[SF8008] Openvix & DAB+ feeds?

[birdman]

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to create DAB as Radio and not as TV?

Why separate Radio and TV at all? They are all services.

 

[Clemente]

Having thought about it, I don't see how just copying in those older codecs alongside the current versions could work. Unless you removed the current ones and properly installed the older ones how would they ever get used by the media players?

Yes I removed the old codec, copied the new one in the /usr/lib folder (two files in total) and rebooted. No particular installation was made.
After a quick test, I noted that many stations who did not work before, now have a very good audio. No slow or broken sound for me.
As mentioned, today I will make a deeper test and let you know.

 

[Clemente]

So, this codec is a big shot! My receiver made a dramatic step forward after this change.
Now almost all DAB stations can be listen with cristal sound, with only very few exceptions mentioned below.

In the BBC mux:
Radio5SX does not work.

In the D1 DAB and D1 Scotland muxes (they seem identical):
talkSPORT, LBC, KISS, Magic, KISSTORY do not work.

In the SDL National mux:
PremierCristian, Talk, Kerrang! do not work.

Possibly these non-working channels are defined but not trasmitting yet?
So, finally exteplayer3 is not needed. Possibly it is used for IP radios that I did not tested at the moment?
This is my experience with the Octagon SF8008, nice to hear more experiences with different receivers using this codec.
I post an archive containing all the english DAB bouquets here. Also i'm preparing more bouquets from other satellite positions, if someone is interested please let me know.

 

[Joe_90]

@Clemente - as it was quite late at that stage, I hadn't actually deleted the existing libavcodec.60 etc. from the /usr/lib folder. There are links also in that folder to the existing codecs, so I'm not sure just deleting them will work. However, I will have a play with it later and report back. It could be an issue with the Hi-silicon chipset on my receiver that is throwing up differences from your experience. Radio5SX does work for me in the BBC mux (I assume you are using the 28.2 version?) but Radio5SX is not always broadcasting. In the SDL mux Kerrang! definitely doesn't work for me on the receiver, but it's ok if I stream the whole mux to my PC and use dablin. So, I think it's something to do with the bouquet or a bug in dabstreamer or some oddity in the eti-tools. I can't see any misconfiguration in the bouquet for Kerrang! specifically, but when I select it and display the service parameters in the information menu in Openvix, it looks like it's selecting the service as a regular DVB as it has a whole lot of PIDs displayed. I'll have to go back to it later and maybe grab some screen shots. In the meantime I'm going to play catch-up with the F1 sprint recorded on Channel 4 TV.

 

[Joe_90]

I deleted the current libavcodec.so.60 file and replaced it with your version. I can't really tell any difference at this point. The DAB+ stations which use HE-AACV2 don't sound correct to me. The music tracks sound as if they are playing slower. On ClassicFM the music plays (poor quality) and then, when the announcer comes on, the audio breaks up completely. It's choppy and unlistenable. Once the music starts again, the audio plays without breakup but it sounds weird - slowish. At this point I have changed so many things around the exteplayer3 is no longer coming up as available in ServiceApp. I've tried re-installing but I think it's hosed at this point! I'll start again with a clean flash. This particular machine is HiSilicon based as is yours, so it's puzzling why we are getting such different results. It's a test machine so it's no issue for me to start again from scratch. I may try it with a newer ATV image to see if it's any different.

 

[Clemente]

@Joe_90, very strange. Classic FM is one of the best sounding station for me! Such incompatibility with your box possibly?
But, as you mentioned, our receivers are so similar, so it is strange.
Can you make any test with a different receiver?
I have only the Octagon for testing, so no chance to verify the situation with more boxes.
But I assure you that most stations sound great (obviously depending from the broadcasting quality.... some is poor but not for reception issues).

 

[Joe_90]

I'll make a try with my Mutant HD51. I did try installing the set of eti-tools in my Quad Plus, but it is a mipsel receiver from about 10 years ago and the architecture is incompatible. I'll try an image from ATV on my AX61 box. But overall, I think the audio quality from the DAB ensembles is generally quite poor, even on my PC which has the appropriate codecs and sounds the best. I'm afraid I've been spoiled over the years with hi-fi quality and I think only the BBC produce any decent radio audio quality these days. But DAB is not the best medium - their streaming services are now much better. My music services now come from a paid subscription to Qobuz which provides me with high resolution streams to my PC or digital player.

 

[BrianG61UK]

Having thought about it, I don't see how just copying in those older codecs alongside the current versions could work. Unless you removed the current ones and properly installed the older ones how would they ever get used by the media players?

In the tiny amount of documentation I have seen about this, it seems to be fairly unpredicatable which codec will be used when there are several suitable ones available.

 

[Clemente]

Update: during these 3 days I got more DAB muxes from additional satellite position. Maybe useful for motorised dish users.
Just got the italian RAI DAB and french DAB at 5 West, and german DAB at 19.2 East.
RAI scanning was so critical, not due to the multistream option but because no PAT is available, so one friend told me the right parameters.
More scanning during next days, I will test 7 East and 23.5 East.

 

[Joe_90]

I still have very mixed results with the DAB+ channels on 28.2. I think it is all down to the libavcodec not handling AAC960 properly. I can't try the eti-tools ipk on my GB Quad Plus as the Mipsel architecture is not compatible. Would have to wait for a build suitable for the processor.

