recommended player in front of BBP

I would say that depends entirely on the content you have and how you want to present it.

You can use winamp or even an Ipod for simple sequential lists.

For more complex playout, you might want to consider the kind of software that broadcasters use. There are several variants out there, some free, most not. I use the Simian system from http://www.bsiusa.com

I would choose wimamp myself for this task as you will get better quality from the stream as you are bringing it in digitally instead of the analog connection from the Barix Exstreamer.
Set up a small playlist in winamp where you copy the URL of your stream in 3 or 4 times, save this playlist and set winamp to repaeat and random. Then run the playlist, (also drop a shortcut to this into the startup directory if you want this to auto-run from startup) this seems to be the most stable method to keep winamp running if the stream drops.
Sometimes tho, winamp will bork altogether and freeze during buffering.. use a free silence detector (such as pira.cz silence detector) to close winamp and re-start your playlist if winamp does freeze. I use this method on a few sites and gives great unmanned results.
Use logmein as a backup just in case you need to manually shut/restart winamp or the PC.

Heya..
We remove the barix shortly and replace it by a mpx rebroadcaster over a digital (dish to dish) link. The barix’s audio transport protocol (mp3) caused a lot of overshoots at the transmitter. But most important.. it harmed the audio.. we lost quality. It sounded like a 128Kb mp3 file. If you dont have another way to get the audio to the transmitter..well then use the barix..i dont recommend it.

We used it for a year… want to buy one ?

Joop

Stationx,

Nobody said the Barix sounds rubbish. They simply stated that you *can* get better quality, in many cases, by eliminating the un-needed DAC/ADC process between the two, and to take it right into the computer with Winamp. Secondly… Winamp already does what you describe the Barix doing with switching between live feeds and local backup audio.

The problem Joop Krauthausen presented with the Barix was because of misuse. Did you notice Joop mentioned they were running the already pre-emphasized & clipped audio through it, with their broadcast processing on the encoder side? Thought you would pick that up from the fact they cared about peak control at all. That’s the problem there, and has nothing specifically to do with the Barix unit.

"Winamp will stop every now and then" is also unfounded. I’ve operated 200 machines running Winamp before, for 4.5 years at one particular NOC, with no issues whatsoever with Winamp. This is just my personal experience. Your personal experience in at least 1 case (you didn’t specify) Winamp stopped at least 1 time and you never figured out what caused it or if it was even Winamp that caused it. Are you aware that Windows NT itself (at least up to XP last i tested) has a bug in the audio subsystems where the machine will just NOT make any audio at all after 365 days of uptime, and you will have to reboot the machine?

You stated that RTP sounds "very close to WAVE quality", where RTP means "Real-time Transmission Protocol". In other words, it is not a codec, it doesn’t define what codecs should be used, nor what the format of audio or video used is at all. You could, for instance, use RTP to send 5mHz DSD or 8kbps Speex. Or send only video. Maybe check out whatever product/s you’re referring to, and what codecs they are using, and then make that part of your personal opinion.

Don’t mean to pick on you, but if you’re going to state something technical as an objective fact, not subjective personal opinion, then please back it up with some proof that stands up to applicable scientific protocols.

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Joop, you need to have a lossless unfiltered STL, or you MUST run your audio processing at the transmitter. Any lossy codec will cause the loss of peak control, it’s not anything’s "fault" including layer-3 or the Barix.