OUT NOW! The Official SHOUtcast iPhone app [Archive]

SC_faisal

11th January 2009, 23:49

IT'S FINALLY HERE...the official SHOUTcast App for the iPhone and iPod Touch is now available for FREE at the iTunes App Store.

With the SHOUTcast Radio App, you can:

1. Listen to over 26,000 SHOUTcast Radio stations

2. Save Your Favorites

3. "Shuffle Shake" - Feeling adventurous? Shake your iPhone and iPod Touch to get a random station. You never know what you might get!

http://www.blogcdn.com/blog.shoutcast.com/media/2009/01/sciphonescreenshot.jpg

Click here to download the SHOUTcast iPhone app from the iTunes App Store (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299647180&mt=8)

NOTE: If you would like to play high quality station streams (ie. 128k MP3) on your iPhone or iPod Touch through the SHOUTcast Radio App, then you will need to enable high bandwidth streams by going into your Settings. You will only have to do this once.

To enable high quality streams on the SHOUTcast Radio App:

1. Install the SHOUTcast Radio app from the iTunes store

2. Tap on the "Settings" icon from your home screen

3. Flick down to the "SHOUTcast" settings. Tap on the "SHOUTcast" Menu

4. Tap the switch for "Allow hi-bit streams" to ON

5. Exit out of the Settings screen by tapping on your Home button and return to the SHOUTcast App

You should now be able to play high quality SHOUTcast Radio streams over 3G or WiFi.

Please give us your feedback by posting comments below. Happy listening.

Click here to download the SHOUTcast iPhone app from the iTunes App Store (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299647180&mt=8)

Jkey

12th January 2009, 04:47

Thanks faisal !.

fc*uk

12th January 2009, 11:36

Great job guys!

The only problem I've had with the app is that sometimes over 3g it will say "no internet connection found" when trying to sort by genre or manually search the yp. I've found that the simple work around to this is to have a station bookmarked and start playing the stream.

All in all this is a great app! Keep up the good work!

SC_faisal

12th January 2009, 15:57

Originally posted by fc*uk
Great job guys!

The only problem I've had with the app is that sometimes over 3g it will say "no internet connection found" when trying to sort by genre or manually search the yp. I've found that the simple work around to this is to have a station bookmarked and start playing the stream.

All in all this is a great app! Keep up the good work!

Correct. Im also seeing the connection issue sporadically and trying to nail down the cause.

Thanks!
f.

Justar

14th January 2009, 17:03

Heyja Guys.
First, my English isn't very well, but I'll try my best.
I hope it's ok to Post my Problem into this Thread, otherwise please move it. ^.~

I downloaded the APP and it's very cool.
But everytime i want to listen to my radio, it's says "Connection Error", so i decided to Restart my Ipod + Internet Connection.
But I still got this Message.
The radio got some other Streams too, so i tried one of them and they work fine.

Just the "Only DJ's & Electro" doesn't work, but the counter shows 465 Listeners. :S

I'll hope you can understand me.

p.s. it's M2radio.fr

Greets
Justar

Greg_E

20th January 2009, 14:27

Thanks! I have confirmed that this palys aac+v2 at 32k on an iTouch, so this should be good for 3G connections too. Now I just have to work out a few bugs with our IT department so that I can get it to work on the campus wireless.

Greg_E

20th January 2009, 20:26

I have a report that it is only mono audio from AAC+ streams, anyone care to comment on this? Wish they weren't so stupid expensive or I might buy one to try.

fc*uk

20th January 2009, 21:33

Greg, must have been a mono stream. I randomly picked one and it was stereo.

Greg_E

21st January 2009, 00:02

Could you check mine? It could be an aac+v1 versus aac+v2 issue since that's where the parametric stereo comes into play. Search for "Onondaga" we should be the only station listed with that keyword. If it happens to be a basketball game, then it will be in mono as that is all we have coming from the gym. I think there aren't any games for a couple of days so shouldn't be a problem.

fc*uk

21st January 2009, 00:21

Huh. That is somewhat odd. When listening through the iPhone's internal speaker everything is mono (mp3 and aac+ no matter what the bitrate.).

