R3 Listen Now problems - "The Sound of Silence"

[Karafan]

For weeks now I have had problems listening to Radio on the PC live. Using Google Chrome I invariably a message which reads "The sound of silence" when I try to listen live. Same on IE and Firefox sometimes does a little better, playing about 20 seconds of the programme before cutting to silence. There's nothing wrong with the PC's audio capabilities from any other source other than the BBC.

I deas on how I might fix this please, or alternative sources of live BBC R3? I have tried a Windows radio player but that sounds like a "slipping tape" and it very irritating!

Thanks

[johnb]

Karafan,

Can you listen to "Listen Again" via the BBC web site?

The BBC player uses Adobe Flash and if you can play "Listen Again" but not "Live" that seems to indicate you are having problems with the new HDS streams that the BBC has changed to for "Live" (the Listen Again streams are still using the earlier format).

As the BBC depends on the Adobe Flash Player - have you checked that you are using the latest version of Flash? (It is always worth running the most up to date version of Flash because there are regular updates to plug vulnerabilities, besides which there might have been changes to how it handles HDS streams.)

If you are using a PC:

Start
Control Panel
System and Security
Click on "Flash Player"
Click on "Updates" tab
Make sure that either "Allow Adobe to install updates" or "Notify me to install updates" are checked (I use the Notify option)
If neither are checked - change the update settings
Click on "Check Now" to check you are using the most up to date version of Flash

See if that makes a difference.

(Oh, and check that the volume control on the BBC player isn't set to mute.)


PS If you download the Flash Player from Adobe's website make sure you untick the annoying McAfee "Offer".

[Karafan]

Thanks John, I'll give that a whirl (and, yes, Listen again is fine).

[Karafan]

Hmmmm...nope that didn't work even after reinstalling flash, I still get

"The sound of silence

We're trying to play this station, but we're having problems. Apologies.

The station's stream may be broken, or there may be a mis-match between this stream, and your device.

Please click here to retry."

[johnb]

I've just tried R3 Live on both Firefox and Chrome and they both play fine for me. (That is, after a bit of fiddling with the volume control settings towards the top right of the panel.)

Another thing to try is to clear your browser cache (always a good idea if a browser plays up).

On Chrome:

Click on the 3-horizontal-lines-in-a-box thingy to the top right
More Tools
Clear Browsing Data ....
Obliterate from "the beginning of time"
If you don't mind losing your browsing and download history you could tick the top four options, i.e. the default setting, otherwise at a minimum clear the "Cached images and files" and I would also clear the "Cookies, site and plug-in data"

[Don Petter]

R3 live seems fine for me (XP and Chrome).