BAJ issue 50 6.indd - Malcolm Steward

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Radio, Radio! UNTIL NOW, LISTENING TO INTERNET RADIO HAS BEEN A RELATIVELY NICHE ACTIVITY. WITH THE STEADILY-IMPROVING AVAILABILITY AND SPEED OF RESIDENTIAL BROADBAND INTERNET CONNECTIONS, HOWEVER, AND THE INCREASING NUMBER OF “INTERNET RADIO READY” PRODUCTS COMING TO THE MARKET, INTERNET RADIO APPEARS TO BE READY TO HIT THE MAINSTREAM. DO WE NEED YET ANOTHER WAY OF LISTENING TO THE RADIO, THOUGH? JAMES CLARK INVESTIGATES… 28 INTERNET RADIO IS A SIMPLE CONCEPT: A RADIO PROGRAMME, RECEIVED OVER THE INTERNET. THE INTERNET IS USED AS THE MEDIUM OF DELIVERY FOR THE RADIO STATION. THIS CAN BE CONTRASTED WITH MORE CONVENTIONAL ‘OVER THE AIR’ METHODS OF FM, DAB, OR SATELLITE BROADCASTING. THUS, THE ‘RADIO’ LABEL IS ACCURATE, IN THAT PROGRAMME IS DELIVERED IN A CONTINUOUS STREAM TO THE USER, JUST LIKE ANY OTHER RADIO TYPE. Internet radio is not something new – not in the timescales of the internet, at least – since the first internet radio stations started to appear around 1994. However, and this is the reason that The BAJ, which prides itself on bringing cutting-edge news and views to its readers, is carrying this article: Internet Radio is now going mainstream. Technology that has been fairly challenging to use and largely confined to a PC is being put into easy-to-use boxes and given a makeover. Does your Mum need a new kitchen radio this Christmas? The one you buy may well be ‘internet radio ready’. World music So why do we need another way of listening to radio? I can already receive more radio stations than I can possibly listen to, through FM, through DAB, through Freeview and through my satellite receiver. Additionally, What Internet Radio is not I have noticed that Internet Radio is sometimes confused with other things. Let us look briefly at what internet radio is not. Internet radio is not the same as “podcasting”. Podcasting involves downloading an entire radio programme to a computer, which can then be played back, paused, skipped, etc., later. Podcasting is more like popping into HMV and buying a recording of a radio programme. Internet radio is not the same as on-demand file sharing. File sharing is the practice of making files available to other users to download. File sharing allows the user to select exactly the music (or other content) that is downloaded, and when. This is different to Internet Radio, which is a continuous stream of information, and where the user (listener) has no control over the content. since many Internet Radio stations are tied to existing broadcasters, such as the BBC, the programme content through the internet is the same as listening to the station through any other means. The internet, in this case, is just a different form of delivery for the same programme material. Why do we need it? The restriction with FM, DAB, etc., is that they are all more-or-less local. Sure, I can receive national stations, even some European and Asian stations by satellite, but, basically, I am restricted to listening to the stations that are broadcast in the area I happen to be in. That is fine until I change location; then I cannot listen to my favourite station any more. Radio through the internet does not have this restriction. For example: where I live in the UK, even using the large antenna on my roof, I cannot receive KBUL 98FM, broadcast from Reno, Nevada (‘Today’s Best Country and The All Time Favourites’). Internet Radio allows me to do this, though, at home or anywhere else that an internet connection can be established. I am no longer restricted to the radio stations that happen to be broadcast in my locality; I can listen to any radio station in the world. This is the power of Internet Radio. Good Thing So, Internet Radio is a life-enhancing development. It allows access to otherwise unobtainable radio stations and music from around the world. In my evangelistic moments, I can argue that it has the power to promote inter-cultural understanding and harmonisation (although I am brought down to earth again with the realisation that world-spanning short-wave radio never managed this). Internet Radio is a good thing. It is not without problems, though. The first problem is the quality of the audio – to get a measure, let us compare the audio quality with that of DAB radio. As a reader of The BAJ, you are probably interested in improving the quality of audio – trying to deliver the most life-like audio experience to your end-user or customer. You will know there has been much wailing and gnashing-of-teeth in our community over the low bit-rate, highly-compressed audio that is DAB radio. A typical station has a bit-rate of 128-192kbps (kilobits per second). It is not CD-quality, and it is deemed by many to be unacceptable. The BAJ ISSUE 50 | 2008
