Stereo Feeds or Separate?

[Adenosine]

What is better, a stereo feed or 2 separate feeds? What are the Pros for the Stereo and then again why do some people dislike them? Is a Stereo feed just a trend or are they sticking around?

 

[jasonpeoria911]

Well it depends on what your wanting to broadcast. Sometimes it's handy to broadcast PD in left speaker and FD in right speaker. Some may opt to slide the audio left or right or listen to both at same time. Technically they can do the same thing with 2 winamp instances but easier to fire up just 1 winamp. The stereo audio for a scanner feed really doesn't sound much different than the old mono mode.

Jason

 

[n0nhp]

I don't know if stereo will stick around, My feed has only been stereo for about 11 years. First as a Shoutcast feed, then with ScanAmerica and finally with RR. When I set it up in the first place, the stereo feed made more sense to me in a bandwidth and overhead situation. At this point, most of my listeners are comfortable with the feed as is and I know that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Those that really want single feeds and data from the channels they are listening to will log on to the ProScan feeds I still provide. They get a couple of users a day as most users just want the audio.
Do what makes sense to you in your situation.

Bruce

 

[ScanYak]

Great question. Those that broadcast in stereo think about it a lot and wonder if the listeners are satisfied with it in that format. I have been broadcasting for a number of years left side fire, right side police. My thought is you have a less chance of missing any action. Now that I have a Droid X my feed will stay stereo for some time. I don't have to launch multiple players to hear both agencies. Will stereo last? For me it will.

 

[gmclam]

Two separate mono feeds. If users want to direct one feed to one speaker and another feed to another speaker, they can do so. It is much nice to have individual feeds, and is essential if you have alpha tags.

 

[one11sgt]

I found that the volume on my stereo feed had to be turned up much higher than my mono feed when listening. And when turning it up high enough to hear well, I would still hear the left channel faintly when I only wanted to hear the right and vice versa. I went back to providing mono feeds. My two cents.

 

[Rleshane]

Like Everything, It Depends

I went with Stereo for my feed, police left, fire right.

The only down side is that if police and fire are both talking at the same time, it can be a little hard to follow along (like two people in the room talking at the same time). But for me, the advantages outweigh this one disadvantage.

First of all, if something truely exciting happens, I can pull the archive files up in Audacity and seperate the left and right channels to listen to them individually.

If listening at a computer, and you don't want to listen to both (I always want to listen to both for my home town) someone can adjust the balance to only listen to police (left) or fire (right). Granted, with two different mono feeds you could just fire up two instances of winamp (or whatever you use to listen), but that's not an option with most cell phones I don't think. I know with my iPhone I can only listen to one feed at a time, so if I didn't have a stereo feed with police AND fire, I wouldn't be able to listen to both while driving around.

My advice, you'll find folks that feel both ways. It's your feed, do what YOU will most enjoy, then share it for others on RR to enjoy if they like.

 

[Rleshane]

A couple warnings regarding Stereo

I started with mono, but went to stereo as soon as I got past two technical issues that had me stumped for the longest time. I see you already have a stereo feed up and running, but I'll mention them here to hopefully save others who read this some time if they decide to go stereo.

Issue 1: I was using the mic input on a laptop. Most laptop mic inputs are MONO. I hadn't realized this. You need to use a true stereo line in on your computer, OR, if using a laptop that doesn't have a stereo line in, you need to come up with a USB solution. If this is the case, let me know and I can find a link to what I ended up using for you.

Issue 2: The RR version of ScannerCast has a bug that doesn't broadcast your feed as stereo even if it's in stereo (end result is it sounds all garbled and useless). You need to use the regular version of ScannerCast which allows you to manually set the bit rate.

 

[adams_jb]

Help Needed

Hello!

I am trying to set up a stereo feed and have the same issues with mono input. can you please send me information on what you used to overcome this?

Thanks in Advance,

Jason
(jadams@bdvfd.org)

 

[ScanYak]

Getting a good clean stereo signal into the PC is one of the key challanges. I use Griffin Technology: iMic - USB Audio Interface and I'm very pleased with it.

 

[Rleshane]

Hello!

I am trying to set up a stereo feed and have the same issues with mono input. can you please send me information on what you used to overcome this?

Thanks in Advance,

Jason
(jadams@bdvfd.org)

The one I used is Amazon.com: Behringer UFO202 Audio Interface: Musical Instruments

That, combined with using the full version of scanner cast, NOT the RadioReference version, and it all worked like magic. You can get the full version here...
K1PGV's ScannerCast

Good luck!