Rocket Streaming Blog

We're pleased to announce the release of Rocket Broadcaster 1.4.13. This cumulative update includes improvements to the Broadcast Audio Processor, bugfixes, and more.

Here's what's new in Rocket Broadcaster 1.4.13:

Bass Exciter and High Frequency Exciter PRO

The Broadcast Audio Processor has been upgraded with two brand-new components, a Bass Exciter and High Frequency Exciter. The Bass Exciter helps enhance your audio stream with a powerful, satisfying low-end. The High Frequency Exciter similarly boosts your high-end with enhanced clarity and harmonics, which fill out your sound. All of our built-in presets have been updated to take advantage of these new exciters.

We've also tweaked the Automatic Gain Control (AGC) to make it more subtle and less likely to overreact for some types of audio. A new Processing Gate parameter has been added, which freezes the AGC if the signal drops below a particular threshold.

For more on the new features, head over to the Broadcast Audio Processor documentation.

Extended Metadata and Artwork for RSAS and Radio Mast

This release includes preliminary support for a new "Modern Metadata" API available on Radio Mast and coming to the next release of RSAS. With this new API, the complete set of metadata provided from your radio automation system is passed through to the streaming server and made available to players. You will be able to finally move beyond just showing "artist" and "title" in your players, to show other fields like the album and genre. This opens up the possibility to even make your player react to the track category, such as showing your station logo during station IDs.

As part of this new metadata integration, we have also invented a new mechanism where if your radio automation system exposes the cover art for the currently playing track, Rocket Broadcaster can then pass that cover art image along to the streaming server, for it to be displayed to listeners. Instead of relying on hacky iTunes and Amazon brute-force searches for cover art, we hope to help the radio industry move to a more reliable, standardized system where your cover art is managed by your radio automation system and passed through your encoder to your listeners. This will help prevent embarrassing situations where mismatched cover art is seen by listeners and finally give you full control over the artwork displayed alongside your stream, without introducing complex new systems.

With this update, artwork passthrough is supported with the following radio automation systems or metadata formats:

• Axel Tech DJ Pro
• Audio Hijack
• Jazler SOHO
• ProppFrexx ONAIR (get the updated event template from our guide)

We have analyzed 22 other radio automation systems that we would like to support, but we need the developers behind those systems to export cover art with their metadata. If you want a seamless cover art solution, you can help by asking your radio automation vendor to contact us, and we can work together to get it supported.

We'll go into more detail on how this new Modern Metadata API and cover art mechanism works in a future blogpost, when the next RSAS update is available (soon).

Raw FLAC Encoding Support

This update adds support for native raw FLAC encoding, which sheds the Ogg container in favour of FLAC's native framing. For historical reasons, FLAC internet radio streams have been encapsulated inside an Ogg container. The Ogg container format offers some advantages on paper, but has some disadvantages in the real-world which make it more difficult to use for streaming. Shedding the Ogg container allows a compatible streaming server, such as the upcoming RSAS release, to more gracefully handle source reconnections without dropping listeners, and stitch together a stream that players will tolerate.

Because Icecast was very late in supporting raw FLAC framing, there are almost no raw FLAC streams on the internet, and the ecosystem to support it is underdeveloped. To help nudge the industry forward with more reliable lossless streaming, in addition to adding support for raw FLAC to Rocket Broadcaster, we are also introducing raw FLAC support in the next update to RSAS and across our Radio Mast streaming services. To help developers ensure their players are compatible with raw FLAC streams, we have published a public FLAC test stream on our Reference Streams page, which can be used for QA testing.

On the playback side, raw FLAC streams can be played in Chrome and Firefox on Windows and through FFMPEG, but support elsewhere is lacking. As of today, iOS Safari and Chrome, VLC, Foobar2000, and mpv do not support raw FLAC streams. If you would like to use raw FLAC streaming, you can help by asking the developers of these projects to support raw FLAC and sharing our test stream with them.

