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App for streaming AM radio with LOWEST bandwidth

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dkperez

Newbie
Hopefully this is the right place to ask this. If not, please point me to where I should...

I need an app for streaming plain old a.m. radio for things like baseball games - VOICE. A.M. - no music, no stereo, just simple, VERY low bandwidth voice. Unfortunately, I'm on Verizon so I need to absolutely MINIMIZE the bandwidth the thing uses... iheartradio definitely isn't it 'cause it seems to gobble well over 100MB an hour. There's gotta be something better. What is it?
 
XiiaLive Pro is what I used in the past but it seems that my favorite AM stations are no longer available. I don't think it's the apps fault though. The radio stations are probably trying to monetize their operations by using their own custom players. Can't say I blame them but it's not like XiiaLive left out the commercials or anything? Maybe it will work for your local area stations. I'm in Boston MA.
 
The amount of data consumed depends on the quality/speed of the particular stream. Some streaming apps will let you choose lower bandwidth streams when they are available from the provider, however the lowest you are likely to find is probably 32Kbps. That will still add up if you have it running constantly for hours at a time. I'll assume using WiFi is not an option or you wouldn't be here asking about this?
If you're on a limited data plan and don't have WiFi available there won't be much you can do other than upgrade your plan or consider a different provider. T-Mobile excludes certain streaming apps from counting toward the data limit on some of their plans.
 
I don't think there's better app, I mean they are all the same, aren't? When we come to use our data to streaming that should mean that we are ready to loose them quickly, that's what I know.
 
Sorry to be so slow replying - life keeps getting in the way.......

My problem is when traveling. I want to stream a station from the home market so a "regular" radio won't help. And since I'm using cell service for data, streaming even audio at the quality iHeartRadio or TuneIn uses gobbles up way too much data for simple voice (think baseball game commentary).

I wouldn't care if I had something like T-mobile - but we PREVIOUSLY had that and there were essentially NEVER connections where we were. Didn't matter if we went north, south, west, T-mobile was utterly useless for data, and most of the time even for phone service. We ended up with Verizon because ridiculously expensive that works is still cheaper than inexpensive that rarely works on the road, but at $10/gig I'm looking for a way to significantly reduce the data bite when all I'm after is low fidelity voice.

I keep figuring there's GOTTA be something out there that lets me SET the bandwidth, but maybe not.
 
The problem with you setting the bandwidth is that it requires them to re-encode at a lower bitrate - in practice for them to provide higher and lower quality streams for each station for you to choose between (or those they provide the option for). Obviously possible, but the question is whether any app provider or station has decided that it's worth their while.
 
On the SiriusXM app it has the option of choosing the lowest bandwidth (lower quality) stream. I haven't used tunein in a while, so I'm not sure if that app has an option like that.
 
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, you may be able to choose between different bandwidth streams IF the provider makes them available and the app allows for it. It's not something you can initiate, the streams are what they are and you can't change them on your own.
TuneIn does have an option for choosing between streams when the particular station provides them. Some only have one stream available, it costs the station/provider more money to have multiple streams and if not enough users need them they get tossed.
But in any case as I also said before this isn't going to help you much with a limited data plan. This is a "can't have your cake and eat it" situation, I think downloading podcasts over wifi is your best compromise to have something to listen to in the car without gobbling data. If live news or sports is what you absolutely must have then I don't see an option for you other than a different plan with either Verizon or another provider with a higher or unlimited data allowance. Yes this costs more but you unfortunately can't have it both ways.
 
Hadron said:
The problem with you setting the bandwidth is that it requires them to re-encode at a lower bitrate - in practice for them to provide higher and lower quality streams for each station for you to choose between (or those they provide the option for). Obviously possible, but the question is whether any app provider or station has decided that it's worth their while.
Click to expand...
Back in the days of early streaming, when many people were still on dialup and domestic broadband was in its infancy. That's what they used to do. Things like Real Player (buffering), there was settings to suit your bandwidth. Of course these days it's assumed everyone has good broadband, and so they just encode appropriately.
 
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Bummer. It sounds like no getting AM broadcasts from home for news, sports events and so on without chewing up at least 100 mb an hour... Which means it ain't gonna happen unless there's something really important going on. Disappointing that all the live radio streams figure you've got a fast wi-fi and unlimited bandwidth cap.
 
No Archers here.
c94dff388557c1739dee6e97547c74df.jpg

Already been there with TuneIn. If it's in the PRC that's all it gets. Frankly my little cheap AM/FM portable does just as well, and doesn't depend on the internets. Fortunately BBC media player radio is OK.
 
mikedt said:
No Archers here.
c94dff388557c1739dee6e97547c74df.jpg

Already been there with TuneIn. If it's in the PRC that's all it gets. Frankly my little cheap AM/FM portable does just as well, and doesn't depend on the internets. Fortunately BBC media player radio is OK.
Click to expand...
That really brings home just how isolated the PRC is mate..... Almost like N Korea (not quite lol)
 
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