff9fb03/attachment-0001.jpeg