Does Roon play AAC+ formats (as opposed to AAC) for internet radio? Also I presume it does not playback FLAC (eg Europa Jazz Radio) same as Tidal for internet radio as yet??
No to FLAC, can’t see any AAC+ stations amongst my stations, so I suspect that’s no also, but I can’t recall testing it.
Came across Absolute radio in the UK trialling FLAC ~1Mb/sec! Would be great see Roon support this. They’re also trialling ‘Opus’, see their gumpf below - sounds like they’re hoping this may become a new standard?
http://absoluteradio.co.uk/listen/links/
Listen labs
Opus Streaming Trial
Absolute Radio Labs read about the Xiph.org Foundation’s efforts to finally free the internet world of the potentially litigious and quasi-legal status of audio codecs that are current in use for audio streaming. They have developed a powerful new, royalty free audio codec called the Opus Interactive Multimedia Codec.
We’ve been avid fans of their open source and open license work in the past by adopting the OGG-VORBIS and OGG-FLAC codecs for streaming but this new codec is really important for a few reasons:
The code behind the codec is completely open source and platform agnostic.
All the patents involved are under a FLOSS-compatible license. Usage of technology covered by these patents is licensed under the liberal BSD license and is completely royalty free.
Technology that has been donated from Skype means very good quality at low bitrates.
Technology imported from past Xiph.org projects means superb, near lossless quality at higher bitrates.
Opus is very, very new but already the Internet standards body, the IETF, has approved the codec as a new de-facto standard for next generation internet browsers and devices. The Mozilla foundation, the lovely people behind the Firefox web browser, has also already implemented the codec into the latest beta version of the browser.
So, with all this in mind, we wanted to have a play! Because everything is very beta currently we had to get the gaffer tape out in order to get some streams going so please don’t shout at us if it’s a bit temperamental! Bear in mind you will be connecting to a beta version of a streaming server that is being fed from a beta encoder using a beta codec library. It’s pretty darn BETA! (Have we said it’s beta enough yet?)
Absolute Radio Labs managed to get it working and working pretty well if we do say ourselves. We believe this makes us the first radio station in the world to stream in opus, broadcasting 24/7 across its stations.
Currently the easiest way to listen is to download the latest Firefox and click on one of the streaming links below:
Absolute Radio Opus stream URLs
Low Bitrate 24k: http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/ar24.opus
Standard Bitrate 64k: http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/ar64.opus
High Bitrate 96k: http://icecast.timlradio.co.uk/ar96.opus
Absolute Classic Rock Opus stream URLs
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How do you think it compares to our low-bitrate AAC+/HE streams or our high bitrate MP3 and OGG streams? Let us know! Use our normal contact pages to get in touch.
Lossless Streaming Trial (OGG-FLAC)
We are currently broadcasting our services without compression using OGG-FLAC technology. This will no doubt be pleasing for all you audiophiles out there but do bear the following points in mind:
This is a trial - we don’t guarantee it to be perfect!
Lossless streaming takes up a LOT of bandwidth. It averages 1 MBit/sec.
Broadband only!
If you have a heavily contended or just generally ropey broadband connection you will experience buffering
If your broadband connection has restrictions (such as download limits) bear this in mind. You may end up using all your allowance very quickly.
You can find the links to our OGG-FLAC streams further up this page. We recommend you download and use VLC. It’s available for most platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Syllable, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, QNX) and supports OGG-FLAC streaming.
We would appreciate any feedback regarding performance or whether you find this useful. Use our normal contact pages.
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Any update on the ogg-flac streams as the absolute radio 1MB one is very good via VLC
I see that the Beeb is currently trialling a FLAC simulcast of Radio 3. Not geofenced either. Yippee!
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I came across more internet stations streaming lossless FLAC, hope Roon can enable FLAC streaming on its internet radio…
HE-AAC’s Internet radio does not play correctly.
URL1 http://ais-sa1.streamon.fm/7028_48k.aac
URL2 http://whurhd.streamon.fm/hls/WHUR.m3u8
URL3 https://nhkradioakr1-i.akamaihd.net/hls/live/511633/1-r1/1-r1-01.m3u8
These URLs are stereo streams originally 44.1 kHz (URL 1&2) and 48 kHz (URL 3).
However Roon will be playing in monaural at 22 kHz (URL 1&2) and 24 kHz (URL 3).
I think Roon does not decode SBR of HE-AAC.