Jack. I have it on my Station Playlist, but I use this instead. Easier to watch.
http://icecast01.loudcaster.com/status.xsl

I have used this plug in for Winamp. It works great and gives you a graph for the listener trend for the past hour.
http://www.winamp.com/plugin/sam-statistic-relays/122864

Thank you trip and reaper. The kind of statistics I am looking for are regarding unique listeners, how long they listened, what they heard and what songs did djbot play and when were they played. For the stations on my centova servers, stats will show me on a google map where each listener was located, what they listened to, how long they listened etc.

In general I don't like winamp, but I attempted to install the plugin and found nothing but ads for SAM and Easycast. I don't use either of them.

Thanks anyway

I had recently asked Brandon about monthly TLH for 2 of my stations. He said that is one of the things they are working on. It should be something that I believe will be available in your broadcaster dashboard. Not sure how detailed it will be or if it will show any demographics or anything like that.

That is good news reaper. I am very impressed with the improvements being made here. Not only do I notice major improvements, but a lot of little things, too. Unfortunately, I am really discouraged with this project. I tested live broadcasting several times and it seemed to go well until last night when I was set up and ready to go live and I could not stay connected for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I have my hand on the plug.

Sorry to hear that. As you may or may not know, I have 2 live stations here and consider myself lucky because things have been working flawless for a few months. Please post any questions that you might have, we may be able to help your situation. There are several broadcasters here that are willing to help.

Two things. As far as the popping in and out while live I suggest you set your gap killer to -30.0 or 29.5 and see if that stops the cutting in and out. Also it may be a bandwidth problem. make sure your son or daughter is not uploading files or video+audio chatting on Yahoo or anywhere else. I had a problem with my stepson sneaking around and doing so while I was sleeping and it took me a while to catch on to his antics. Plus he would try and play Peddle To The Meddle on my computer while the live broadcast was going on. I had to buy a super computer in case he snuck in and did that while I was sleeping.

If you have a wireless router make sure its encrypted and the pass is not too easy.

Last but not least if your running anything other than Windows XP you'll need the folling computer config or better:

AMD Phenom II X4 945 processor 3.00 Ghz 64 bit (very important)
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.
1TB HDD with at least 500 GB's of music.
All songs encoded in 192K Mp3 CBR.

If you follow this to the T your station will be hickup free (even when you surf the web and test other songs from say iTunes).

Hope this helps.

Real Album Rock
http://thelegacyrocks.24ex.com

Thank you reaper and thelegacy for your input.

I suspect it is either a bandwidth problem or is related to the fact that the Loudcaster server is East Coast and I am West Coast. I have business class internet = to T1, but there is a huge amount of traffic on that connection. Even with heavy traffic, it pings at several times what a home internet connection upspeed would be.

I use XP Pro SP3 and my studio software (VirtualDJ Pro) has a CPU monitor on it that rarely goes over 25% for more than a second. I have 3.5 TB on 4 physical drives plus another 500GB external firewire drive. 2GB ram. The only thing wireless I have is my Sennheiser headset. I really don't think it is my computer.

I tried installing "PingPlotter" to trace where the breakdown occurs, but I could never interpret the results.

As far as I know, I don't have gap killer. I don't use SAM.

UPDATE: Now I just tested live on Loudcaster and it was a disaster again. Then I connected to my Centovacast server (East coast) which I have never used for live broadcasting and guess what...it was flawless. Unfortunately I can't use anything that requires royalty payments on that server. So apparently it isn't my computer or my internet connection, it is either somewhere in the network path to Loudcaster or at Loudcaster.

Maybe it would help if there was a buffer of some kind at the Loudcaster end of the wire?

Do you know how to do a traceroute? If not, check out this link and it will tell you how to. Post your results. Just do a traceroute to www.loudcaster.com.

http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/troubleshooter/traceroute.html

Jack, hang in there. At least you know it's not your internet connection, and that's a big thing right there. I have a froggy connection, and I just got tired of it doing what yours is, so I just stopped broadcasting live.
But, yesterday, mine got dead air for at least 60 seconds. So, the fact is, its somewhere in the LC connections.

In the old forum there was a post with the link to check the Loudcaster server status. It was herku or something like that. Does anyone have that link?

I will make another attempt to do a traceroute.

His connection could be stable but also could have a bad hop between him and Loudcaster.

At one time I had a bad hop between me and L365, I called my ISP and they cleared up the issue. ISP's will work together to clean up bad switch overs. If it's a bad hop, it can be remedied.

Thanks reaper & trip. I ran the tracert executable twice. As soon as it finished, it disappears. Is there a log file somewhere? I couldn't find one and I don't see any means for posting pictures here.

Anyway, it goes quite fast up to line 12 which is:
ae-4-90.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net
Lines 13-20 are Request timed out.