It was an interesting experiment for me, but the audio quality generally on the DAB muxes is not very good. At best it is similar to what is available on the standard radio channels carried on satellite. Most of the stations are pretty low-fi, though. Many channels crammed into one ensemble to maximise quantity over quality. It's a bit like what happened to SD and HD video quality on satellite over the past several years - maximum transponder occupancy. The wow factor we once had with HD video can now only be seen on UHD. Such is technological progress it would seem!

 

[Clemente]

Well, I believe that the low quality you mentioned does not depend by the quantity of channels in a single transponder, or at least not only from that. Probably the original audio quality is bad.
For example, the BBC Radio3 has a very better quality compared to other stations, the same for RAI Classica at 5 West.
I did not test the 28.2 East anymore, moved to different positions now, but my problems ended as soon as I replaced the codec that I posted last Sunday.
Maybe you could try more deeply the exteplayer3, but when I tested it I was not able to obtain any sound, don't know why.

 

[Joe_90]

I get nothing with exteplayer3 on the DAB+ channels also. It works for the BBC channels ok, because they are DAB (not DAB+) and use MP2 coding for the audio. I have found that coding the services in the bouquet at 4097 and using the built-in player I can get most DAB+ channels to play, but some like Classic FM sound odd when playing music and then break up completely when carrying speech. I'm sure it's due to the AAC960 codec not being handled correctly by the player. The number of channels in a DAB ensemble absolutely does have a bearing on the audio quality. A DAB ensemble has a fixed bandwidth of just over 2Mb/s for audio. The individual services or programmes can have various bit rates for their audio - ranging from 24kb/s upwards. The AAC codec used in DAB+ is more efficient, so a programme with a similar bitrate to one transmitted in DAB (using MP2) will have a better audio quality. Some of the DAB+ programmes are using 64kb/s and sound ok, but some are down at 24kb/s and are really only suitable for speech. Distribution/transmission costs seem to have forced the smaller players into reduced quality. The BBC3 audio quality is very good as it is broadcast at 160kb/s but this is the flagship classical programme from the BBC. The quality is about the same as the BBC3 radio channel on Freesat on 28.2. It's probably close to the best FM audio. Other BBC programmes carrying music are transmitted with 128kb/s bit rate. However, BBC make available an even higher quality stream on internet streaming, but this is geo-blocked to the UK.

 

[cactikid]

Hopefully it sounds better than jack hammers and drills going all day and picking up good vibrations from next door.
Workmen arrived at 7.10am .

 

[Clemente]

Maybe the Openvix developers could address the AAC960 codec issues? We hope so.

 

[Adrian70]

My solution for Octagon 8008(openatv7.5) I solved the dab+ sound problem by uninstalling gstreamer1.0-libav plugin from Setup-Software Management-Advanced Options-Package Manager-Multimedia Packages. Restart.

 

[Joe_90]

Interesting! I had thought of trying ATV, but just hadn't got around to it yet. Thanks for the tip. I'll have a go and report back.

 

[Clemente]

Well, I largely prefer Openvix than Openatv. Do you think that the solution could be the same?
And, what did you installed instead of Gstreamer? Thanks.

 

[Joe_90]

I've just tried installing dabstreamer and eti-tools etc. on my mut@nt HD51. I'm just using the 4097 service bouquets and I'm getting similar behaviour to my AX 61HD. The DAB bouquet is fine with the main BBC stations using MP2. The DAB+ bouquets are a little worse, some that play ok'ish on the AX HD61 have a constant rattling sound in the background (like a machine gun!) on the mutant. I'll try the codec swap on the mutant as I found that there were other codecs in my AX HD61 in odd libraries which may be specific to it. Haven't tried OpenATV yet.

 

[Joe_90]

Deleting libavcodec.so.60.... from /usr/lib and substituting libavcodec.so.58 which you extracted from another build @Clemente seemed to work a little better for me on the mutant HD51. It might have been my imagination, but I think Classic FM sounded a little better and the voice over (studio announcer) didn't have the same breakup. However, I think swapping out libavcodec in this manner causes other issues. For example, exteplayer3 (controlled from ServiceApp) just stops working. I think that replacing codecs requires a more structured approach as there are interdependencies between the codec and various parts of ffmpeg etc. The newest versions of libavcodec really should be capable of decoding AAC960 as this was worked on years ago and it's unlikely that the functionality has been dropped. I think it's the actual audio streamer/player somehow not identifying that it's dealing with a DAB+ stream and invoking the audio decoding properly. I don't know the low-level details of the players in enigma, but gstreamer is the normal one used. I wonder if it uses faad instead of faad2 for decoding AAC? The dablin player on my linux desktop invokes faad2 for decoding the AAC audio when I stream the DAB ensemble directly to my PC instead of using the enigma player. exteplayer3 uses ffmpeg and so would need the libavcodec.

 

[Adrian70]

Uninstalling the gstreamer1.0-libav plugin does not mean uninstalling gstreamer. It runs and plays dab+ stations correctly. Deleting or replacing libavcodec.so.60... will cause other problems, it should be left as the original image is built.