Stream Drop Outs

[the buzzz]

Hi there - most likely plenty of threads on this but I am running my station via RadioBoss cloud for the bulk of the week, scheduling shows and breaks etc. That works fine. On a Friday I go live for breakfast radio for 3 hours - so take over the cloud platform and broadcast from the licensed software also of course RadioBoss. Then after the live broadcast finishes, I disconnect which defaults back to the cloud. Question: should I be doing it this way??? Or should I be using the broadcast system all the time and utilising the playlists? Lately the stream keeps cutting out on all platforms so wondering if this is the cause? Please help as this will effect listener numbers and advertisers as I’ve already had messages about it. Thanks Daz

 

[djsoft]

Then after the live broadcast finishes, I disconnect which defaults back to the cloud. Question: should I be doing it this way??? Or should I be using the broadcast system all the time and utilising the playlists? Lately the stream keeps cutting out on all platforms so wondering if this is the cause?

You can connect Live stream when you need it, and the rest of the time it will play from the Cloud. It's was designed to support such kind of operation, and Live<->Cloud switch is performed automatically.
About stream dropping, does it only drop when you stream Live or it happens regardless?

 

[the buzzz]

Thanks. I'll leave it the way it is. As for the constant drop-outs - it's happening with both cloud and live. Really frustrating as it's the same with atleast 5 streaming apps I've tried, so not a problem that end. The song will start...stop...kick in...stop...kick in...etc.

 

[djsoft]

Thanks. I'll leave it the way it is. As for the constant drop-outs - it's happening with both cloud and live. Really frustrating as it's the same with atleast 5 streaming apps I've tried, so not a problem that end. The song will start...stop...kick in...stop...kick in...etc.

I'm not sure why this happens. Our monitoring does not detect any issues, so I don't think we can really do anything about it.
One possible reasons is that some customers can abuse streaming or their radios can be a target of DDoS attack, which will also affect other streams on the same physical server. In the past few months we have started removing those "abusing" accounts, so things should become better.

 

[Peter Tate]

Hi Dazz
There could be a few reasons for this buddy. The main one being - Australia is a whole world away....
If you think of the global internet listening audiences as one big audience of people.... You will soon realise the big numbers are Europe and the USA... Being from a broadcasting background... you want your transmitter in the middle of this action. In internet streaming this is where you locate your streaming server. Then the nerdy types will tell you to locate that in a New York datacentre. As it's on US data networks, plus US soil, plus has good acess to Europe. Well that is all true, until you wake up to the fact this is pointless if you can't feed your server with a good link in the first place. For us in Australia you want a streaming server on the West Coast of USA.
I've not looked lately, but I'm guessing RadioBoss Cloud is housted in Europe some where. Not good for us in Australia!

 

[djsoft]

I've not looked lately, but I'm guessing RadioBoss Cloud is housted in Europe some where. Not good for us in Australia!

We have a selection of servers. When you order an account, you choose either Europe or North America. The country can't be selected, the server is assigned automatically depending on various factors.
We can manually change the server, when possible, to a concrete country/state but it's done in exceptional cases and it's not actually moving of the account - account is deleted on one server and a new account is created on another server.

 

[Peter Tate]

We have a selection of servers. When you order an account, you choose either Europe or North America. The country can't be selected, the server is assigned automatically depending on various factors.
We can manually change the server, when possible, to a concrete country/state but it's done in exceptional cases and it's not actually moving of the account - account is deleted on one server and a new account is created on another server.

When you are in Australia it requires a little bit of "outside the box" thinking. This is due to our distance from the major networks. You need to be a little crafty to get your feed to where it needs to go reliably.

 

[djsoft]

When you are in Australia it requires a little bit of "outside the box" thinking. This is due to our distance from the major networks. You need to be a little crafty to get your feed to where it needs to go reliably.

I know some datacenters have better connectivity to Australia than others. There are also datacenters in Australia, I guess this will be the best option. Maybe we'll consider setting up servers there if there's enough demand for it.