That took 20-30 seconds. I didn't have a stop-watch handy so I am just guessing.

The thing is, I still don't know what it means or what to do about it.

I discovered the following link that will do a traceroute: http://www.domaintools.com/research/traceroute/?query=64.94.136.5

Here are the results:

1. 2.66ms 2.87ms 3.81ms 66.249.16.2
2. 2.62ms 3.05ms 3.64ms 64.246.161.201
3. 6.68ms 7.30ms 6.65ms igr1-pe2.blh.fibercloud.net
4. 10.59ms 9.34ms 8.64ms 12.119.199.41
5. 10.59ms 11.92ms 8.55ms cr1.st6wa.ip.att.net
6. 7.54ms 7.37ms 21.67ms 12.123.46.5
7. 68.63ms 11.33ms 5.57ms 12.90.77.10
8. 44.62ms 29.45ms 27.56ms border6.po2-bbnet2.sef.pnap.net
9. * * * Request Timed Out
10. * * * Request Timed Out

Still not sure what it means.

That would be a concern. You will usually get %100 packet loss on your end if behind a firewall, but you are getting timouts like you mention, that could be your problem. These hops could be owned by the same company like Verizon, AT&T or some other communications company. Contact your ISP and see what they say.

Not sure why your command prompt is disappearing though, that's also kinda weird.

This is from my laptop which is wireless.

1 1 ms 2 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 17 ms 9 ms 9 ms 192.168.1.1
3 10 ms 12 ms 9 ms csw01dlthmn-gbe-3-47.eucl.wi.charter.com [96.34.
25.172]
4 11 ms 13 ms 9 ms crr01dlthmn-gbe-6-0-0.eucl.wi.charter.com [96.34
.16.12]
5 17 ms 18 ms 16 ms crr01stcdmn-gbe-3-0-0.stcd.mn.charter.com [96.34
.16.240]
6 16 ms 17 ms 18 ms bbr01stcdmn-0-3-0-2.stcd.mn.charter.com [96.34.2
.212]
7 28 ms 33 ms 29 ms 96-34-0-118.static.unas.mo.charter.com [96.34.0.
118]
8 51 ms 52 ms 50 ms bbr02ashbva-tge-0-0-0-6.ashb.va.charter.com [96.
34.0.59]
9 51 ms 50 ms 51 ms prr01ashbva-tge-2-4.ashb.va.charter.com [96.34.3
.67]
10 * * * Request timed out.
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 * * * Request timed out.
13 * * * Request timed out.
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 54 ms 51 ms 53 ms proxy.heroku.com [174.129.212.2]

The last hop is Loudcaster. Not sure why I am getting the timeouts as well. My ISP is Charter Communications, which could explain my stable connection, they appear to handle all connections up to the timeout.

Well, the breakdown is at Level3 communications in Washington, DC, not far from Loudcaster in Delaware and a long way from Los Angeles, CA. Level3 has no relationship with my ISP except a lawsuit regarding net overload because Level 3 is the provider for Netflix.

At this point I know the problem is on the network. I don't believe I can do anything about that. I don't have the problem with my other servers. The best or easiest solution appears to be switching to LoudCity or SWcast and using my other servers...or dropping the project completely. I don't want to pull the plug after just having one of The Isley Brothers record my station ID's.

Have you tried going through a VPN? Sometimes this can solve bad hop issues. I went through Hotspot shield when I had a similar problem. Guess what it cleared it all up. when you go through Hotspot shield you'll be hitting a server in Chicago. You could also try various proxy servers and see if that helps too. You may have to pay for a good proxy but there are several good uses for a proxy. Especially if you use chat clients to take requests. Let me know what Hotspot Shield does for you.

Real Album Rock
http://thelegacyrocks.24ex.com

Jack, I know when I had my stream at Loudcity, using my servers, I never had a problem. But here I do. So, you can take that as advice any way you wish. :)

Thanks trip, I think I have figured out what the problem is. It will just take a few weeks to fix it, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. Good luck to you.

Sorry we couldn't help. I can only guess what could be your problem and you seem to know your way around a computer so I wont offer any more suggestions and insult your intelligence.

I will offer this last one though, if you have not done so yet, I would submit a support ticket and see what happens.

The reason this does not happen to everyone at once is because it depends on which DJBot their using. At first I had trouble and then it cleared up. One thing I also done was to instead of typing the url I pinged it and got the physical ip address and used that instead. If you use the IP address it routes you straight to the DJBot instead of having a web router do it for you. This also eliminates a hop to go through. This also helps clear up data errors that cause glitches between you and the transcoder. PingPlotter will give you the IP address the url leads to. When any server gives me an address like:

free.freeshoutcast.com:3490 I'd ping free.freeshoutcast.com:3490 and get that IP address. Then use that instead. That is only an example.

