We are pleased to let you know that in addi­tion to our exist­ing mp3 audio stream, we can now be heard in AAC, which may offer improved qual­i­ty includ­ing bet­ter stereo and a clean­er sound, par­tic­u­lar­ly as we improve oth­er parts of our broad­cast chain to match.

Per­haps more impor­tant­ly, lis­ten­ers will expe­ri­ence low­er data usage as the AAC stream runs at 64kbps rather than the 128kbps that is used by the mp3 stream. We are cur­rent­ly upgrad­ing our mobile apps to play the AAC stream — watch this space! The 128kbps mp3 stream is unaffected.

To tune in to the AAC stream, set your play­er to https://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 Some net­work play­ers (Winamp for exam­ple) won’t decode the AAC stream over an https path, so in that case use http://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 An alter­na­tive is to use the short-cut http://aac.vcradio.org — but note that this does not work with all play­ers (VLC works fine)

NOTE: AAC is not avail­able in Sec­ond Life. Lis­ten­ers in Sec­ond Life and oth­er vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments that rely on the FMOD audio libraries should con­tin­ue to use the exist­ing mp3 stream as AAC is not sup­port­ed by this library (and appar­ent­ly nev­er will be). You can, of course, run an ordi­nary net­work play­er while you’re in-world.