New Audio Server Discussion

[Avian(Admin)]

The new audio server has been installed! Thanks to everyone who contributed funds for us to make this major upgrade. It has solved a lot of issues we've been dealing with, and it opens the door for tons of really great improvements and new features. It's always an amazing sight to see how much the Aural Moon community comes together to support our collective musical voyage.

The new server is a Dell SC1425 Dual 2.8 Ghz Xeon with 1 GB RAM, and like our old server, resides in our Chicago datacenter. It has a new 300 GB hard drive all ready for tons of new music, but of course, contains everything from our original extensive music library.

Use this thread to report any concerns or strangeness you hear - or for that matter good things! In addition to the new hardware, we're also running a new version of the streaming software (SAM). I know some people have noticed an increase in sound quality, and there are many more features to come!

We've had one bug report already that crossfading of the songs gets turned on automatically somehow - unfortunately, you can't turn it off again easily without inconvenience to the listener. I hope they'll address that bug in the future - meanwhile we'll keep an eye on it, and try and keep working on the issue.

Thanks again for your support again, and enjoy! Were movin on up!

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by Avian

It's always an amazing sight to see how much the Aural Moon community comes together to support our collective musical voyage.

AuralMoon has the best people on earth... or would that be on the moon?

Originally Posted by Avian

We've had one bug report already that crossfading of the songs gets turned on automatically somehow - unfortunately, you can't turn it off again easily without inconvenience to the listener. I hope they'll address that bug in the future - meanwhile we'll keep an eye on it, and try and keep working on the issue.

Fixed!

Originally Posted by Avian

Thanks again for your support again, and enjoy! Were movin on up!

Next floor... Lingerie, sundries and new web server!

[Rick and Roll]

the only reason I'm posting this is to make sure an email drops in when somebody posts. Saves me the trouble of searching new posts...

oh and nice job avain, vax.....

Excellent sounds Avian and VAX. I really notice the difference.

I agree about the community that is Aural Moon. It's an honour to be a part of it and contribute whenever I can. Keep it going and there will be a lot of happy people around.

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by KeithieW

Excellent sounds Avian and VAX. I really notice the difference.

I agree about the community that is Aural Moon. It's an honour to be a part of it and contribute whenever I can. Keep it going and there will be a lot of happy people around.

OK, enough of this...

You're getting a stream of bits defined by a standard. The standard hasn't changed nor has the bits as they were recorded when the CDs were ripped. The same bits that were sent to you before are being sent now, so there's no way that there is any noticable sound improvement -- unless you've changed your gear to reproduce those bits.

[lotus]

Vax, Avian told that there is a feature in SAM that is high quality seting (or something like that).

Could this mean, that, as the music is on 192 kbs on the server, SAM uses better algorythms to grade it down to 128 kbs, as we have now a faster processor?

I agree with KW (maybe we have a psycho thing or so) that it sounds better now.

[Avian(Admin)]

Originally Posted by VAXman

OK, enough of this...

You're getting a stream of bits defined by a standard. The standard hasn't changed nor has the bits as they were recorded when the CDs were ripped. The same bits that were sent to you before are being sent now, so there's no way that there is any noticable sound improvement -- unless you've changed your gear to reproduce those bits.

Don't forget about the amount of encoding and reencoding that goes on in a system like this. The mp3 encoders were set to Medium quality, I believe to save CPU. So now they're at High because of the new server.

The other thing that I think most people are hearing is that there is some compression and other FX that's on the music. It was on there by default. If everyone likes it, I'll keep it.

[roger]

rick's announcement (just prior to the Yes) was very distorted. overly compressed or some such thing? I've never heard hom talk quite like that...

heh.

[Rick and Roll]

Originally Posted by roger

rick's announcement (just prior to the Yes) was very distorted. overly compressed or some such thing? I've never heard hom talk quite like that...

heh.

I noticed the voices sound even more like hell than usual. My voice system is very mom and pop...but this week's was unusual. I recorded my next week's voices today and they appear fine. Let's see what they do next week,, should be better.

[Yesspaz]

Originally Posted by Rick and Roll

I noticed the voices sound even more like hell than usual. My voice system is very mom and pop...but this week's was unusual. I recorded my next week's voices today and they appear fine. Let's see what they do next week,, should be better.

higer quality stream means lower quality encoded files sound worse... Any and everything new should be 192k. My two cents.

