streaming audio keeps buffering after 30 seconds

[jreynolds]

When I listen to broadcasts on shoutcast.com, everything sounds great for exactly thirty seconds of playing time, then bam......Silence....the task bar reads: buffer:0%, then of course it increases up to 100%and plays for thirty more seconds and repeats the irritating process. I was using winamp 2.0 so I thought it might be the old version causing this and downloaded version 2.76. So now I have Real Player, Wamp2.0 and 2.76 all on my hard drive. I have tons of available memory and a very fast processor so I know it has nothing to with that. I have also looked through countless threads to find someone who has the exact same problem and have found similarities to other problems but nothing identicle. Please help.

[jreynolds]

I forgot to mention that I have a 56 K modem.

[cokeman73]

Are you on a dialup connection? If so, what streams do you select to stream at? I suspect that you're selecting "56k", cos you're on a 56k modem. If so, this is your problem. You need to listen to those stations/streams which broadcast at 28k - 33.6k, tops.

Not going to go into a long explanation, but basically, streaming at 56k is not viable over a 56k modem - a 56k modem doesn't actually connect at this speed consistenly, so you can't, therefore, stream at this bandwidth.

If, however, you'd been able to stream previously, but now suddenly cannot (as happened to me), I don't know what the reason is. Could be because there've been more connections at your phone exchange; honestly don't know. My solution was fairly radical - as I now depend on SHOUTcast, so much (!!) - but what I did was to get an ISDN line installed, with Anytime priviledges, so I can connect at anytime for a fixed monthly fee, but with no call charges.

But the chances are that you're simply streaming at too high a bandwidth for your type of connection. Mail me @ cokeman73@btinternet.com if you want to discuss this further.

Hope this opens a door of discovery for you!

i.