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Simplest Ogg Streaming Clients for non-Unix Users?
Dr. Smeegee asks: "I recently set up an .ogg stream for beta testing, on a website chronicling my hometown's music scene in the 80's. I stream nothing but independent bands from the Evansville area. I chose IceCast using Ogg Vorbis for obvious reasons. The only problem is, I've been using ogg123 on BSD for so long, I didn't realize that streaming Ogg support is sketchy at best on the Windows and Mac platforms. Can anyone suggest good players? Or am I going to have to downgrade my sound and stream in .mp3?"
"I have provided my potential users links to these applications that claim to play .ogg streams:
Zinf
VLC for Windows
OggDS plugin for Windows Media Player
Winamp 2.81
Whamb
MacAmp Lite, and the
Quicktime Plug-In
However, am still getting complaints of flaky behaviour not linked to the stream itself. One Mac OS X user in particular, using MacAmp, could play the stream, but the system kept a download dialog up the whole time! Most, however, complain that the applications flat won't play streams."
Zinf
VLC for Windows
OggDS plugin for Windows Media Player
Winamp 2.81
Whamb
MacAmp Lite, and the
Quicktime Plug-In
However, am still getting complaints of flaky behaviour not linked to the stream itself. One Mac OS X user in particular, using MacAmp, could play the stream, but the system kept a download dialog up the whole time! Most, however, complain that the applications flat won't play streams."
Winamp 5.05 plays ogg streams just fine..
My email addy? should be easy enough.
I use WinAmp 2.81 to play OGG streams.
The important thing with this one is to ensure you get the full version, not the lite one. The lite one doesn't have the necessary features.
You could try porting noXMMS, a console port of XMMS with no links to X. I don't know how tricky that would be though. I'm pretty sure it supports OGG streams though.
Otherwise Winamp is the obvious choice.
Try JOrbis, the pure java Ogg Vorbis decoder as an applet.
If you MUST be different, try AAC, its lossless unlike ogg and gives better than cd quality by eliminating jitter.
Not only that, my good man! It is well known that AAC decodes to pointier ones and rounder zeros than OGG, for a richer, smoother and creamier digital playback experience. True audiophiles use nothing less.
try AAC, its lossless unlike ogg
Ogg can be lossless. You are mistaking Ogg for Vorbis.
If you MUST be different, try AAC, its lossless unlike ogg and gives better than cd quality by eliminating jitter.
Ah, nice, so I can finally get rid of that crappy quality of my CDs. Thanks man, gotta try that out!
:w!q
For instances like this where Linux has a good app, but Windows does not, could a WINE-like product be useful? I have a favourite Windows ad-filtering proxy that I've taken with me on my slow move to Linux. Perhaps a way to run Linux binaries on a Windows PC would be helpful to bridge a gap and even an aid to migration.
At Diamondway Teachings we use a simple Java client (don't remember which one) for the purpose. We're streaming Ogg, as it sounds LOTS better than MP3 at very low bitrates.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
Streaming wirh vlc is really easy. Just follow the streaming howto pdf on their website. http://www.videolan.org
there are even clients available for almost all platforms and you may also stream videos!
If you're doing it to advocate Ogg Vorbis then rock on. If you're doing it because you want people to listen to your stuff, then maybe you should consider that the audience is used to mp3 streaming and already has the tools to do that, and offer them an mp3 feed in addition.
http://foobar2000.org
Simple. Works.
The author is the original author of the Winamp Vorbis support...
Why not ask both the people who listen to your stream what format they'd like the music in?
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I support spreading santorum
AAC has a lossless mode, but the default is NOT lossless. I'm good friends with a Dolby engineer that worked for the company while they developed AAC. One internal thing that they didn't want to let out is that AAC is better in every way than Dolby Digital AC3.
Besides, for good lossless, we have Ogg FLAC.
As far as the frame jitter issue goes, any decent CD player that has a 16-frame buffer (a whole whopping 256 bytes -- could be cache on the D/A chip) could effectively eliminate jitter. Period. In modern CD-players, it's not an issue, regardless of what your friendly neighborhood audio store will say. Same with "greening" cd's. It's psuedoscience that sounds feasible, but in reality is a load of crap.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
You could try Foobar 2000 for Windows. ;)
I haven't tried any Ogg/Vorbis streaming with it, but please post
some links if you're not afraid of the hordes
Providing a pre-recorded stream in more than one lossy format would require twice as much storage on the server. Providing a live stream in more than one lossy format would require twice as much computing power. Some people can't afford to rent that.
Any /. reader could figure out how to get their computer to play any streaming format ever made, but that doesn't do anything for folks not as "enlightened" / "have more of a life" than us. While OGG is certainly a very nice format, if the basic premise of the streaming is to provide a service of interest to mainly non-technical folks -- like those *primarily* into 80's music -- then you might have to consider the possibility of not using the *coolest* format and opt instead for the most *available* format.