Typically, Internet Radio stations provided by the BBC (a representative measure, I think), stream at 64kbps; 32kbps and less is common from other providers. While it is true to say that this is only an approximate comparison with the quality provided by DAB (since different audio codecs (compression algorithms) are used in DAB and Internet Radio), there is no codec in existence that, at 64kbps, comes anywhere close to CD-quality audio. Internet Radio is, with very few exceptions, very low quality audio. Would this problem not be solved simply by getting service providers to increase the bit-rate? Well, the difficulty with Internet Radio, from the point-of-view of the service-provider, is that it is not actually broadcast; each connection is point-to-point. Take BBC Radio 2, for example: to cover the entire U.K. on the FM band, the space from 87 to 89MHz is used. It does not matter whether all or no radios in the country are tuned to Radio 2; there is no impact on the amount of radio spectrum used. On the internet, this is different. Radio 2 is broadcast on the internet at a bit-rate of 64kbps; to service one listener, 64kbps is streamed between the server at the BBC and the listener. If a second listener tunes in, the BBC has to stream 128kbps (2x64kbps), and so on. With internet radio, the bandwidth required to service all listeners increases with each additional listener. This might seem a bit of a “so what” issue – it is a problem for the BBC, not the listener, right? However, it gives rise to problem number 2: the audio stream from Internet Radio stations tends to be unreliable. As a listener, you are competing with other listeners for the bandwidth coming from the station provider; you are competing with all other internet users for the bandwidth between the station provider and your location. Sometimes you will lose that competition, the audio data you need will be delayed or lost, and the station you are listening to will disappear for a few seconds, or completely. This is very annoying. This problem will get worse (at least in the short term), if the use of Internet Radio increases dramatically and more people compete for the available bandwidth. Long term Internet Radio is now reaching the mass-market, in an easy-to-use, low-price format. Its strength is to make stations from other areas, other countries, as easy to tune in and enjoy as any radio station in your locality. For ex-pats wanting to stay in touch with their homeland, for businessmen on trips abroad and to people wanting to explore the music that other countries have to offer, Internet Radio provides a useful, and very welcome, service. It can be a lot of fun tuning into radio stations from abroad, listening to what is going on. However, audio quality tends to be low and audio drop-outs or complete connection loss are not uncommon. These are big problems. Network capacity and speed are improving all the time, though, The BAJ ISSUE 50 | 2008 which should lead to fewer drop-outs and, ultimately, higher quality audio. I hope that the, potentially, poor experience in the short term does not lead to the rejection of a useful, exciting and, importantly, fun technology for the long term. Useful links If you want to learn more about Internet Radio (particularly its history), a good starting point is Wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/internet_ radio. KBUL 98-FM, “Today’s Best Country and The All Time Favourites”, can be found here: http://www.kbul.com. A good starting point for exploring the possibilities of internet radio on your computer, with around 11,000 stations listed, is VTuner: http://www.vtuner.com. Scanning the ether Since radio stations on the internet are not actually broadcast, it is not possible to find stations by “scanning the ether”, as might be done with a conventional radio. An Internet Radio receiver has to use a different mechanism for determining the availability and location of radio stations. The usual mechanism for obtaining this information is for the receiver to contact an on-line database of internet-radio service-providers (the manufacturer of the receiver typically pays a “lifetime” subscription fee for their product – the end user is not involved). An example of such a database is “VTuner”, found at VTuner.com; several others exist, too. The number of internet radio stations is already in the thousands (and is only increasing), so it is not practical simply to supply the user with a list of stations, as might be done on a DAB radio. (Imagine scrolling through an alphabetical list of 10,000 stations, looking for the one that matches your interests.) Instead, it is normal for the user to specify the type of stations they are interested in – by location, for example, by music type, or by language. The on-line database is queried automatically by the receiver and the results are returned. The user can then, of course, choose one of the stations, or specify different criteria. Although this system works, it does suffer from two problems. Firstly, the database can become a single point-of-failure. This means that, if the database should fail or become unavailable somehow, the Internet Radio devices that rely on that database will become unusable. The second problem is that, if a desired station is not entered into the database, the station cannot be selected by the user. TECHNOLOGY 29
Page 1 and 2: £5.00 ISSUE 50 | 2008 The BAJ ISSU
Page 3 and 4: 50 Editorial Director Malcolm Stewa
Page 5 and 6: Sennheiser’s Dave Smith and Phil
Page 7 and 8: The BAJ ISSUE 50 | 2008 Ideas Above
Page 9 and 10: Gary Mardell Joins KEF as Marketing
Page 11 and 12: The BAJ ISSUE 50 | 2008 PMC Helps T
Page 13 and 14: Alphason Window Dressing ALPHASON H
Page 15 and 16: Fantastic Publicity for Luxury Livi
Page 17 and 18: the turntable scene was looking pos
Page 19 and 20: have nothing but praise for the com
Page 21 and 22: Monster Introduces the World’s On
Page 23 and 24: NAD’s Budget Reference CD Player
Page 25 and 26: “get off my foot” shouted into
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Page 31 and 32: acquired McIntosh, under the same s
Page 33 and 34: Need A New Job? THEN LOOK NO FURTHE
Page 35 and 36: BANG & OLUFSEN UK LTD Unit 630 Whar
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Page 39 and 40: PR & MARKETING GRAFFIX MEDIA 8 Seym
Page 41 and 42: Kimber ............................
Page 43 and 44: training 23 - 26 june exhibition 24

BAJ issue 50 6.indd - Malcolm Steward

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