Listening to radio via a PC

Posted by: pjl2 on 22 February 2013

I am puzzled! Having recently acquired a NAD wireless USB DAC I am now able to listen to on-line radio through my system via my PC, which is nice. My puzzle is this. What is the difference between listening to say BBC Radio 4 by visiting their website and clicking on the 'listen live' option, or accessing the station via a media player such as WMP 11? Is there any difference or does it amount to exactly the same thing? From what can see it seems that the station website may be using their own player when listening live, but I'm not sure. What do people usually do?

 

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but it is all a voyage of discovery for me.

 

Peter

Posted on: 23 February 2013 by {OdS}
Originally Posted by pjl2:

I am puzzled! Having recently acquired a NAD wireless USB DAC I am now able to listen to on-line radio through my system via my PC, which is nice. My puzzle is this. What is the difference between listening to say BBC Radio 4 by visiting their website and clicking on the 'listen live' option, or accessing the station via a media player such as WMP 11? Is there any difference or does it amount to exactly the same thing? From what can see it seems that the station website may be using their own player when listening live, but I'm not sure. What do people usually do?

 

Please forgive my ignorance on this, but it is all a voyage of discovery for me.

 

Peter

 

Peter,

 

There shouldn't be any difference. Basically, the radio station provides a source and you chose which client to use to connect to it. You might chose to directly use the player embedded on the radio web page (which is often using flash technology) or any media player you might have installed on your PC (like Windows media player in your case).

 

Hope that helps!

 

Christian

Posted on: 24 February 2013 by pjl2

Christian,

 

Many thanks for that. I notice that with some on-line stations they play when 'listen live' is clicked but they also provide the option to click on another media player such as Realplayer or WMP. What is the point of this? Are there sound quality implications?

 

This is what I can't quite grasp. It seems to me that the easiest option is just to go to the station homepage and click 'listen live'. Why bother to involve a seperate media player at all? Especially as the station homepage usually provides info on what's being played that would not be available listening through WMP for example. Thanks.

 

Peter

 

Posted on: 24 February 2013 by {OdS}

Well, it depends on your use case, really. If you just want to occasionally listen to the radio and you have a PC with a web browser installed, using the live player embedded on the web page of the radio station might be all you'll ever need.

 

Now, imagine that you want to dedicate a PC to multimedia duties. Or you just want to be able to switch from a radio station to another very easily. Wouldn't it be more practical to have all your favorite radio stations bookmarked in your favorite multimedia player, rather than having to launch a web browser and start surfing the web for all your radio stations? If you open the live feed via a dedicated application (like Windows media player in your case), feeds will be stored in your history (and you can manually save them locally, too), allowing you to easily re-open them at a later time.

 

There are other use cases of course, depending on users needs!

 

Christian

Posted on: 24 February 2013 by pjl2

Christian,

 

Many thanks again, that makes sense now. I will need to decide which route to take. I suspect that with continued use the best option for my needs will become obvious.

 

Peter

Posted on: 24 February 2013 by {OdS}

Peter,

 

always glad to help!

 

Regards,

 

Christian