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Updated 2010.06.10
Bote's Mixer Board, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Bote's Wild Feed, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Bote's Southernmost Feed, Key West, Florida
Bote's Mobile Feed, anywhere
You should listen to these feeds using WinAmp, as that does the best job that I have found. It is free. It is widely used. Shoutcast was written by the same people as WinAmp so they were made for each other, and Icecast follows on the heels of Shoutcast. There are numerous plug-ins and skins for it to enhance your enjoyment of it.
Here is a WinAmp equalizer file that will make the audio a little easier to listen to. It rolls off the highs and the bass a little bit for better communications-grade audio.
Buy the Logitech Squeezebox Radio
YouTube video
showing Squeezebox tuning in RadioReference Internet scanner feeds with ScannerBox app
It can be your bedside alarm clock radio to wake you up to music, talk radio, fire or police scanner streams, railroad radio streams, you name it
The Acoustic Research Infinite Radio 200
You can buy a tabletop alarm clock-radio that receives Internet streams as well as AM and FM broadcasts. It can even play mp3 files off of a USB thumb drive. The sound is rich and full from such a small package, of course that also depends on the source.
The Infinite Radio 200 is sold under both the Acoustic Research and RCA brand names, so you might see model ARIR200 or RIR200 because of that. It's not perfect, but it's neat being able to "tune in" to an Internet radio station without tying up a computer to do it. It has 6 preset buttons across the top that save stations for each listening mode. It also allows you to go to their web site to browse thousands of online radio streams and store favorites on their web portal so that you can pick them quickly from a list on the radio screen. You can also search by location or by genre from music and talk radio stations. It's pretty cool.
The ARIR200 is great for listening to Icecast and Shoutcast streams because it scrolls the current selection across the screen, although on live feeds the name tag is not synchronized with the audio that matches it. I'm trying to get them to fix that.
You can order an ARIR200 from Amazon.com for about $90 as of this writing, which is the top of my comfort range. Still, I'm glad I bought this Internet radio because it is too useful to be without now, really.
Windows Media Player will work, but you must sell your soul to Bill Gates in order to use it. Apple's iTunes also works on mp3 streams, but can be inscrutable in its operation. VLC is freeware and can be buggy, but has been improving in recent times.
The server is Icecast version 2.3.2 running on a linux box at a well-connected co-location facility in Dallas, Texas.
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.A.
Trackstreamer status blog
Listen to Bote's Mixer Board Fort Lauderdale Streaming Scanner Feed — Icecast server mount point /botemixer
The fully qualified uri to Bote's Mixer Board is
http://colostreaming.com:8000/botemixer.m3u
This feed will be up full-time.
Less chatty.
Normal program audio includes:
If there is a noteworthy fire or police incident and I am here to control the scanner I will focus on that as warranted.
Radios: Uniden BC780 scanner for the Fort Lauderdale area Mixer Board feed.
Audio: A Mackie 1202 mixer board allows me to feed scanner and other audio into the streaming computer. So you never know when I might pipe in some other audio besides the scanner audio. Ya been told!
The streaming software on my end is Simplecast. It is simple to set up, but it breaks in the presence of ScannerCast. The monaural audio streams at 16kbits/sec with a sample rate of 11025 samples/sec. It sounds pretty good.
Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida, U.S.A.
Trackstreamer status blog
Listen to Bote's Wild Feed — Icecast server mount point /botewild
The fully qualified uri to Bote's Wild Feed is
http://colostreaming.com:8000/botewild.m3u
More chatty.
Normal program audio includes:
If there is a noteworthy fire or police incident and I am here to control the scanner I will focus on that as warranted.
Radios: BCD996T scanner.
Audio: An audio cable from the scanner to the feed computer.
The streaming software on my end is ScannerCast, a FREE feed encoder from K1PGV. The monaural audio streams at 16kbits/sec with a sample rate of 22050 samples/sec. It sounds pretty good for communications quality audio.
Location: Key West, Florida, U.S.A.
Trackstreamer status blog
Listen to Bote's Southernmost Feed — Icecast server mount point /botekyw
The fully qualified uri to Bote's Southernmost Feed is
http://colostreaming.com:8000/botekyw.m3u
Normal program audio includes:
If there is a noteworthy fire or police incident I will post on the Trackstreamer blog.
With the erection of a 1/4-wavelength high band antenna in early June 2010 the scanner can now hear local VHF marine traffic and the Monroe County fire UHF repeater which carries paging tones and clear dispatcher audio. I also added the 5 interoperability repeater 800 MHz frequencies in case those are ever used down the Keys.
When you see "UHF FD Key West" it is Monroe County fire traffic, but the repeater itself is located in Key West. Monroe County maintains a string of UHF fire repeaters up the Keys, but this is the only one that comes in at milemarker 0. That's just the way I programmed the channel labels that I use for all my scanners.
Radios: BCD996T scanner fed by a 1/4-wavelength high band groundplane antenna about 20 feet up.
Audio: A Terk automatic level control box attempts to limit the dynamic range of the mumbling Monroe County mobile units and the very loud Key West units. Still, it's pretty weak sauce.
The streaming software on my end is ScannerCast, a FREE feed encoder from K1PGV. The monaural audio streams at 16kbits/sec with a sample rate of 22050 samples/sec.
Location: Anytown, U.S.A.
Trackstreamer status blog
Listen to Bote's Mobile Streaming Scanner Feed — Icecast server mount point /botemobile
I only operate this mobile feed on road trips where there will be something interesting to hear.
This feed has whatever my mobile scanner is receiving, usually railroad traffic, but could be public safety, ham radio, aircraft, or Space Shuttle audio. Check the Trackstreamer blog for the latest.
Radios: BCD996XT scanner.
Audio: HPQ laptop computer, SoundBlaster X-Fi USB audio input, and air card for mobile data access.
The streaming software on my end is ScannerCast, a FREE feed encoder from K1PGV. The monaural audio streams at 16kbits/sec with a sample rate of 22050 samples/sec. It sounds pretty good for communications quality audio.
Happy monitoring!
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