I picked a mono stream and got the same results.

Greg_E

21st January 2009, 01:01

With the internal speaker it should be mono since you should only have a single speaker. But the line/headphone out should hopefully be stereo if it was done with the Coding Technologies codec. Did you hit my stream with a single device or with two different devices? I have two connections within about 45 seconds from the same IP, and the IP traces back to ATT in Florida.

fc*uk

21st January 2009, 01:12

Headphone wise all were stereo (even the mono stream).

I did hit your stream twice with one iPhone within about 45 seconds ... but I am no where near FL. I'm in Michigan! :)

I thought that the iPhone had two external speakers. But I just googled that and found out I am dead wrong; the other one is the mic.

Greg_E

21st January 2009, 02:10

Well your IP runs through ATT in Florida, which seems very far away from the nearest backbone.

That would be dual ear mono which is what it should be doing with a mono station, but if it isn't decoding the PS element it would also do the same with our stereo station. Guess I need to track one of these devices down to listen for my self. The person that told me they are only outputting mono (not decoding the PS element) knows more about this stuff than any of the rest of us ever will, so I kind of take it that he is right. But it is also possible that he used an early version of the app which is why I need to check on this somehow.

Have to send a couple more emails at work tomorrow to see if I can track down an iTouch that I can borrow.

fc*uk

21st January 2009, 02:15

I figured as much ... if there is any way I can further help you out, just let me know via pm (I am more likely to respond more quickly that way).

Greg_E

23rd January 2009, 13:36

OK, this does play aac+v2 streams, but as expected it plays only the mono portion and at about half the audio bandwidth. Think AM broadcast audio and you'll have a good idea what your stream might sound like if you use aac+v2 encoding. Well, it was a good attempt.

I'll have to wait for the next player to arrive, and that player should be pretty soon, and it will support aac+v2 with full quality (don't know if it will be free yet).

SC_faisal

29th January 2009, 15:10

THANKS for making the SHOUTcast iPhone app the Number 1 Music App in 6 countries: Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal & Spain!

Get yours now: http://*******.com/8w5l86 !!

f.

SC_faisal

29th January 2009, 15:12

Originally posted by Greg_E
OK, this does play aac+v2 streams, but as expected it plays only the mono portion and at about half the audio bandwidth. Think AM broadcast audio and you'll have a good idea what your stream might sound like if you use aac+v2 encoding. Well, it was a good attempt.

I'll have to wait for the next player to arrive, and that player should be pretty soon, and it will support aac+v2 with full quality (don't know if it will be free yet).

Playing AAC and AAC+ sreams and files is a limitation of the iPhone / iPhone SDK and not the SHOUTcast iPhone App. If you would like us to support *true* AAC+ playback, I suggest that we all write to Apple and request them to add it. :-)

f.

Jkey

29th January 2009, 15:37

Originally posted by SC_faisal
THANKS for making the SHOUTcast iPhone app the Number 1 Music App in 6 countries: Finland, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Portugal & Spain!

Get yours now: http://*******.com/8w5l86 !!

f.

see the forum blocked a dodgy link ????????
Email me the link and i will try and get that fixed :)

Greg_E

29th January 2009, 16:41

Originally posted by SC_faisal
Playing AAC and AAC+ sreams and files is a limitation of the iPhone / iPhone SDK and not the SHOUTcast iPhone App. If you would like us to support *true* AAC+ playback, I suggest that we all write to Apple and request them to add it. :-)

f.

I've done this many times now. And oddly enough Apple keeps ignoring me.:mad: It's also strange because they support most other mpeg 4 codecs. In general, Apple's "Holier than Thou" attitude pisses me off. I got the same thing from them (on the phone) when I was trying to price a 16TB storage server, it is more than twice the price of the same thing that I need from Avid Technologies, and the Apple server will not work with one of the applications that I need to run. Let's see $30,000 for an Avid server that I can drop into my existing system and it will work with all my applications, or $60,000+ and I'll have to rip up all the network to put in fiber channel, and it still won't work with everything I need to run. They went on and on about how this big name University and that big name business just put one of these systems in... Blah, Blah, Blah! It's all crap if the machine won't do what I need it to do! Now getting back to the iPhone (and Macs in general) I think they suck because doing real world tasks is so damn hard. I won't own one unless I get it for FREE :mad: Try joining one to your domain sometime (even though apple claims to have fixed the issues). If you don't own an Xserve, you might as well not bother trying.

