How can I listen to timRADIO?
How can I listen to timRADIO?
HARDWARE/NETWORK CONNECTIONS
timRADIO requires a computer. No computer, no timRADIO. That's the sad fact. Then again, no computer, no TIM, so what are you doing here?
timRADIO requires a computer that plays sound. In many cases, this requires a soundcard, although some machines have sound capability built in without an actual separate soundcard. It also requires a relatively fast computer, that can decode the incoming MP3 files.
timRADIO requires a somewhat fast Internet Connection. This translates to at least a 33.6k modem getting at least 30kbps throughput on the system. If you're running a 28.8k modem or below, then you can't listen to timRADIO online. Skip to the bottom to read about our CD-ROM solution.
MP3 SOFTWARE
If you have never played MP3s on your machine before, timRADIO is a potentially frustrating, heck of a way to start. If you want, go to MP3.COM and learn all about the MPEG-3 format and all the neat software you can download and use to listen to music. In fact, if you have major problems with connecting to timRADIO, you'll at least get some fine music playing out your speakers.
The Shoutcast server was meant to work with a specific Windows program, called Winamp. In fact, Shoutcast was written by the same folks who wrote Winamp. If you are running on a machine running Windows 95/98/NT, then we highly reccommend getting winamp.
If you have a UNIX Box, then there are a variety of program out there that emulate the work of Shoutcast. Since this field is expanding rapidly, we're just going to point you to this page which is constantly updated and reflects the most up to datse software available for playing mp3 and Shoutcast streams on UNIX Boxes, including Linux.
Currently, there is no equivalent software to listen to timRADIO on Macintoshes. This is a major hole in our distribution, but there is nothing we can do about it, just yet. As soon as information on a Mac solution becomes available, we will put it here.
If you have another platform you'd like to get help with, let us know on TIM (Sketch and RedEVIL are good ones to find.)
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
With a lot of luck, you can go back to the main page of this server, click on the icon for "timRADIO highband" or "lowband" and have it tell you it can't find an application for a file of type "audio/x-scpls". If this is the case tell it you want to pick an application, and then pick either Winamp or your Shoutcast-Ready UNIX program (and eventually, some day, your Macintosh program). If this all works, you'll click onto the logo in the future and timRADIO comes a-STREAMIN' down into your machine! yay!
More likely, though, is that you might run into some problems. In that case, you might just run Winamp, select "Play Location:" and enter one of the following two numbers, or run your UNIX-Based Shoutcast-ready program and enter one of the following two numbers:
This will open a connection to the timRADIO server and start downloading the audio. With any luck, you're on your way!
A LAST-DITCH SOLUTION
If you don't have the soundcard, streaming software, or the network bandwidth needed to pull off timRADIO, another solution will be making itself known in the future: timRADIO CD-ROMs. We will be burning collections of content from the timRADIO server onto CD-ROMs that you can play locally on your machine. You require a CD-ROM and a machine that runs MP3-decoding software (a good majority of them, at this point), and then you can get timRADIO when and how you want. Additionally, we will put on these CD-ROMs the highest possible quality MP3 files so that you get CD-Quality Stereo Recordings of timRADIO productions without needing to download them.
If you want some idea of what we intend to play on timRADIO,
click here.
If you want to know how to get stuff that you've made onto
timRADIO, then click here.