Full List of Changes

Features:

• Broadcast Audio Processor improvements:
  • New Bass Exciter and High Frequency Exciter, inspired by famous vintage hardware.
  • Added a "Processing Gate" to the AGC, to reduce overreactivity.
  • Updated presets to take advantage of the new features.
  • Two new presets: Radio Dynamics, and Polished, which use the AGC in RMS mode.
• Modern Metadata API Support
  • Added support for RSAS's new Modern Metadata API, which includes passing more metadata fields along to listeners, including artwork from your radio automation system.
  • Supports Axel Tech DJ Pro, Audio Hijack, Jazler SOHO, and ProppFrexx ONAIR.
• Raw FLAC encoding support (sans Ogg container).
• Custom Metadata Output now supports two-line output.
• Allow Shoutcast 1.x special characters error to be ignored, for compatibility with Azuracast.
• Improved data validation in the Streams dialogue to reduce common mistakes.
• Hide source kick message box automatically if a subsequent connection attempt succeeds.
• Pass keyboard events through to VST windows, and window sizing fix for Stereo Tool.
• New Metadata Formats:
  • Added DJB Radio On-Air metadata support.
  • Added Audio Hijack metadata support, used by Now Playing Pro.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed "Monitor Master Output" resetting to off after restarting application.
• Fixed rare bug where TLS streams could disconnect without the application detecting.
• Automatically reset the Integrated Loudness measurement when changing the AGC power target.
• Fixed binding to a specific NIC if your NIC has multiple IPs.
• Fixed clock drift compensation bug if input and output devices had different samplerates.
• Detect and report more "Audio Device Error" scenarios.
• Metadata: Avoid sending the hyphen if the artist or title is empty.
• Fixed "Link with Radio Mast" feature not reconnecting after connection loss.
• Fixed a recording bug where recordings could still happen when low on disk space.
• Fixed metadata compatibility with Shoutcast 2.4.2.167.

Download the Update

• Free Edition - Download the latest update here.
• Pro Edition - If you're a Pro Edition user, click the download link in your purchase confirmation email again to get the latest update, or visit My Products in the Oscillicious Shop.

We're pleased to announce the release of RSAS 1.0.7. Rocket Streaming Audio Server (RSAS) is a high-performance webserver for distributing live streaming audio through the web, optimized for low latency and high numbers of simultaneous listeners.

Download RSAS 1.0.7 today from our Downloads page.

This maintenance release contains a couple of major bugfixes, including fixes for some regressions in 1.0.6. This is a recommended update for all users:

• Bugfix: Fixed sources getting stuck on a mount in certain situations (1.0.6 regression)
• Bugfix: Fixed seamless takeover (source kick), where the new source connection would get closed too (1.0.6 regression).
• Bugfix: Fixed empty HLS segments with low bitrates
• Bugfix: Fixed static binary installer bugs

ARM64 and Raspberry Pi 3/4/5+ support

We've continued working on ARM support and are pleased to announce a 64-bit ARM build is now available, which should be compatible with Raspberry Pi 3, 4, and 5. This build has been tested on Ampere Altra cloud-based servers. This build requires an ARMv8 CPU and requires a Linux distribution with glibc 2.28 or newer (Raspberry Pi OS 2020-12-02+, Debian 10+, Ubuntu 18.10+). It should be compatible with other ARM devices that meet these requirements, including other cloud-based ARM servers.

Other Changes

We've included the full list of changes above, but for a complete change history of recent releases, please refer to the CHANGELOG.

We're pleased to announce the release of RSAS 1.0.6. Rocket Streaming Audio Server (RSAS) is a high-performance webserver for distributing live streaming audio through the web, optimized for low latency and high numbers of simultaneous listeners.

Download RSAS 1.0.6 today from our Downloads page.

