AAC Support?

[Unknown Artist]

Any plans on supporting AAC streams? Seems like it would help quite a few streams.

I know TuneIn uses jPlayer (specially developed for them) to allow for AAC support. jPlayer is already in use on shoutcast.com ~ thoughts occur

[DrO]

AAC has already been supported by SHOUTcast for a decade or so...

the better question / request is support for AAC inside of some form of container (be it FLV or MP4) instead of just providing it as ADTS-AAC as is currently done which Flash and HTML5 players do not support as-is (it only works if inside of a container or for Flash, if working with a Flash Policy Server and a sockets connection can be made and then the Flash instance containerises the base data).

[Unknown Artist]

Ah well I meant on http://shoutcast.com , sorry for the confusion. Seems a bit silly that the play button is disabled when the stream is AAC.

[DrO]

and as you note about the other service that they're using a custom player to do it. as-is certain existing SHOUTcast AAC streams could be supported but as that's not yet common, its easier to just generically disable it until there's a greater volume of compatible setups that could work without hacks and workarounds.

[Unknown Artist]

Sounds like AAC might be native now to some browsers.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15568884/how-can-i-use-html5-audio-tag-to-play-aac-file

I just found that AAC is Native to Google Chrome: (at least from my version)
45.0.2454.85 (64-bit)

[DrO]

this is why HTML5 audio playback is a mess as there's either a lack of consistency or it takes ages for everyone to get to the same level of support (look how long it took for MP3 to generally be assumed playable in all cases).

as AAC in MP4 seems to be the only true common factor for those implementations that support AAC via HTML5 (and also Flash), the only realistic option is to have the DNAS provide a compatible AAC in MP4 stream and go with the 'standard' way.

[Unknown Artist]

Well the good news at least in this case is that for you guys you won't need to navigate getting your own special version of jPlayer. Now you could wait even longer for all browsers to just work, or you could find a piece of javascript laying around to detect whether AAC is native in browser. ~I seem to recall a function that checked for mp3, ogg and wav I think, should be the same for aac/mp4~

[DrO]

i'm aware of the means to check for such support (as it's used on the interim builds for hiding the HTML5 control on browsers that don't support MP3 playback due to not having the codecs installed) but it has no effect on someone trying to directly play the stream url in-browser or via a HTML5 player.

as i've already detailed, the DNAS is what needs to become compatible with what is being done in the space and if Chrome is support plain AAC, good for them but we're not going to go for specific options unless that is the only way to do it (which it is not).

so as already mentioned, the only true solution is to have MP4+AAC streams provided from the DNAS and that is not currently something it can do and so AAC in browser / HTML5 player is a no-go and is something that the DNAS needs to get onboard with doing sooner rather than later as well as broadcasters when that option eventually becomes available.