Real Album Rock
http://thelegacyrocks.24ex.com

What?

Well, thelegacy, I pinged djbot01, got the ip, and my live broadcast was better. I stayed connected for 2 songs. I am somewhat certain that the problem does not originate at my location because I connected to another station I have that is located on a server in NY and let it run live for 24 hours without any glitches at all. I understand that doesn't eliminate a network problem, but it is a good indication it isn't a problem on my computer or my router or with my software.

I really appreciate all of the suggestions and tips and I have learned a lot, but I am pragmatic and completely discouraged. I think my station will go off the air on the 10th, but I will try again in a few months and see if anything has changed. By then perhaps something, somewhere will have changed and the problem will have fixed itself.

This thread was originally about statistics, and as a suggestion for sometime in the future, the statistics I get on my other server include how many people disconnected when a track was playing, how many tuned in when a track was playing, how many people heard a track, most listened to track, the ip of each listener, how long they listened, what country/state/province they were in, what player they used, and graphs of trends. I find these things to be useful, but I was comptroller at an entertainment company in Culver City and maybe more of a "suit" than the rest of you.

When I started in radio (a long time ago), there was no playlist. A station that I worked at in Sacramento, CA, the playlist was: take a record from the top of the stack and put it on the bottom. When I was music director, I didn't have playlists, I had guidelines that gave dj's a lot of discretion. We were at the top of the market. Just playing what you like may work best.

But anyway, my point is that even in a hobby, statistics can be useful. There have been a lot of changes and improvements here, so when I try again in a few months I will probably be amazed. That is, if they let me back in.

"There goes the last DJ"....you don't need a weatherman to tell you which way corporate radio blows!.

Sorry to see you go if you do Jack :(

Well Doc, thanks. Do you think they're gonna hang me high, as Tom Petty says? I really believe that internet radio is the future of broadcasting. Where I lived for the last 27 years probably has the worst broadcast radio in the world...Hollywood, CA. During those years I drove back and forth between Hollywood and Sacramento quite often and discovered the best broadcast radio is in little one horse towns. It's really not my taste in music, but there was an awesome station in Merced, CA that played the most amazing trance music. Unfortunately, it was either highly directional or low power because it only lasted for a few miles.

But with more and more hot-spots and smart phones and new technology, listening in the car to internet radio will be easier, cheaper, and better. The thing is, Jack-FM, Jill-FM, and Bob Radio are all bots and they sound like it no matter how much they try not to. I may be old-fashioned, but I like to hear a dj say "HI" between records.

Jack...are you considering leaving because your LIVE shows don't make it through to LIVE as you would like?. Just curious Jack. I too would like to do a few weekly LIVE shows and I do have RadioBoss for that. I agree, a REAL human is nice to have sometimes. And I too agree, that internet radio will or is the way-to-go, and maybe, just maybe, bring back that almost forgotten word...."DJ"

Yes Doc. I could be wrong, and no doubt someone will tell me so, but I think that I have more personality than DJbot01, and I think that I can pick the music better, segue better, and mix better, too. Also, there are some times of the day I would like to put more emphasis on one genre than another, but DJbot01 doesn't do that. Without saying a word, you can tell when there is a human at the controls. For whatever reason, I can't stay connected for a live broadcast. I am not blaming anyone, but it doesn't work for me and I give up trying to figure out why. It may be that I am just too far from the server. I am really disappointed because I do like the setup here and the features get better every day.

radiowayne wonders if Jack is trying to be live while wireless. radiowayne has noticed over the 11+ years that he has been webcasting that even though a few folks can successfully webcast live via wireless most folks have issues and need to be hardwired.

Wayne G. aka radiowayne

Jack i know this sounds silly, but sometimes a VPN will allow you to go through a different series of hops sometimes eliminating the problem. However I did notice a few small hick ups on my station switching from live to DJ Bot during the ID. It only happened a few times but none the less it was a glitch I've noticed in beta. The fact that your other station does not mess up means its not your computer, but again the hop to Loudcaster could be faulty. I'm sure in a few months the glitch will be totally ironed out.

I love your stats idea. I too want to know how many web listeners I have, Mp3 listeners, AAC+ listeners which I can get by bringing up the two separate DNAS's however there is no way to tell how many web listeners no is there a way to see the IP's so I can't pull up their state and city. I always like to know where Progressive Rock fans are these days to try and advertise my station in those areas. Also it helps to know how the word is spread about Loudcaster.

Real Album Rock
http://thelegacyrocks.24ex.com

On my end I've tried the graphical statistics relays on Simplecast but the application always crashes. For the longest time I've used Radio Toolbox but inexplicably it will no longer allow me to enter user names and passwords for the servers :( .