There is a way to make the iPhone play aac+, but I'm not sure how it was done. I know a future app plays properly from Darwin/QTSS served streams in the LATM encoding, not sure if this other player will work with aac+ shoutcast streams, but knowing where it is coming from, I'm pretty sure it will. The last information that I had was they were waiting for licensing details for the codecs, and I'm not at liberty to say more about the app until it is public. I'm still hoping it will be free because everyone else will "borrow" the codecs.

NoCTrancefe

12th February 2009, 22:29

It seems that it is possible to fully support AAC+v2 on the iPhone, but it has to be done by software decoding. FStream is the only program I know of that does this.

If this option was added I'd use this program by default, what'd also be nice is if we could add a favorite station with it's URL.

dbonilla44

15th February 2009, 13:24

Where exactly is the app download at? I go to the app store and it seems to be hiding somewhere. Any one got a download link??

fc*uk

15th February 2009, 13:58

Search the app store for shoutcast. The first program returned from the search, SHOUTcast Radio, is what you want to get.

This should be the direct link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299647180&mt=8

999thebeat

17th February 2009, 14:59

This is a really cool app, I downloaded it myself and I am totally enjoying it!

EdmtnFireRadio

20th February 2009, 01:59

One thing that I have noticed is that after listening for 2 or 3 minutes I get a buffering msg and the program stops responding. Other applications seem to run fine for hours but this app gives me problems.

Running the software on an iPod Touch using my home WiFi network. Using speedtest.net I consistently get between 3 and 4 meg average download speeds.

/edit - For some reason when I tune into a low bandwidth feed it plays fine. Not really sure why other applications work well with the 128k feeds but at least I was able to figure out a way around the issue.

combustion8

26th February 2009, 17:47

posted a thread about this question a min ago but in case this gets looked at instead:

Love this app!! but can you guys add a feature that auto reconnects when timed out? I have to constantly hit the play button to reconnect... I noticed winamp will auto reconnect by itself.

Johnnyboy928

12th March 2009, 21:03

If I put this up on my site and tell ppl how to use and install can I customize it to install to ppls iphone/itouch and have it set to connect directly to my radio..

thanks in advance...

sdoc

14th May 2009, 18:03

Originally posted by SC_faisal
Correct. Im also seeing the connection issue sporadically and trying to nail down the cause.

Thanks!
f.

was this ever figured out why?

fee

26th May 2009, 14:20

I have a request:

I noticed that the newest version of the iPhone app selects a random station when the user shakes the phone...

I take my iPhone to go running... you can guess the frustrating result.

Can you add an option to Enable/Disable this feature?

Thanks

Johnnyboy928

26th May 2009, 19:14

Great idea... That is annoying... Also apple should of made a setting themselves so someone can disable that feature in the settings...

Originally posted by fee
I have a request:

I noticed that the newest version of the iPhone app selects a random station when the user shakes the phone...

I take my iPhone to go running... you can guess the frustrating result.

Can you add an option to Enable/Disable this feature?

Thanks

Greg_E

26th May 2009, 21:09

Apple should have done a lot of things!:mad: :igor: :weird: :cry:

fee

26th May 2009, 23:13

IMO this shouldn't be Apple's responsibility...

Originally posted by Johnnyboy928
Great idea... That is annoying... Also apple should of made a setting themselves so someone can disable that feature in the settings...

Johnnyboy928

29th May 2009, 00:17

Originally posted by Greg_E
Apple should have done a lot of things!:mad: :igor: :weird: :cry:

LOL well Apple has made a great product and it is the best out there as far as mp3/phone media devices... but yes of course like every product we would like to see more features available...

Fees Post
Its not apple's responsibility
No it is not apples responsibility but I was just saying that it would of been nice if apple would have done so for this reason.

but you can definitely program the APP itself to be able to disable that function.

