Unable to solve...please help! (barix / stl question)

[Nostalgia]

After 4 pages of comments I have yet to see anyone ask if you have, or suggest that you contact Barix technical support directly. (if I missed such a post then I apologize) I have had excellant response from them whenever I had a problem, including from one "guy" who posts here when he worked for Barix.

Good Luck.

 

[duckfan98]

Hi Nostalgia.

I attempted to contact Barix support for the first week this was happening with no luck. I received one email response and heard nothing back.... I sent approx four emails. A neighboring cluster of stations (25) was looking at Barix / IP point to point for the STL and unfortunately I dont think I can recommend the units after all this mess.

I spent 3 hours last night again taking the station on and off the air trying to get PCM to work with no luck. I installed the IP Intercom firmwares, I downgraded the STL firmwares, I changed the sampling rates; nothing.

I even brought in a WISP Provider to check the point to point link, and they confirmed I was receiving steady dedicated 40+Mbps upload speeds, with 70+ download. It is not an issue with the link... Why cant Barix atleast provide a decent quality compression algorithm if PCM wont work? Something like AAC of Flac, or heck even just MPEG1?

 

[LA_Guy]

24 kHz PCM using Raw UDP didn't work for you? I'm surprised - I have been using it for over a year with zero problems over a Towerstream wireless T1 link that isn't even point to point. It just sits and runs. The only bug I have seen is that in the latest IP Intercom firmware (1.06) the transmitter end of the link shows 'not connected' when it obviously is (audio is passing fine). I am running two Annuncicoms and my link is bi-directional.

I am running a 160 ms buffer which is really all you can do with mono (for stereo you should use 80 ms). The problem si the Barix IPAM 100s only have 64k of buffer.

 

[oldiesstation]

Maybe you just have a bad Barix. Never saw any with this issue,thousands used worlwide. did you email andrew at barix support. maybe you can swap out boxes or even better get the Barix 500.

 

[Kmagrill]

Will the 100s do FLAC? If so, that may be your solution. FLAC is a 4:1 lossless compresion, so when decoded it will have no artifacts.

On the other hand, we're doing PCM with a 100 encoder and a 1000 decoder over a 5 mile, Ubiquity 5.8gHz, link with no problems. Have you hooked up the two boxes over a wired LAN to see if the problem goes away? If it does, then it's your wireless link, If the problem persists on your wired LAN, then it's a Barix issue.

 

[oldiesstation]

No FLAC in Barix,don't know why ,it's open source. I asked Barix about this numerous times.Would be good to have on a T1 when you need room for data.Good suggestion kmagrill on wired lan testing.

 

[duckfan98]

Testing on a 'wired lan' is an impossibility. Taking the Extreamser down from the tower location would require a half day of the station being off the air.

Mpeg works fine, aLaw, uLaw.....all work fine. Just cannot get PCM at any sample rate to stay connected. I even tried buffer sizes from 100 all the way to 4000ms! Still dropped the audio and made distorted sounds. Speed and reliability of the IP link is not the issue.

24 kHz PCM using Raw UDP didn't work for you? I'm surprised -

Didnt work. Same issue, after about 15 seconds of playing it gets that weird 'robotic' like sound...

 

[chriscollins]

I think you have a bad box... You should not have these issues. I would go for a replacement unit at this point.

 

[oldiesstation]

Duckfan check your gmail.sent you a contact phone number..sounds like you may have a defective box.

 

[duckfan98]

Tried installing the firmare that Barix recommended (streaming and streaming client), with brtp....still no luck. After about 45 seconds the audio 'blips' and 'blurps'. I set the RTP delay to anywhere from 80ms (recommended) all the way to 999....with still no difference.

Argh!!!!

 

[richard.vanderveen]

Is there any form of networkmanagement applied to the connection between the two boxes?
For example: maximum bandwith or higher priority applied to certain ports...

 

[Kmagrill]

Testing on a 'wired lan' is an impossibility. Taking the Extreamser down from the tower location would require a half day of the station being off the air.

That's simple. Just put a PC at the site with WinAmp or FooBar on it and let it be the stream receiver for a while. In fact, you can setup a PC to be the stream encoder at the studio too, and can get both encoder and decoder freed up for testing. You should also be able to tell a lot about which box is having trouble by substituting a PC for each end.

 

[dfwhisp]

Good idea about the computer, and by the way, VLC player can receive the rtp stream that the instreamer is sending.

 

[duckfan98]

Good idea about the computer, and by the way, VLC player can receive the rtp stream that the instreamer is sending.

I have a PC running at the tower on the network (it runs Breakaway).

What is the point of even having an exstreamer at the tower if I can just do it this way? Never thought about this before....

 

[Kmagrill]

What is the point of even having an exstreamer at the tower if I can just do it this way? Never thought about this before....

Three reasons:

1. Dedicated boxes don't tend to crash once you have them running properly. Despite great advances in the reliability of newer computers, I still don't think computers can quite claim the same degree of reliability as dedicated streamer hardware.

2. Power. If you have a pair of PCs that consume an average of 200W of power on each end, that's 400W per hour. At 12 cents per kWh, that's about 5 cents per hour. Hmm.... That's not much you say. Well, that's $36.00 per month or about $430 per year. So, your ROI is maybe 18 months and we haven't mentioned the extra air conditioning load to get rid of the waste heat. Basically, the dedicated boxes probably pay for themselves in less than a year.

3. Initial cost. Two new computers still cost more than a dedicated pair of streamers. This isn't as much of a factor if you have spare computers in a closet, but a lot of places don't have good PC spares. Also, even if you do have good spares, once they're busy being streamers, they're lost to any other purpose, so you end up buying new computers later when you need additional units.

 

[richard.vanderveen]

What is the point of even having an exstreamer at the tower if I can just do it this way? Never thought about this before....

Three reasons:

1. Dedicated boxes don't tend to crash once you have them running properly. Despite great advances in the reliability of newer computers, I still don't think computers can quite claim the same degree of reliability as dedicated streamer hardware.

2. Power. If you have a pair of PCs that consume an average of 200W of power on each end, that's 400W per hour. At 12 cents per kWh, that's about 5 cents per hour. Hmm.... That's not much you say. Well, that's $36.00 per month or about $430 per year. So, your ROI is maybe 18 months and we haven't mentioned the extra air conditioning load to get rid of the waste heat. Basically, the dedicated boxes probably pay for themselves in less than a year.

3. Initial cost. Two new computers still cost more than a dedicated pair of streamers. This isn't as much of a factor if you have spare computers in a closet, but a lot of places don't have good PC spares. Also, even if you do have good spares, once they're busy being streamers, they're lost to any other purpose, so you end up buying new computers later when you need additional units.

That doesn't fly when there is a dedicated PC on the location that is handling the processing and therefore part of the 'system' anyway. Then it flies the other way: Using an extra device just ADDS another possible point of failure... My two cents: never use more devices than you absolutely need to. So using the Breakaway PC as the receiving end of the STL is a good idea indeed.