[gilbertopb]

Great!
I listen to 56k, and some hundreds of servers after the new one, but I notice no pauses in the stream.
And the sound, well, now it´s playing "The Revealing Science of God". Where in the world I would listen this in a radio?
Thanks for all

[progdirjim(Admin)]

So here's the official list of donors to the new server:

Atomik Rooster
KeithieW
Rogormortis
Lotus
Sharcnorris
Jamforte
Podakayne
sheridan3957
Nadina
Dinosaur
Mailotron
jtmckin
James Hankin
Unter
MrMagoo
Fremder99
Jeff Vandervoort
Walter Sandza
Laurie Hall
tobygnome
mossy
yorksvc
James Rogers
Michelle Kolota
Stefan Hammele
Yesspaz
Nigel Harris

a great big THANK YOU to all of you.

[roger]

cool. thanks rick.

loving the show.

[roger]

mine will come if I get a divorce.

or if I don't.

[sharcnorris]

Jim, This was the finest Entertainment Dollar spent. No where do I find the Music I thought only I liked for 35 years, and These joyous souls who enjoy it as much as I.
Can't wait for the New Home Page Look!!!

[Olaf]

Please stop using dynamic compression!!

Thank you very much for the new server and everything else! Aural moon is my strongest source of musical inspiration since 2003.

Since the new server is online I thought something is wrong with my equipment. I hear a lot of noise when the music turns soft and there is a extreme amount of pumping all the time. This is really frustrating when listening with headphones.
The current stream sounds a bit like some of the stupid radio stations here in Berlin. Everyone is adding more and more FX to the audio material to give it punch -- but as a result all stations sound the same and dynamic expression in music is totally lost.

First I thought this is your tribute to the RIAA, because they want you to stream music with less quality!

So please -- never add any FX to the stream! Once mixed in you never can get the FX out of the signal again.
There are a lot of winamp plugins available so that anyone can create his own level of dynamic compression if he wants.


Greatings from Germany
Olaf

[Rick and Roll]

Originally Posted by Olaf

Please stop using dynamic compression!!

Everyone is adding more and more FX to the audio material to give it punch -- but as a result all stations sound the same and dynamic expression in music is totally lost.

First I thought this is your tribute to the RIAA, because they want you to stream recordings with less quality!

So please -- never add any FX to the stream! Once mixed in you never can get the FX out of the signal again. There are a lot of winamp plugins available so that anyone can create his own level of dynamic compression if he wants.


Greatings from Germany
Olaf

I'm in no way a sound person, but isn't that an issue with recording of almost all music? I don't think Aural Moon does anything like that, it's just the quality of newer music.

[dangerboy]

Are there any plans to broadcast via port 80? Unfortunately, my company's firewall blocks the ports that the Moon uses. I still listen at home of course, but it sure would be nice to have AM all day!

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally Posted by dangerboy

Are there any plans to broadcast via port 80? Unfortunately, my company's firewall blocks the ports that the Moon uses. I still listen at home of course, but it sure would be nice to have AM all day!

I once offered to do this for Mossy when she couldn't access the streams from her employer's network. I could easily do this on my router. However, soon the AM web site will be adding to the traffic on my T1, so I will not provide such a mapping.

If you were to make as little as a $50 donation, you could get the 128K stream and it does have a port 80 transmission.

[jtmckinley]

WOOT! glad to see new server is up!

I don't know if this is the correct thread to post this since I dunno if the new streaming server is the same as the request page search server, but here goes anyway...

Today I was trying to request "I See You" off of the 1st Yes album and did a search for "I See You" by song name (both with and without quotes) and got an out of memory error from the server. Adding quotes seemed to help some, I didn't always get and out of memory error with quotes, but it seems it was matching any song with "I" in the name or something.

I then tried to search for "Yes" by album name and it only turned up 4 of the tunes from the record. Also there seems to be some issue with the paging of the search results, when I try to go to the 3rd or sometimes even 2nd page of the search it goes back to the top of full song list as if there were no search criteria.

Anybody else having issues like this? Am I doing something wrong? Is this due to the new server and some kind of config problem? Thanks in advance for any help.