I have a radio station that a lot of my people use mobile devices to listen on the road or in cases like you and I use them for... So if either company would make the option available to disable that feature it would be nice... lol

I would also like a developers/website station's package that someone could download this app for the iphone or radiobee for the blackberry and it would automatically be tuned in or set to hear the station for which they installed the app for originally.

Most people go to a specific site with a radio station and want it on their mobile device... First they have to install it and then find the station they are looking for. A lot of people would either find other stations or give up at this point.

A lot of people are not that savvy when it comes to that kind of application. So it would be nice to be able to do that as well... Only way around it then is programming it ourselves or hire someone to do it unless we want to wait till the companies do it which probably will not happen since it is a free application.

jmhayes

8th June 2009, 00:05

Can I use this app to play private streams?

I have Shoutcast feeds that aren't in the public directory; I just want to open something like http://foo.bar/listen.pls ... I looked all through the screens for this app and failed to find a way.

Thanks!

fc*uk

8th June 2009, 01:03

No, unfortunately the app only works for streams that are listed in the yp.

jmhayes

8th June 2009, 01:06

Originally posted by fc*uk
No, unfortunately the app only works for streams that are listed in the yp.
Ok, thanks. In the mean time, I found fstream ... works great and is free.

fc*uk

12th June 2009, 14:54

Originally posted by fee
I have a request:

I noticed that the newest version of the iPhone app selects a random station when the user shakes the phone...

I take my iPhone to go running... you can guess the frustrating result.

Can you add an option to Enable/Disable this feature?

Thanks

Go into your iPhones settings and select the shoutcast app. You can turn shake to shuffle on and off.

M5Rahul

3rd July 2009, 20:11

I just installed this APP on my iPhone 3GS and LOVE it!! However, I have two issues with it:

1) Every few minutes, the playback stops with a 'Timeout Error'

2) Occasionally, I get NO volume thru the ear-plugs and I have to STOP and start playback again to get sound!

The latter issue isn't a huge deal, but it sucks that I keep getting a 'Timeout Error' every few minutes and I have to click 'Play' again to resume play!!

Is this a known or isolated issue ? Any fixes in the works if it's a documented issue ?

I usually use it thru WiFi [home and work] and everything else works just perfectly! So, we can def. rule out network issues..

Please post!!! Thanks and keep up the great job!!!:up:

Guspaz

7th July 2009, 18:55

It's not about the iPhone supporting aac+; it does. v1 at least.

When I visit a 32kbit aac+ Shoutcast stream in Safari directly (the iPhone will stream shoutcast directly but obviously won't show song titles), the iPhone opens up the QuickTime streaming interface and starts playing. After half a second, the frequency bumps up from 22KHz to 44KHz as expected.

When I visit the same channel in the official Shoutcast app, it never bumps up the frequency and sticks stuck at 22KHz. It quite frankly sounds horrible, while viewing the Shoutcast stream with the iPhone's own software directly sounds significantly better.

I'm not sure if it supports v2, as it can be hard to tell if something is mono/stereo. But the iPhone *definitely* properly supports aac+ v1 at the very least, and the Shoutcast app doesn't.

This is a problem.

Greg_E

8th July 2009, 02:56

This is new to the 3.0 software, it didn't support aac+ at all before, it was only playing the AAC portion so the frequency response was horrible. If it is now playing v1 streams with full fidelity then they are probably using part of the FAAD decoder which takes too much processor to do the v2 streams. I wish they (Apple) would just buy the damn codec and let everyone use it!

Guspaz

11th July 2009, 08:04

The 3GS has a hugely improved processor (sort of like the difference between a 486 and a Pentium), so it's unlikely that it, at least, doesn't have the power to decode full AAC+.

Furthermore, even on the older iPhone 3G, you can listen to an AAC+ stream (with SBR) while doing other things on the phone; streaming audio in Safari is treated like the iTunes app where you can minimize it while the music plays. While doing this, there isn't any noticeable degradation in performance in other apps, indicating that even on the 3G there is performance to spare.

bbgt

25th July 2009, 21:10

I want to listen to this radiostation:
mms://mms.omropfryslan.nl/omropfryslanlive

How can I manage this on my iPhone and the Shoutcast?