This release includes a number of minor quality-of-life improvements and bugfixes:

• Improved bitrate auto-detection
• Added a "404 HLS Not Enabled" error response, for easier troubleshooting.
• HLS:
  • Added a <base-url> option to provide flexibility when running behind a reverse proxy. Read our new docs on Reverse Proxying for more information.
  • Added experimental <relative-paths> option.
  • Added support for X-Forwarded-Proto header.
• VHost hostnames now support starting with a wildcard (*.example.com)
• The error log now includes the IP addresses of sources that connect, to make troubleshooting easier.
• Bugfix: Fixed HLS segment timestamps being in wrong byte order (regression in 1.0.5)
• Bugfix: Fixed a race condition in HLS segmenter
• Bugfix: Fixed Looped Audio Files rate limit not working in certain circumstances
• Bugfix: Fixed a memory leak in HLS
• Bugfix: Fixed HLS relay sometimes truncating segments

Raspberry Pi and New Platforms

We're pleased to announce we now have an experimental build available for Raspberry Pi. This build should work on Raspberry Pi 2 and newer. It is compiled for ARM "A" series processors (ARMv7-A and newer) and requires a Linux distribution with glibc 2.28 or newer (Raspberry Pi OS 2020-12-02+, Debian 10+, Ubuntu 18.10+). This build should also work on other ARM devices that meet these requirements.

We've also added AlmaLinux 9 as a supported platform. CentOS 7 support has been dropped, as it is no longer supported the CentOS project.

Other Changes

For a full list of changes including bugfixes, please refer to the CHANGELOG.

We're pleased to announce the release of Rocket Broadcaster 1.4. This major update adds the brand new Broadcast Audio Processor, an automatic configuration backup system, and improved connectivity for Radio Mast.

Here's what's new in Rocket Broadcaster 1.4.0:

Broadcast Audio Processor PRO

Our brand new Broadcast Audio Processor improves the sound of your stream by providing consistent loudness and mastering of your audio. By using ITU BS.1770 loudness metering (LUFS), our unique hybrid two-stage AGC ensures your stream hits a consistent loudness target, so listeners can hear it comfortably on all devices.

The Broadcast Audio Processor also includes a Multiband Compressor and Peak Limiter, with 9 easy presets, to help you shape the sound of your radio station. Our signal processing chain gives your stream that "radio" sound, making it loud and clear on a variety of devices.

For more information, check out our page on the Broadcast Audio Processor and the documentation for it.

Upgrading to Rocket Broadcaster Pro 1.4? Watch our 2-minute crash course on the new Broadcast Audio Processor:

Other New Features

Soundcard Clock Drift Compensation

When using different input and output devices, Rocket Broadcaster now transparently compensates for clock sync drift. This solves an issue where mixing different input and output devices could sometimes result in a choppy stream over long periods of time.

Enhanced Connectivity for Radio Mast

We've added a new "Radio Mast" stream connection type, which provides better connectivity to Radio Mast servers. It will automatically choose the closest server region for you and failover to the next nearest region if your ISP loses the ability to reach it.

Automatic Config Backup System

We've added a system to automatically save a backup of your settings on your PC, to help prevent losing your settings if your PC is shutdown improperly or your settings are corrupted. If your settings are corrupted and a backup is available, you'll be asked if you'd like to restore from backup. This prompt is on a timer which automatically accepts the backup option after 45 seconds, to help ensure operation is automatically restored without human intervention.

Other New Features:

• Stream Diagnostic - We've improved the explanations of some common issues in the Stream Diagnostics.
• More keyboard shortcuts - Added keyboard shortcuts for mute mic (CTRL+M), opening the Broadcast Processor (CTRL+B), and monitoring master output (CTRL+O).

Bugfixes

• Fixed a rare crash that could happen on certain systems over long periods of time.
• Fixed a rare issue that could cause settings to get lost during unexpected shutdown.

Download the Update

• Free Edition - Download the latest update here.
• Pro Edition - If you're a Pro Edition user, click the download link in your purchase confirmation email again to get the latest update, or visit My Products in the Oscillicious Shop.

We're pleased to announce the release of RSAS 1.0.5. Rocket Streaming Audio Server (RSAS) is a high-performance webserver for distributing live streaming audio through the web, optimized for low latency and high numbers of simultaneous listeners.

This new release is a recommended update for all users.

Download RSAS 1.0.5 today from our Downloads page.

Looped Audio Files

We've redesigned the Looped Audio Files feature (aka fallback files) to solve some long-standing issues, allowing them to now be much more useful as fallbacks. Fallback files no longer rely on client-side buffering to throttle playback, which improves compatibility with players and prevents delay from accumulating. Looped Audio File sources now start automatically too, which makes them more usable as fallbacks in practice.

