48 kbps HE AAC stream from SomaFM.com

[hans-jürgen]

Does VLC already support decoding this HTTP stream, also with the Linux and Mac OS X versions, or can it only play RTSP streams with MP4 audio content? It seems that XMMS cannot play it yet, although its MP4 plugin is based on FAAD2 and can decode AAC ADTS as well as MP4 files. So Linux users do not have the opportunity to listen to it yet, because RealPlayer 10 also seems to have problems with it. On the other hand the latest foobar2000 for Windows (also using FAAD2) is able to do that, and Winamp 5.04 using the new internal HE AAC decoder based on Coding Technologies seems to play it, too.

The stereo stream is done with the commercial Orban Opticodec implementing Coding Technologies' aacPlus encoder. SomaFM.com offers different channels, and "Groove Salad" is available in 48 kbps HE AAC (ADTS format, not MP4) and 128 kbps MP3, so you can directly compare the sound quality between these two synchronized streams:

http://somafm.com/aacdemo.pls

You can express your feelings (e.g. "Overwhelming...", "Why no Ogg?" etc.) in their forum, too:

http://somafm.com/aac/

Here is a list of other HE AAC streams, even in 5.1 multichannel at 160 kbps:

http://www.tuner2.com/

[Bond000]

it seems vlc detects shoutcast and automatically thinks that it should be mp3

[The DJ]

From the sources:

Code: Select all

if( !strcmp( p_sys->psz_protocol, "ICY" ) ) { if( p_sys->psz_mime && !strcasecmp( p_sys->psz_mime, "video/nsv" ) ) p_access->psz_demux = strdup( "nsv" ); else p_access->psz_demux = strdup( "mp3" ); msg_Info( p_access, "ICY server found, %s demuxer selected", p_access->psz_demux ); }

so if it doesn't know the mime, it just guesses it's mp3.
easily fixable it guess if a different mime-type is used

[Gibalou]

Problem fixed. Thanks for the report.

[hans-jürgen]

Problem fixed. Thanks for the report.

And DJ also found the problem specific to the Mac OS X version tonight (latest FAAD2 snapshot used an outdated header from an older snapshot on his system), so I guess this means VLC can now decode these streams with all OS versions (also Linux), right?

[The DJ]

correct

even the boomer radio streams. (audio/aac)

[hans-jürgen]

Are these changes included in the nightly builds of the Mac OS X and Linux versions, so interested users can try them out today and/or tomorrow?

[hans-jürgen]

Answering my own question with this announce from Gibalou on the mailing list:

Date: Fr 01.10.04, 22:41
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello everybody,

Here is the second test release in preparation for 0.8.0 (aka Janus).

You will find the new tarball here:
http://download.videolan.org/pub/videol ... 8.0-test2/
Binaries for Win32 and MacOSX have also already been uploaded.

As usual, this release contains an amazing amount of new features as well as bug fixes. To name just a few:

* Re-write of the input layer.
(better, faster, more extensible - eg. allows multi-input support).
* Re-write of the transcoding layer.
(everything VLC plays can now be transcoded).
* New plugins cache system to speed up launch time.
* Improvements to the subtitles/OSD subsystem.
* Vastly improved DVD support.
* DirectX Media Object decoder/encoder (Win32 only - supports WMV3).
* Cross-platform OpenGL video output.
* New screen capture input plugin (to stream your desktop).
* Windows Media Server RTSP support.
* Multipart JPEG demuxing/muxing.
(for video streaming to a Mozilla Web Browser)
* DVB subtitles decoding/encoding.
* Audio equalizer.
* etc...

Changes since 0.8.0-test1 include:

* More gradual resampling which should improve the pitch changing effect.
* Improved video filters and new subpicture filters.
* WAV demuxing/muxing with support for multichannel audio.
* Support for AACPlus webstreams.
* VLM enhancements.
* VobSub support.
* etc...

See http://developers.videolan.org/vlc/NEWS for the extensive list.

Please, test heavily and report any problems you might have.

Enjoy!

For the VideoLAN team,

--
Gildas

--
This is the videolan-announce mailing-list, see http://www.videolan.org/
To unsubscribe, please read http://www.videolan.org/support/lists.html

[Bond000]

tested windows test2 build, aac starts play but soon stops:
faad warning: Unexpected channel configuration change

[hans-jürgen]

tested windows test2 build, aac starts play but soon stops:
faad warning: Unexpected channel configuration change

That's the same error that DJ got with the Mac OS X version when it used an older FAAD2 version instead of the current snapshot. Normally the VLC Windows version should use this latest FAAD2 version, but maybe something went wrong when compiling the new binary.

[tuner2]

Hey everyone,

We are about to add a reference to VideoLAN as a mac player, but we need a confirmation first. Does VideoLAN support 5.1 playback of aacPlus on Mac OS X? Also, does it support sample rates up to 96kHz? (does FAAD2 for that matter?)

If someone could email info [at] tuner2.com to let us know, that would be great.

Thanks!
http://www.tuner2.com/

[hans-jürgen]

Does VideoLAN support 5.1 playback of aacPlus on Mac OS X? Also, does it support sample rates up to 96kHz? (does FAAD2 for that matter?)

I'm not sure, but isn't multichannel playback impossible on the current Mac OS X version? That would mean that VLC for Mac couldn't handle it either. The only way would be to downmix the decoder output to stereo which is an option in FAAD2 (also capable of 96 kHz sample rate).