Best setup for RDS?

[Polecat]

Me neither g33ky. It's mighty odd behaviour.

I could almost certainly get back to that point where mpxgen actually worked. But I don't have line of sight into how to address the soundcard connection issue.

And I can't be sure mpxgen will fire up again if I turn the machine off. So, on reflection, I think it's time to throw in the towel.

My experience with these 3 software RDS solutions (using WINDOWS 10) leads me to conclude:

Stereotool:
Feature rich
Takes time to optimise
Hungry on system resources
Works well with Winamp
Other players may require virtual soundcard
Free with ad in RDS

Mpxgen
Simple limiter/rds encoder
Royal PITA in Windows 10
Linux experts may get it working
Free

JMPX
Simple limiter/rds encoder
Easy install
Requires a virtual soundcard
Works well
Free

Note: I used Virtual Audio Cable as my virtual soundcard. It works with Traktor and Stereo Tool as well as JMPX, it's easy to use and costs £24. For anyone that's plugged together decks, mixers and amps, it's a simple concept to understand.

Hope that's useful to board members.

With special thanks to g33ky for help and patience with mpxgen. I bailed long after you suggested it but no regrets...learned a lot.

[XXL]

G33ky what are you running mpxgen on ?
I’m on raspbian
./mpxgen doesn’t work. It try’s to open a directory instead.

[g33ky]

G33ky what are you running mpxgen on ?
I’m on raspbian
./mpxgen doesn’t work. It try’s to open a directory instead.

I'm running it on Debian Linux on an old laptop from around 2005. I don't know how well a Raspberry Pi will handle it, mine were too laggy to work.

When you type "./mpxgen" make sure there are no spaces. Same goes for you @Polecat. Does it still report its a directory? If so:

cd mpxgen
cd src
make
./mpxgen (again no spaces)

[Polecat]

I'm outta there g33ky. See my previous post.

Uninstalled everything and getting back to normal life lol.

[XXL]

Says mpxgen is up to date. I can open it by running as admin (sudo) but not with the simple ./mpxgen. I need this to work because the following won’t work.

ffmpeg -i "http://198.245.62.81:8008/listen.pls" -af "lowpass=f=15000" | cd /home/pi/mpxgen/src && sudo ./mpxgen

Not my shoutcast link btw, it’s playback uk.

[g33ky]

Says mpxgen is up to date. I can open it by running as admin (sudo) but not with the simple ./mpxgen. I need this to work because the following won’t work.

ffmpeg -i "http://198.245.62.81:8008/listen.pls" -af "lowpass=f=15000" | cd /home/pi/mpxgen/src && sudo ./mpxgen

Not my shoutcast link btw, it’s playback uk.

You're piping it wrong. Once you're in the mpxgen/src directory, this should be your pipe:

sudo bash -c 'ffmpeg -i "http://198.245.62.81:8008" -af "lowpass=f=15000" -f wav - | ./mpxgen --audio - --ps PLAYBACK'

I'll explain why it's like this: the 'sudo bash -c' bit at the beginning means to run the entire sequence as sudo, both ffmpeg and mpxgen (saves a headache). Your URL is also wrong, you don't want the "listen.pls" bit at the end, since that just contains the stream address, not the actual data in the audio stream, meaning ffmpeg (and therefore mpxgen) will just be like "WTF this isnt audio bruv". The "-f wav -" bit will just send it to the pipe (in this case mpxgen). I realise now that my earlier comment is wrong, as I forgot to include the "-f wav -" bit at the end. This should now work fine.

I hope this works, if not just hit me up. It works on my machine.

[BlackBeard]

Little idea for a link receiver with RDS & stereo for those who are on a really tight budget. Costs 20€ in total.

- get 2x HP, Dell or Thinkpad/Lenovo mini computers (those small square boxes) somewhere for free; they're used in many places
===> many companies throw them away at some point because they get new ones on a regular basis
- get a cheap 128gb SSD (12€ on Aliexpress or somewhere else, for example this one: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005004786749783.html)
- get a 384 kHz DAC from Aliexpress (https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005004358120260.html)

I tried a similar USB-C DAC from Action on my Win 10 machine, worked flawlessly as a soundcard, but only on 48 kHz. The DAC from Ali works with USB-C and USB-A using an adaptor that comes with it. Take the second computer's RAM stick out and use it to max out the RAM on the first machine. Then put the SSD in and install your favourite operating system - I'd recommend Ubuntu Mate as it's relatively lightweight but still convenient and has good support. If you wanna use windows, there's this super tiny Windows 7 version (actually free): https://archive.org/download/windows-7x ... nano-final. Then you block the internet access and only allow connections to the local network, as shown here: https://geekoverdose.wordpress.com/2020 ... allow-lan/

MPX or RDS can be generated using MPXgen, JMPX, Airomate or StereoTool. A working & stable crack of StereoTool from a reputable release group is available online - same goes for Airomate. Have a look at Sanet st for StereoTool. For Airomate have a look here: https://www.piratenpraten nl/schemas/Diversen/. Install the program with internet/wifi disabled, put in the key, block the software in the firewall and you're good - after that you can enable wifi again of course. Please purchase the products if you can though!

[Frequent Lee]

I used to do exactly that using a 3g mobile internet usb dongle with the receiver pc on the block roof using winamp to get the audio stream in 128k aac+ into breakaway audio processor with airomate for rds. The resulting mpx straight into the transmitter and the audio quality was right up there with Galaxy, Radio 1 and the rest. No link noise, no drifty horns. Bonus using TeamViewer to do any necessary on air tweaks to the audio. It was about £10 a week in data top ups for the dongle back in 2008-2010 when I was using that setup.