(I inserted this URL in my iTunes on my laptop
but no sound!)

Jkey

25th July 2009, 22:04

That station is using windows media server.
In order for you to listen with the iphone app
the station must provide a shoutcast stream.

bbgt

26th July 2009, 07:16

I am getting sick and tired of this eternal war between
Microsoft and Apple. Obama should do something abt that.
Its really silly.

fc*uk

26th July 2009, 14:03

Originally posted by bbgt
Obama should do something abt that.
Its really silly.

I agree with you, but I would not hold your breath on that one :)

Guspaz

2nd March 2010, 17:17

An update, the iPhone has apparently supported AAC+ v1 in the SDK since OS 2.2. One developer posted a detailed how-to:

http://blog.stormyprods.com/2009/10/supporting-aac-via-iphone-sdk.html (looks like the URL is hidden, I guess a mod needs to approve?)

v2 isn't supported, and it only works on real hardware (as opposed to the SDK simulator). You're stuck in mono, but AAC+ streams are already stuck in mono, so the improvement from 22KHz mono to 44KHz mono is a big one.

I've also had strange issues with the shoutcast app behaving unreliably; dying mid-stream but never timing out (just buffering eternally). Also, when it really does time out, it doesn't attempt to reconnect.

As such, here are my suggestions:

1) The timeout be substantially lowered, or have some way to configure it; it takes a very long time to time out even when it does work

2) The app auto-reconnect when connection is lost

3) AAC+ v1 support be added, since it's there in the SDK

4) Allow adding arbitrary shoutcast streams to the favourites

Unfortunately, the app hasn't been updated since June 11th, 2009, so it looks like it might have been abandoned :(

deveds2

23rd March 2010, 18:42

First, I love having the app. I use it every day.

Second, and I'm probably not the first to report this, but it's BUGGY. Very buggy. Dropped streams is the worse part. Anyone know when this will be fixed? I am constantly having to restart the stream, restart the app to get the stream to start, etc. Very frustrating.

deveds2

24th March 2010, 19:08

Would love to have these features included in the next version:

- It must have the ability resume a stream when signal is reaquired.
- Ability to use premium stream accounts (sky.fm, DI.fm, etc) for commercial free listening
- MUST include an EQ. Not only is the iPod/iPhone sound quality crap (which is why the iPod app inclues an EQ) but stream quality varies. An EQ (even with some simple presets to "warm" the sound) would make using this app much more enjoyable.

deveds2

22nd June 2010, 19:23

Any idea when an iOS 4 version will be released?

Brutish Sailor

22nd June 2010, 20:10

I actually saw a flash player with the EQ built in. I might need to look into this, might be nice to offer on a .mobi website.

odogg

30th June 2010, 02:58

Patiently waiting for an iOS4 version that takes advantage of the new multitasking feature so we can play Shoutcast streams in the background. :)

deveds2

30th June 2010, 03:14

odogg, I agree. I'm concerned that the "time to connect" is much slower on the new OS and this current version that I get a lot of timeouts. Not sure how that gets fixed.

Museter

15th January 2011, 20:02

This is great news for online radio stations. Thanks for this great new product.

Ensuna

29th January 2011, 18:17

Hello all!

I have a own Shoutcast radio station called "HardStation.FM". I have downloaded the Iphone App and installed on my iphone.

I installed to listen to my radio station 24/7. But i cant find it on the shoutcast directory on the App.

But i do find it on the shoutcast.com directory. And i cant find the genre "Hardcore" / "Hardstyle" or "Dance".

My stream is working like it should work, but not with the shoutcast app, can someone tell me whats wrong or what to do ?

http://www.hardstation.fm/content/streamfiles/listen.asx
http://www.hardstation.fm/content/streamfiles/listen.pls
http://www.hardstation.fm/content/streamfiles/listen.ram

I dont know if i am in the right section to ask this, but could not find any kind of forum threads who resolving this kind of problems.

Thanks in advance!