Error: audio stream breaking up

There can be various reasons for disconnections occurring. If there are no apparent issues with our infrastructure or the Internet, please firstly check your encoder configuration in accordance with the instructions given in the corresponding guide.

You might also check that upstream components are working properly:

• if you are streaming an FM radio, check that your capture board is working correctly
• if you are broadcasting a web radio, check that your streaming software (WinAmp, SamBroadcaster, Station Playlist, etc.) is working correctly

Ensure that you have not scheduled a daily restart of your stream (in the general settings for your radio) or if you really need this, specify a time that will not affect the majority of your listeners depending on which country they are listening from. Note, however, that a weekly restart takes place just before dawn on Tuesdays (Swiss time).

If may be that your ADSL line is no longer able to keep up with the data being sent to the server. You should have a minimum equivalent upstream bandwidth (or "upload" speed) to match the total of all streams being uploaded to the server (e.g. for one radio streamed at 128kbs plus another streamed at 48kbs, this gives 130 + 50 = 180kbs).

Generally, radio stations have a dedicated ADSL line for uploading their audio streams to avoid all of the available upstream bandwidth being used up whenever, for example, a large e-mail with an attachment is sent at the same time (bearing in mind that upload speed is never the same as download speed) which would then saturate the line in the upload direction and cause streams to break up (during encoding), meaning in turn that users experience this breakup as the stream is downloaded.

Your ISP may also cause an outage on the line which, however short, will also cause a break in the radio stream.

If your encoder (Oddcast/Edcast etc) is configured to upload metadata to our servers via a text file hosted with another provider and the latter experiences disruption, the stream may also be disrupted!

Also, pay attention to the load on your computer's CPU: make sure that this is not the bottleneck by checking that you have enough memory if you are carrying out other operations in addition to the AAC stream encoding, which is a particularly memory-hungry task!

Note that if all streaming goes down, our teams are notified automatically and will take action immediately. We log all connections and disconnections to the encoder on our incoming stream server and will send you an e-mail notification.

The diagnostics page in your control panel provides access to various information:
The "Network Status" section provides information on the overall status of our infrastructure.
The "Incoming Streaming Servers" section tests that incoming and outgoing streaming servers are working correctly (more information).
Finally, the "Internet Connection" section allows you to test the connection between your server and our infrastructure.