No Audio? March 26 2020

shaywalters · 2020-03-27T03:18:01.588Z

I just noticed that the Othernet Radio is not playing. The news seems to be populating normally. Under the Tuner/Status, I show Audio BPS = 0, and the stream always shows “files”, never “audio”. I didn’t really listen to the radio much at all, I’m just reporting it in case it’s useful to anyone else to know about this.

jlorman · 2020-03-27T04:09:12.147Z

I’m seeing the same.

vasir · 2020-03-27T13:25:55.768Z

Same here , don’t care much about VOA type news … anything better?

shaywalters · 2020-03-27T13:49:31.461Z

I like BBC but depending on your point of view, that might be “VOA-like”. I’d like to have something that doesn’t have much music because the music sounds so bad at such a low bit rate.

vasir · 2020-03-27T14:15:03.469Z

I agree with you on the music stream. Seems like every time I listen to the radio stream (if it works) it is always VOA with my luck.

Jruys · 2020-03-28T06:53:52.258Z

You are aware audio is not always available? When you see the audio bitrate slowly go down there’s no audio in the stream. Or look at the led next to the audio plug on the 3.05 Dreamcatcher - when it blinks there’s an audio feed.

Not sure if there’s a formal schedule when audio starts/stops.

(edit: right now I’m getting audio on the EU beam)

shaywalters · 2020-03-28T12:03:13.031Z

No, I was not aware of that. I’m on the US beam, BTW. I’ve had my Dreamcatcher for many months and I had never noticed the audio being absent previously. It’s been 3-4 days that I haven’t seen any audio - I had waited (I think) two days before I reported it in case it was a temporary thing. It’s not an issue for me because I rarely listened to the audio, but it had always been present when I had looked at it previously. Thanks for the info.

wthelms07 · 2020-04-01T14:14:11.521Z

I’m on the US beam too and noticed yesterday there was no audio as well. A few weeks ago when I set my receiver up I noticed the audio was always on, which is because we more have bandwidth on the US satellite. Not sure if something has changed since then. Maybe they’re devoting more bandwidth to news and wiki articles or there could be radio content licensing issues. Not Sure. The US example Othernet server (http://71.206.20.63/) does not have audio as well.

shaywalters · 2020-04-01T14:36:53.726Z

My understanding, such as it is , is that when the recent frequency/beam-type change was made a couple/few months ago, that our bandwidth had been decreased from 20Kb/s to 10Kb/s which made it the same as the EU beam. But for a long time after that, I hadn’t noticed any change in the audio feed - it had always been available when I looked. Perhaps this is one side-effect of the coronavirus mitigation efforts, that someone in the chain of people who makes that available isn’t able to get things done. I have no idea what’s involved in doing that, I’m only speculating. It’s not something I wanted to be complaining about since I so rarely listen to it, I just wanted to bring it to (whoever)'s attention in case it was something that needed action.

wthelms07 · 2020-04-01T14:47:35.003Z

HERE’S YOUR ANSWER:

The US satellite’s bandwidth was decreased to match satellite bandwidth for Europe. I expect the audio to be similar to that of Europe in the past. That is not constant and on a schedule.

Here’s the full post to answer your questions:

New Frequency SES-2/North America 12.1032 GHz / beam type 164

The frequency on SES-2 will change to 12.1032 GHz. The Beam type is: 164 This will happen next week. As soon as a date and time is confirmed, it will be posted here. The bitrate in the US is being reduced to match the bitrate in Europe. Both beams will now be ~10 kbps. In the coming months, there will be changes to the content and playout schedule. And hopefully new features will be added. Please manually change the frequency in the Tuner app to 12.1032 GHz [image] Don’t forget to switch …

wthelms07 · 2020-04-01T14:50:27.677Z

Oh, yeah I see what you’re saying now. I’ve been off and on the last 24 hours and have not seen the audio come back. I think your theory may be right.

kenbarbi · 2020-04-01T18:16:06.847Z

I’m sure that’s what is happening, My system on http://71.206.20.63/ hasn’t had audio in awhile, but my data is rock solid. I believe Syed said his plan for now was to restrict audio broadcasting in favor of data. Ken

wthelms07 · 2020-04-06T18:21:37.479Z

Audio is currently streaming. Looks like data is stream too, but at a lower rate. 6th April at 02:21PM EST