A little birdie told me that stats could be available soon. Not sure when exactly though.

re: TheLegacy

I signed up for a VPN (HideMyAss) and checked the route and it is totally different. The first thing I noticed is that when using a VPN I am unable to connect to this forum. I loose the connection in Arlington, VA.

Yesterday when I had only a few listeners, I tried live broadcasting with 32KB MP3 and was able to stay on the air for 3 hours with djbot01 only kicking in about 3 times for very brief periods. That was without the VPN. I have no idea how it sounded though.

I will try live again later today using 64KB and the VPN, but right now I have to many listeners to be experimenting.

I think it would be less confusing for listeners if the djbot could be turned off manually so that they don't hear a different song. By now listeners here are used to hearing dead air. At least I am.

>I think it would be less confusing for listeners if the djbot could be turned off manually so that they don't hear a different song. By now listeners here are used to hearing dead air. At least I am.

Jack been suggested, requested, it ain't gonna happen apparently. That's why I gave up on live broadcasting. Some broadcasters here are in the right area and don't have the problem. But there are a lot of us who do.

"I think it would be less confusing for listeners if the djbot could be turned off manually so that they don't hear a different song. By now listeners here are used to hearing dead air. At least I am."

I really agree with this, or at least have a 3 to 5 second delay before DJBot kicks in. It seems like DJBot is very sensitive to dead air, (which is OK, that "tingle" means it's working) but sometimes when I switch from the news stream to music, for example, the DJBot kicks in for about 1 to 2 sec. before the music resumes.

I would love to have some more informative stats. I'm being patient.

re: thelegacy

OK, I tried the VPN. Even at 32KB it cut out after about 1 minute.

Hmmm try btguard. Depending on the ISP you may need to try several before you get it right.

@Jack by chance are you using a router?

Reaper: Yes. It is SMC8014. I have Business Class Internet = to T1. I have Static IP's. The slowest hop in the path is between Arlington, Va & Loudcaster. Second slowest was between me and HMA in Los Angeles.

I am just curious what kind of bandwidth you have. Try these links and do some testing. I have residential internet (I pay for 3Mb up and 25Mb Down), stream four 128k streams up. What you have should handle what you are trying to do. The one thing about using a router verses a switch is your not getting full bandwidth to all computers that are on a router. My set up is from my cable modem, it goes to my Linksys wired/wireless switch to a 3Com 10/100 SuperStacker 24 port switch. I get full bandwidth to all computers (7) on my network including the wireless computers.

http://www.speedtest.net/
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

I have 5 IP's. Each computer is directly wired the router which is connected directly to the internet. It is a WAN router, not a LAN router.

I tried switching to Verizon, but they don't have Business Internet in my area. I tried to add Verizon Residential in addition to what I have, but they won't send an installer, so I told them . . . well, you can guess what I told them. I am still looking for a second provider, but have no luck so far. There is a 4g wireless internet provider in my area, but I am skeptical of anything wireless. Everyone wants a term contract and I don't want to get stuck for 2 years with something that doesn't work. Even the newspaper has a term contract.

That really sux! Not sure if this would help but I have all my machines running through Google's DNS. Their primary is 8.8.8.8 and secondary 8.8.4.4. It could be me but when I switched over to their DNS my internet connection became more stable.

We have what's called Clearwire, a wireless ISP up here. It is actually made by the same guy that started Sprint back in the day. It's a good alternative to a dial up connection but their put-through was terrible. OK for surfing the web and emailing but no gaming or streaming. It was a 3 Meg connection (3 MB Down and 512 up I think).

I saw only now that by clicking on the channel name on the stats page I have the average listeners and peak listeners, day by day....goooood job Brandon!

I agree with @oldwolf. The only thing I notice is the stats are the same no matter what station I look at. It appears to be an aggregate of the 3 stations instead of a breakdown for each station. Maybe this is a first release and the bugs will be fixed as things go forward.

Oh, and one more thing I noticed was there were two days where I had peek listeners in the 60's and 0 listener hours for the day. Just wanted to add that too.

Gee sorry, I didn't know you couldn't voice an opinion about these NEW stats on a separate thread such as I had. This thread here deals with just about everything so what's the difference????. And maybe it is just a "first release" but it would be nice to have a heads-up as to what's going on....

I could be (and probably am) wrong, but the new stats don't look right to me (based on what I have been seeing on the old stats page). Anyway, it's a good start and great to know that we are being heard.

@Doc, I'm just trying to keep comments about Stats in one thread. It's much easier for everyone to review this thread verses 5 or 6 threads about the same subject. It had nothing to do with what you said. Your posts or comments will still get reviewed either way.

I understand that but I'm talking about these NEW stats (daily, etc) not the other page we can access.

(http://icecast01.loudcaster.com/status.xsl)