Radio stream disconnects after a few minutes.

I have an online .asx radio stream that works great in Windows Media Player. However, after linking it to a new yourmuze station and testing it from my android phone I realized the audio stream would disconnect after about 3 minutes. I tested the same station directly from yourmuze.fm from my PC and it also disconnected after a few minutes.

I know this stream works because because I can listen to it from my PC without any problems in an embedded Windows Media Player object.

How can I diagnose what the problem is? Why is yourmuze.fm disconnecting from my radio stream after a few minutes?

This is the stream for reference: http://www.mainstreamvideos.com/hitmen/music/playlist.asx

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Pete

Hmmm. I added it to my favourites in YOURMUZE and listened to it on the PC and it seems to play just fine. I hit stop after 7.5 mins because it looked like it would play forever.

You seem to be saying that you are finding that this URL http://www.yourmuze.fm/webplayer/?id=67188 stops playing on your PC after a few minutes? Is that what you are saying? Does it automatically resume after a while? What happens in the interval?

Hey Shep, thanks for your reply. This is a very frustrating issue and I really appreciate your help.

Yes. I am simply pasting the url: http://www.yourmuze.fm/webplayer/?id=67188 directly into my PC's browser. I am listening to the stream through the builtin yourmuze player. After a few minutes, the stream will stop, the player will display "initializing", it plays a loop of "connecting to your muze" and then starts my stream again on a different song for a few minutes until it fails again.

I performed some tests this evening at 8:00pm central US time.

Test 1: I pasted the url in my browser and started the player. I listened to my stream for 4 minutes and 31 seconds until it stopped.

Test 2: I let the player re-connect to my stream from test 1 and listened for over 15 minutes without any issues. I eventually stopped the stream manually and closed the window.

Test 3: I opened a new browser window, pasted in the url and started the player. Below are the results:

a. Played for 1:21 before stopping and restarting
b. Played for 4:05 before stopping and restarting
c. Played for 0:18 before stopping and restarting
d. Played for 2:40 before stopping and restarting

* I closed the window at this point.

I am completely stumped. It will stop playing during a song so it's not like it's failing due to an invalid file type or something. I have tried different PC's, different networks, I have tried cell phones (using the url above and via the app and mobile site on both android and apple phones) and all seem to stop playing after a few minutes.

Is there a way to see if my web hosting service might be causing the problem somehow? I don't think it is because http://www.mainstreamvideos.com/hitmen/randommusic.html plays the exact same stream in windows media player without any issue at all.

Like I say this is very frustrating and I really appreciate any help. Believe me, I realize it sounds like I just want you to listen to my stream but honestly I don't, I just want this resolved.

Thanks,
Pete

That's what happens when your internet access is too slow for the YOURMUZE bitrate. 64 kbits for the flashplayer, I think. It doesn't sound like anything to do with the radio station. (In any case, I think YOURMUZE plays tones whenever it loses a station's feed.) The fact that your station plays okay for me pretty much rules out station problems.

Try listening to some other stations here http://www.yourmuze.fm/stations_list and I expect you will encounter the same problem.

Have you added it to your YOURMUZE favourites? If so, set the bitrate to something low and try listening to the station. Should play okay now.

Thanks Shep I really appreciate your feedback. I have tested from various networks including very high speed networks and I still experience problems. I have tried adjusting the bit rate as well to no effect.

I am beginning to think my MP3's are just too large. I'm going to try and compress them and re-test. Do you happen to know much about MP3 compression? What is the recommended compression for streaming? If not, don't worry, I'll research and test this weekend.

Thanks again,
Pete.

Have you tried that?

I just listened to another 20mins (using 20kbit rate as I'm on slowish wireless BB and I also set the browser to masquerade as an iPad to force the AAC format) and there was not one instance of buffering.

The symptoms you describe sound like what I'd expect if a listener (even though on a "fast network" to the general internet) nevertheless experienced an erratic or congested link to the YOURMUZE server from that fast network.

My ping times to YOURMUZE.FM exceed 1 second, so I'd say that demonstrates that ping times aren't important. :)