StreamS Live HLS Encoder

StreamS are the first to offer professional xHE-AAC encoders.

Professional Internet Streaming

Internet streaming audio is now a viable means of delivering quality content to a mass audience. This IS the new era of radio. Internet streaming is no longer a hobby or a toy. Hundreds of millions of desktop computers, smartphones, automotive dashboards, and other player devices allow easy access and can reach your audience with quality that can exceed traditional terrestrial and satellite radio. This is provided the right streaming encoders are used.

StreamS HLSdirect™

Using StreamS HLSdirect™, dedicated specialized streaming servers are no longer required. Instead, standard web servers or cloud storage can be used to deliver live and file streaming content with lower cost, higher reliability, and easier deployment and maintainability.

High Fidelity Audio

High-fidelity wideband floating-point audio encoder engines provide the highest coded audio quality, which outperform fixed-point implementations.

Not all streaming audio encoders are created equal. They all have different audio encoding implementations and various feature sets. Some CDNs provide encoders. Most are inferior, as their main objective is to just make “noise” and sell bandwidth. Many broadcasters, netcasters, IT professionals, and even software developers are not aware of all the necessary details to produce quality audio on computer platforms, even though it may be their primary business. Now is not the time for poorly implemented amateur encoders. Broadcast quality standards should be applied to streaming audio to achieve professional results. StreamS Encoders take all the guess work out of this for you. All of the details are taken care of.

Synchronous Frame-accurate Metadata

Synchronous frame-accurate metadata, which does not reply on server performance, provides on-time delivery of content information, such as artist and title, and other user definable metadata. It also allows accurate cue points and triggers for content insertion such as advertising, achieving professional results and eliminating embarrassing off-times and resulting miss-cues resulting in a very unprofessional audience presentation, commonly heard on other systems.

Reachability

Using new streaming formats such as HLS and AAC, it now possible to reach all modern browsers and platforms without requiring Flash, RTMP, or expensive, deprecated MP3 streams. HE-AAC (aka aacPlus) allows your audience to listen longer at less expense to both the content provider and the listener. MP3 is only useful to reach the very small number of old remaining streaming devices that don’t support AAC. It is no longer economically feasible to support MP3 streaming to these few devices, as it is an added expense to reach a very low percentage of the total audience. However, for those who insist on MP3 for whatever reason, StreamS offers MP3 encoder options.

Audio Processing Available
StreamS Encoders continue to lead with the best audio encoding technology available. Using Orban Optimod-PCn with StreamS Encoders produces audio streams that attract and hold audiences to listen longer, and keep them coming back for more. StreamS Encoders are currently in use at some of the largest content providers. Targeted towards demanding professional applications, “There are no better audio streams than those produced with StreamS.”

Now With xHE-AAC

Create X-rated StreamS

eXtended HE-AAC
Xcellent Efficiency
Xtraordinary Quality
Xceptional Reliability
Xcelerate Audience Share
Xclude High Streaming Costs

Licensed for commercial use
Unlike open-source implementations that require codec licensing for commercial use, this software is ready to go without any additional licensing, and is DMCA Compliant.

No dedicated streaming server software required

     
Uses standard web server and web server infrastructure to stream live and files. Does not require any special web server module, allowing any web server on any platform, including simple cloud storage, to be used. Uses HLSdirect™ and DASHdirect™. HTTP/2 ready. Does not rely on legacy ICY (SHOUTcast/Icecast) or Adobe Flash RTMP protocols to deliver HLS/DASH without all the associated limitations. 100% FlashFree™ encoder.

Decreases deployment costs
Does not require separate streaming server infrastructures, and deployment staff.

Decreases operating costs
Does not require separate streaming server hardware, software, and licensing, and no extra support staff.

Increases reliability
Less hardware and software to fail.

Network scalability
Less complex server infrastructure to scale. 
Uses standard web server or cloud storage.

Apple HLS and/or MPEG-DASH
Uses IETF compliant Apple HLS and/or ISO compliant MPEG-DASH, the new HTTP streaming protocols. Overcomes obstacles and limitations of ICY and RTMP streaming. More robust than ICY or RTMP delivery, especially on crowded mobile networks. TTL and Keep-Alive problems associated with streaming protocols are eliminated. Network traffic appears to player clients as HTTP-delivered downloadable files on standard and/or custom ports. This makes it easy to penetrate most firewalls, relieving streaming support issues, and creating a much better user experience increasing listener expectations.

Optimized for Audio Streaming Delivery
HLS is encoded ADTS ES and MPEG-DASH encoded in ISO/BMFF with complete real time metadata, which is much more efficient than TS for audio-only delivery.

AAC/HE-AAC Audio Codecs – Stereo / Surround
Uses Genuine Fraunhofer AAC/HE-AAC (aacPlus), the latest MPEG audio standard codec, commercial floating-point implementation for the ultimate wide band audio quality. No transcoding from other coded formats are used, which reduces audio quality. This replaces outdated primitive MP3. No MP3 streaming royalties, less expensive to stream, less expensive to listen, more efficient, more reliable, and sounds better than MP3. Due to higher coding efficiencies than MP3, your audience will thank you for substantially less data usage. This is the same audio codec technology used in the number one on-line music provider, Apple iTunes Music Store. HE-AAC allows your audience to listen up to 4 times longer than MP3 for the same cost with higher reliability, especially on crowded mobile networks.

