Hi Chris,
I'll answer your question, but copy the list, too, since some others may be
wondering about this.
Delicast requires some self-orientation, that's for sure. The list of
stations is in a screwy order, so I immediately relist it according to "NAME"
on the tab above the list. Then I have to guess which page to head for, say
RNE 1, is going to be about page 12 or so. In some cases the name we all know
for the station may be slightly different from the way Delicast names it.
Looking for Alger Chaine 1 from Algeria last night required me to guess Radio
Algerie 1 as the tab to hit. Some are much less obvious than that. The
Egyptian Generam Programme (as listed in the EMWG) is "Radio Cairo" on
Delicast. The Russia example you mention is that kind of case. Do you look
under Radio Rossiya, Voice of Russia, or Golos Rossiya? In some cases, it
simply works best to go to the official web page of the station to find the
best audio stream, but then you have to be careful that you are not getting the
podcast instead of the live audio. If everything's in English it can be fi!
gured out, but sometimes with odd languges you just have to guess. The little
speaker icon could mean several things. I have a tab that allows me to
translate web pages into English, but this is rarely worth doing, The
translation either doesn't work at all or comes up with some very odd phrases
"Live Feed" = "Food Not Yet Dead" (I made that one up). And, like with
American web audio, they sometimes start the live stream with an advertisement
that is not part of the web stream that will follow. On top of this you also
have to hope that the web audio delay is somewhat in synch with what you're
hearing, 5 or ten seconds is manageable, buit 30 or 60 seconds makes it very
difficult unless the music is unusually distinctive.
listenlive.eu is better because the list is shown alphabetically from the
start, and in the case of Spain the RNE stations are listed ahead of everything
else, I guess government is privileged over commercial. But that's OK, because
more often than not I'm looking for RNE audio. listenlive also gives you
choices in bit rates with the individual stations.
However, Delicast has streams from countries outside of Europe that
listenlive does not have, like North Africa. When I tentatively had Syria,
though, the Radio Damascus audio stream sounded like a scratchy skipping
record. I checked back several days later - same thing. The IT department
there must have been on vacation.
Some stuff just isn't there to be found. I never found a web stream to
match CRI programs on 702
Monaco or 963 Finland. In these cases I had better luck getting better audio
by using Global Tuners. Even though you can not ID a station this way, at
least you can get some better audio to compare with the fizz that you
are hearing over the air at home. Global Tuners has its own learning curve.
You have to figure out which radios are equipped for medium wave (a lot are
not), and then be prepared to skip around until you find an available receiver.
"Hijackjing" a radio that someone else is using is frowned upon and may be
grounds for expulsion from the group. You also have to figure out which
buttons to push to get the best sound, bandwidth, mode, etc. I found the hard
way that looking for the "Best Quality" option is always the best. I was
thinking lower quality would get the signal to me faster, but it simply froze
up.
Don't forget to look for shortwave parallels in some cases. These are the
best because there is no delay. Croatia has a good one 1134 and 7375 are the
asme program at times.
Oh, did I mention that all of this is going on while you are trying to DX,
and having to wait for web streams to kick in rather than freeze, with radio
audio that might last a minute before fading? Often hit or miss!
As for me, I'm still in the halo, and hope to have it off next week,
replaced with a hard collar. This will allow me to have my first shower in 2
months! I hope to be back on the job after Christmas. Not sure when I can
begin driving. Fortunately, everyone is encouraging me to take the time I need
to get better.
I hope all of this helps!
Jim Renfrew
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Black
To: Jim Renfrew
Sent: Wednesday, December 09, 2009 8:46 AM
Subject: Delicast
Hi Jim,
I see you mention them now and again, so I took a look but have a couple
questions.
First off, I hope your recovery is going well and you will be in top
condition soon !
I went to the site and punched up Russia. I wanted to find Radio Rossi on
161, but couldn't seem to find them by the station name alone, which is all
that is available and it looks like you can't get any frequency information as
well.
I can see how it would be a useful tool if you know the exact name of the
station.
Do you have any patented tricks to using the site you could pass along to a
newbie?
Best de Chris
Cape Cod
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