Re: CBGB Archive-Patti

["Anthony J. Rzepela" <rzepelaa>]

> Jeff Riedle wrote:
> > 
> > I just went to the Patti show at CBGB's on Rocktropolis 'cuz I figured I'd
> > record the material that I missed last Wednesday, and when I played it back
> > I hear a static-like hiss sound every few seconds throughout the recording.

Okay, I spent a few hours playing with this over
the past couple of days and here's what I've 
discovered.... 

The hiss and static come from traffic that isn't
delivered quickly enough to your machine for processing
and so the player puts noise in. 

Visually, you can anticipate these things by looking
at the green-on-black display. Little green lightning 
flashes indicate some loss. Little red ones indicate 
a big chunk of lost data.  (and it only gets worse
from there). 

You should turn on the "Statistics" display (and then 
select the "Details >>>" button for the full picture) 
if you want real numbers. It's very informative. 

One of the constantly-recalculated
numbers is the number of lost packets in the last
30 seconds of play. My first attempt to record 
was really trashed by the traffic slowdowns. That darn
number NEVER reached zero... :( In other words, 
there wasn't a 30-second stretch on my tape 
without some of this g-damn noise. 

Then, I discovered "Buffered" mode. It was put into
the software to allow folks to hear at least some of
the higher-bandwidth content on "skinny-pipe" 
connections.  Lost _no_ packets. None. Everything
came through. (Whee! Can we talk about how
tiring it was to hear "Waiting BZZZT Under BZZZT ground.."?) 

Of course, if your connection is appreciably slower 
than that of your selected clip (the higher quality 
RA file is ~80Kb/s) you will have huge gaps of
silence while your slow connection tries to buffer
data off the 'net for your player to chew through. 
You can't, for example, use a 33.6 connection to get 
an uninterrupted audition of the ~80Kb/s clip. 

The slowness of the connection means that buffered content
gets exhausted by the player before your machine is able 
to download a sufficiently large number of new 
 bits for smooth playback. 

However, if you are getting a percentage loss of 
less than 5% over the preceding 30 seconds, or if
your effective rate keeps hovering _close_ to the 
clip's required rate over the course of five minute
of listening, Buffering may help.

The buffering options in the V 5.0 RA player are 
set using the "Preferences" dialog box. (This box will 
not be enabled if a clip is playing. Hit the STOP
button to enable the "Preferences" dialog box.)

You can either buffer the entire clip (which is impossible 
for this show - whether that is because of size of
the clip or options which have been set on the server
I do not know) or buffer a minimum number of seconds
before playback begins.

It makes sense to try to set the "minimum number of
seconds to buffer" to a very high number, but I
never got it to do more than (I think) 300 seconds
(or, five minutes....). 

Of course, I didn't realize my first night that 
I wasn't running in "buffered play" mode at all. 
The buffer settings were meaningless. To activate 
this feature, you have to reset (again, using the
"preferences" dialog box) your RA preferences and
"tell" RA that your Internet connection is providing 
less bandwidth than is required by your preferred
clip. 

[breath.]

And another thing. The ~80Kb/s clip just dies on
me before "Because the Night" starts, every time.

"BTN" starts at about 40 minutes and 17 seconds 
into this file. What I've had to do, and what has worked
for me without fail, is to manually drag the pointer PAST 
the 40:22 mark, BEFORE it gets to the 40:17 mark, 
and slowly and carefully bring it
back down to 40:22. Then I can release it, 
and it resumes playing.  

Yes, I miss the very start of the song. Beats 
missing out on the rest of the clip. 

I don't have an arsenal of hardware on which to
run experiments, so this may be happening to me and 
me only.

HTH.