Adaptive Multiple Bitrates
Synchronous adaptive multiple bitrate streaming without transcoding for the best possible audio quality. 
Switching between different stream bitrates keeps audio in sync (provided player support is correct).

Player Compatibility
Solves the cross-browser, cross-platform AAC Player problem using one single codebase browser player. 
All current version Apple OS X and iOS Devices, Microsoft Windows 10 Edge Browser, and select Android Devices, have native support for HLS and AAC/HE-AAC. HTML5/MSE browsers can use JavaScript HLS/MPEG-DASH players, of which there are now several available, and also FlashFree™. Optionally, legacy operating systems and browsers can use custom Adobe Flash Players. This results in 100% browser coverage without expensive, obsolete MP3 fallbacks, further reducing costs. iOS and Android Player Apps cover mobile devices. This gives your audience the best possible user experience everywhere.

Player Starts Immediately
Since HLS/MPEG-DASH segments are cached on the server, player clients can download as fast as the network connection allows and will start playing immediately. No need to support special streaming server fast-start protocols or be constrained by the ability of the streaming server to fill a buffer before play starts. Metadata is also displayed immediately without multiple network connections which cause metadata latency.

RFC Compliant FTP / DAV Ingest
Uses RFC Compliant FTP, FTPS, HTTP DAV, HTTP DAVS, HTTP POST/GET, Amazon AWS S3, Limelight, and Akamai (more services are in development) for streaming encoder to server connection. Provides complete file management for segments. Automatically deletes expired segments and files. Eliminates high-overhead restrictive server management scripts. Does not require obsolete proprietary Adobe Flash RTMP for the streaming encoder-to-server connection, eliminating unnecessary complexity and Flash security risks. 100% FlashFree™.

Secure Stream Ingest
Ingest isolation between stream input and output. Ingest URL can be completely different than the stream URL. Also allows separate ingest servers to be used.

HTTPS/SSL/TLS
Deliver streams over HTTPS using SSL/TLS for secure connections. All stream network traffic can be concealed using SSL-compliant player clients with public or private keys.

Optional Audio Encryption
Protect your content.
Encrypt content for subscription based services using encryption compliant player clients.

Optional Audio Watermark
Immediate content accountability and traceability while playing using watermark-compliant player clients.

Standard Audio Device Support
Audio Input uses any Microsoft Windows WDM compliant audio device, including stereo sound cards, multichannel sound cards, virtual sound drivers for inter-app connections without sound cards, and network audio drivers for audio input without sound cards. This allows any Windows Audio compliant sound devices and applications, such as audio playout and processing, to be direct connected without proprietary audio protocols or APIs, and without physical audio cables for those applications not requiring live audio capture. Qualified multichannel sound cards can be used for multiple stereo 2.0 and/or multichannel 5.1 input sources.

PAD/Metadata
Frame-accurate synchronous extensible PAD/Metadata with full ID3v2.4 UTF-8 compliance for all extended and International character set support. Provides an accurate listener experience, and precise content/ad insertion timing and control. There are no unpredictable server PAD/Metadata latencies and variables from metadata intervals, stream transpacketizing as from ICY SHOUTcast/Icecast2 protocols, unpredictable metadata query intervals, and separate metadata network connections. Secure PAD/metadata updates, unlike ICY SHOUTcast/Icecast2 protocols, since it is done at the encoder rather than the server. Extensible PAD/metadata without legacy limitations, and user-definable PAD/metadata fields for complete custom applications, including content/ad insertion, and other signaling. No complex server-side scripting required. Also accepts externally generated ID3v2.4 frames. Metadata is DMCA Compliant.

Frame-accurate Audio Frames
HLS and MPEG-DASH segments are frame accurate lengths to prevent fragmented-frame audio decoder errors.

Apple iTunes Radio Compliant
Apple HLS and PAD/metadata is 100% Apple iTunes Player and iTunes Radio compliant with Artist, Title, and Images.

Audio Player Gain Offset PAD/Metadata
In conjunction with compliant player clients, this metadata controls the player client audio level to achieve consistent audio loudness between program elements, which is especially important for server-side content/ad insertion applications. This feature facilitates EBU R128 compliance by using the appropriate analysis software and sending the Target Loudness Level PAD/metadata through the streaming encoder or in the PAD/metadata of the server-side content/ad insertions to compliant player clients.

SNMP Monitoring
Monitor encoder parameters and status using network SNMP. Status alarms through TCP/IP control interface.

VM Compatible
Virtual machine compatible with:
VMware
VirtualBox
XenServer
Parallels Desktop for Mac

HLS ES Players
StreamS HiFi Radio App for iPhone/iPad is the first compliant player available.

Apple iTunes is an HLS Compatible Player.

VLC Nightly Build is an HLS Compatible Player.

Viblast Player.

MediaElment.js Player.