When connected to a Looped Audio File mount, listeners will now all hear the same audio from a common playback position. Previously, each listener would hear the audio starting from the beginning of the file. We acknowledge this change in behaviour may not be ideal for all broadcasters, but in order to implement the other usability improvements mentioned above, we had to make a tradeoff, and this was a result of that.

HLS Improvements

HLS playlists now include the EXT-X-PROGRAM-DATE-TIME, which helps players do timeshifting over long periods of itme.

Dependencies and Build Overhaul

We've performed a major upgrade of our build system as part of ongoing maintenance necessary to keep RSAS production-ready, secure, and supported on as many platforms as possible. RSAS has been upgraded to use OpenSSL 3.1 and is now statically linked against it, to allow us to continue supporting older Linux distributions for longer. These build system changes also recently allowed us to respond quickly to security concerns over liblzma and audit our use of it.

Speaking of builds, we've added support for Ubuntu 24.04, which is the new Ubuntu LTS release slated for April 25th.

Other Changes

For a full list of changes including bugfixes, please refer to the CHANGELOG.

On March 30th, 2024, the discovery of an backdoor in XZ Utils / liblzma specifically targeting the SSH process was announced and assigned CVE-2024-3094. RSAS is unaffected by the scope of the security issue known to date. We investigated this vulnerability because some versions of RSAS depended on liblzma, but not on any version known to be backdoored.

We will update this post and notify our mailing list if the status changes.

For more details, please read our mailing list announcement.

We're pleased to announce the release of Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.43. This is a minor maintenance release that mainly brings a couple of bugfixes.

Here's what's new in Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.43:

• Audio Input volume control now saves across restarts
• System Audio Capture can now be disabled in the Preferences dialog.
• Improved compatibility with high DPI displays and display scaling. Rendering is greatly improved on 4K displays with display scaling.
• Improved the way soundcards are enumerated, to improve device compatibility and fix some bugs:
• Fixed a bug causing some MME sound devices to open in mono.
• Fixed some inconsistencies with devices that differed in capabilities depending on the selected Audio API.
• Fixed a bug causing the Broadcast Wizard settings to not apply.

Download the Update

• Free Edition - Download the latest update here.
• Pro Edition - If you're a Pro Edition user, click the download link in your purchase confirmation email again to get the latest update, or visit My Products in the Oscillicious Shop.

We're pleased to announce the release of RSAS 1.0.4. Rocket Streaming Audio Server (RSAS) is a high-performance webserver for distributing live streaming audio through the web, optimized for low latency and high numbers of simultaneous listeners.

This release is primarily a bugfix release, but there are a few minor new features as well. This version is a recommended update for all HLS users.

Download RSAS 1.0.4 today from our Downloads page.

What's new in RSAS 1.0.4?

Codec Detection

RSAS now detects the codec used by each stream and includes this information in the /health API. Having this information available at a glance is useful for troubleshooting and validation.

HLS Customization

You can now customize the HLS segment size and number of segments in a playlist, which allows broadcasters to make their streams rewindable further into the past. For more information, see HLS Settings.

Custom HTTP Headers

Custom HTTP headers can now be added to all responses, or scoped by port, VHost, or mount. This feature makes RSAS more flexible and eliminates the need to put a reverse proxy in front of it in many enterprise environments.

For more information, see our docs on Custom HTTP Headers.

Proxy Server Support

RSAS can now use a proxy server for outbound HTTP requests, which is useful in corporate environments. Read more about proxy server support in RSAS.

Other Changes

For a full list of changes including bugfixes, please refer to the CHANGELOG.

What's next?

We are still finalizing our roadmap for the next major release and are not yet ready to announce details on features.

What we can share is that we will be overhauling our build system and are hoping to see some performance improvements and support for new platforms (Raspberry Pi). We will also be upgrading to OpenSSL 3, as OpenSSL 1.1.1 is EOL. In order to continue supporting RSAS on older platforms like CentOS 7, which do not have OpenSSL 3, we will be switching to statically linking all dependencies, including OpenSSL. As a consequence, it will be even more important for you to stay appraised of RSAS releases in case there's another Heartbleed-style situation, so please make sure to join our low-traffic rsas-announce mailing list if you are running RSAS on the public internet.

