I’m at my wits end with an audio artifact issue that I’m having. I am running ShoutCast v2 and every channel that my stream is on with Roku has artifacts. The artifacts are on TuneIn, ShoutCast and Third Wave Ska channel. However this only is an issue on the Roku. This is not happening on PC, Ipad or AppleTV in Shoutcast and TuneIn apps. BellTown was kind enough to do alot of work to isolate the issue (thank you) concerning Roku treating metadata as sound. Every service that I use has a support staff to discuss this with. I have discussed this with WaveStreaming, ShoutCast, and TuneIn, all of them say that it’s Roku not being configured properly.
However, I cannot find any way to contact Roku developers support. The support page from Roku is for end users only. They have no contacts and suggest this forum. I cannot find a Roku developer to respond. Is there anyway that I can get Roku to take a look at my issue?
Practically speaking, somehow they don’t feel compelled to answer most emails - it’s survival of the fittest (or naggiest). So be very explicit yours is not rhetoric question. And if you have Daddy BigBucks, be sure to mention it
As belltown mentioned in the thread you linked to, it is not normal for a Shoutcast server to include the ICY-Metadata unless you specifically request it. The fact that your server is sending it in every case would suggest that there’s a configuration issue on your end. I think it’s unlikely that contacting Roku support would provide you any more insight than that.
With that in mind, however, Roku added support for MP3 metadata to the Audio SceneGraph component in firmware 7.2, albeit woefully underdocumented. It’s not clear if that could be used for ICY metadata or not…
Thank you TheEndless.
Dang it, this is the first time that I heard that the metadata is not included by default. It makes sense that it would be. How else would you be able to artist, title and album art for an individual song? Well it’s off to post the same email to Roku, ShoutCast and WaveStreaming support.
Thanks for all the help people. It’s certainly been more of an education than I was ready to receive.
Typically, if you want ICY metadata to be included, you’d add the “Icy-MetaData:1” header to your request to let the Shoutcast server know that you support it. It’s possible, if you send “Icy-MetaData: 0” instead that it could explicitly disable the metadata, so you might give that a try.
We have done some research into this issue, and as far as we know right now, the problem has nothing to do with the embedded metadata. The problem seems to be that the Shoutcast encoder is framing the MP3 packets differently than we’ve seen anywhere else. We are still looking into this.
It turns out that the problem is indeed the embedded metadata, and it appears that for some reason the server is returning the metadata when it sees Roku/DVP in the UserAgent string. Perhaps there is some server configuration that can be changed to stop it from doing this.
Are you asking for a change in the server configuration from Wavestreaming, Shoutcast or Roku? Two out of Three of those require my involvement and I don’t want to hold things up.
“ThirdWaveSka” wrote:
Are you asking for a change in the server configuration from Wavestreaming, Shoutcast or Roku? Two out of Three of those require my involvement and I don’t want to hold things up.
It certainly looks like the Wavestreaming server is doing something it shouldn’t. However, the good news is that there is a workaround from the Roku side of things – have the roAudioPlayer send a User-Agent HTTP header with something other than the default “Roku/DVP”. I noticed the same thing as Aaron as I was playing around with my own audio player trying to track down the problem. With that workaround I was able to play your stream flawlessly.
I believe TheEndless is the developer of the Roku SHOUTcast channel. If he doesn’t respond here, you might want to send him a PM to see if there’s anything he can do to implement the workaround and get your stream playing on that channel.
Also, you can test out your audio stream on my SIMPLEAUDIOPLAYER Private Channel. I’ve just updated it (version 1.9.2) with the workaround.
And let me know if you need help figuring out how to implement the workaround in your own channel.
Fantastic! Since my channel is developed through InstantTVChannel.com, I would need to let them know how to implement the workaround so, please, if someone let me know how to pass that along, I would love it. I also forwarded the findings onto Wavestreaming to see if they can simply resolve it on their end. Thank you everybody
~~ @ThirdWaveSka - can you pls change the thread topic? Like click the edit “pen” on your first post and change to something like “Troubles Wavestreaming to Roku”. Current title by now is misleading~~
No, I’m sorry, I meant, what should I tell InstantTVChannel what the workaround should be? I know how to contact them. I want to make sure that I understand how to resolve this so I can help everyone else in the future without having to bother all you nice folks.
“ThirdWaveSka” wrote:
ThirdWaveSka:No, I’m sorry, I meant, what should I tell InstantTVChannel what the workaround should be? I know how to contact them. I want to make sure that I understand how to resolve this so I can help everyone else in the future without having to bother all you nice folks.
The workaround is to add a User-Agent HTTP request header for the roAudioPlayer object that is something other than “Roku/DVP…”.
Patch applied and submitted to Roku for approval. Hoping for the best. Will post results. Thanks everybody. TuneIn still has artifacts and doesn’t show album art. ThirdWaveSka doesn’t even play on Shoutcast channel. Darkest before the dawn
Received approval for channel update today. Unfortunately the work around did not work. Artifacts are still present in ThirdWaveSka channel version 1.1, Shoutcast and TuneIn. Basically in every Roku stream. Sound is glorious in every other outlet.
“ThirdWaveSka” wrote:
Received approval for channel update today. Unfortunately the work around did not work. Artifacts are still present in ThirdWaveSka channel version 1.1, Shoutcast and TuneIn. Basically in every Roku stream. Sound is glorious in every other outlet.
The channel is still sending the same HTTP headers as before. Specifically, the User-Agent header is a “Roku” user-agent string, which as we previously determined was causing the ShoutCast server to embed meta-data in the mp3 audio stream.
I still think the workaround will work – but it has to be implemented correctly.
GET / HTTP/1.1
Connection: close
Host: stereo.wavestreamer.com:2735
User-Agent: Roku/DVP-7.20 (027.20E04100A)
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
icy-notice1:<BR>This stream requires <a href="http://www.winamp.com">Winamp</a><BR>
icy-notice2:SHOUTcast DNAS/posix(linux x64) v2.4.7.256<BR>
icy-name:Third Wave Ska
icy-genre:Punk
icy-br:128
icy-url:http://www.thirdwaveska.com
icy-pub:1
content-type:audio/mpeg
icy-metaint:16384
X-Clacks-Overhead:GNU Terry Pratchett
Thank you for taking a look. I will get back with both InstantTVChannel and Wavestreaming. Is there any chance that this can be fixed on the Roku end or are these workarounds my only possibility of keeping my channel? I realize that the fix is to filter the header data but is this a concern that Roku is interested in?
Your AudioUserAgent string on the Theme page in Instant TV Channel is blank. Put something in it, like “thirdska” (without the quotes). Then try the stream again.
Thank you OddScott, That did resolve the issue of the artifacts on my InstantTVChannel. However now none of the metadata is showing up. So here’s how I stand right now.
First of all, there are no issues with any stream or metadata on any platform outside of Roku.
On the Shoutcast App, my Third Wave Ska station buffers to 19% then says “Unfortunately, an error has occurred during playback”. This has been occurring ever since I started the station back up two months ago.
On the TuneIn App. Third Wave Ska takes about 2 or 3 minutes to buffer and then has artifacts. No Metadata.
On ThirdWaveSka App. No Artifacts. No Metadata, about 2 or 3 minutes to buffer. It does take the full buffering because it’s about a full song behind the live station.
I rebooted the server stream. Verified metadata and clean sound on PC, tablet, Amazon store, Apple TV.
I truly appreciate everyone who has worked on this with me. I would have cancelled this channel along time ago if it wasn’t for this forum. I really believe in the Roku Platform and think it’s vital to be on it for anything entertainment wise going forward.