We're pleased to announce the release of Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.42, which includes a number of small bugfixes and minor features.

Here's what's new in Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.42:

• Added support for new metadata formats:
  • AudioVault AVAir
  • Westwood One Storq
  • Arrakis New Wave Format 5
• Show a low disk space warning in the Preferences dialog if there is insufficient space for recordings.
• Fixed a rare issue where dozens of consecutive automated reboots could eventually cause the application to fail to launch on startup.
• Fixed a compatibility issue with screen readers (bug introduced in version 1.3.39)
• Fixed an issue caused by attempting to record with less than 30% disk space free

Introducing HLS at Radio Mast

We're also pleased to announce HLS support for MP3 and AAC streams is now available as a free upgrade for all users on the Radio Mast Streaming Network. HLS provides a better listening experience for mobile listeners by allowing listeners to seamlessly switch between Wifi and cellular networks interrupting playback, as well as improving battery life.

Getting an HLS audio stream is now easier than ever before - simply create a stream on Radio Mast and connect your encoder. Your MP3 or AAC stream will be available not only as a conventional HTTP(S) stream, but now also as an HLS stream. No reconfiguration or expensive extra software is required, and this feature is available at no additional cost to Radio Mast users.

Learn more about HLS at Radio Mast on our blog.

New to HLS? Check out our quick primer, "What is HLS for Audio?"

Download the Update

• Free Edition - Download the latest update here.
• Pro Edition - If you're a Pro Edition user, click the download link in your purchase confirmation email again to get the latest update, or visit My Products in the Oscillicious Shop.

Feedback

Rocket Broadcaster development is driven by your feedback, and all of the changes above were made as the result of feedback from users. If you're looking for a missing feature, or have ideas for how we can make Rocket Broadcaster even better, please let us know!

We're pleased to announce the release of RSAS 1.0.3 and Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.37! Rocket Streaming Audio Server (RSAS) is a high-performance webserver for distributing live streaming audio through the web, with low latency and high listener capacity. Rocket Broadcaster is a streaming audio encoder for capturing live audio and sending it to a high capacity server, such as RSAS, for distribution to listeners.

RSAS 1.0.3

RSAS 1.0.3 is primarily a bugfix release that includes a fix for HLS on Windows and a rare issue that could cause source connections to get stuck on Linux.

Get RSAS 1.0.3 today from our downloads page.

Changes include:

• Webhook source auth: Added http_status field, which passes through the original request's full status line.
• Webhook source and listener auth: Pass through client HTTP headers as HTTP headers (with the header_prefix), in addition to POST body params (backwards compatible). Read more about this change in the webhook authentication docs.
• Bugfix: Persistent relays could in certain situations not kick relaying listeners when failing, preventing downstream failover.
• Bugfix: Fixed rare issue causing read timeout mechanism to fail, leading to stuck source connections or webhooks.
• Bugfix: Fixed compatibility with older FLAC encoders
• Bugfix: Fixed preroll truncation on Linux and force audio frame sync after preroll.
• Bugfix: Windows GUI: Fixed hostname setting not saving (HLS)
• Bugfix: Windows GUI: Fixed empty max-listener-duration causing error on startup.

Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.37

Rocket Broadcaster 1.3.37 is a cumulative update that contains important bugfixes for Radio Mast users along with some minor features.

Changes include:

• Added CPU usage monitor for encoders linked to Radio Mast.
• Added support for Smarts Broadcast Skylla metadata format
• Added support for "Hyphen Delimited" metadata format.
• Added "%ignore%" token for Window Title metadata capture, to allow ignoring certain parts of a window title.
• Network optimizations
• Fixed rare instability caused by the "Link to Radio Mast" feature.

Rocket Broadcaster Pro customers can download the latest version by logging into the Oscillicious Shop and clicking "My Products".

Free Edition users can download Rocket Broadcaster here.