Public beta test link for a new plugin that plays WebSDR (Software Defined Radio)

Blue_Mangoo

https://testflight.apple.com/join/uCR4PwA5

Good day to you! We have a new plugin coming out. It's called WebSDR. It allows you to access WebSDR streams inside of an audio unit host app.

SDR STANDS FOR SOFTWARE DEFINED RADIO
This plugin connects to servers located in various places around the world that are connected to software defined radio receivers. By connecting to them, you can listen to real live AM and FM radio broadcasts from all around the world. But that's not all: Software Defined Radio can listen to a wide variety of other broadcasts including air traffic control, police scanners, CB radio, automated marine weather announcements, amateur radio, morse code communications, encrypted wireless data streams (it doesn't decrypt them though), and anything else that is coming in over the airwaves in the vicinity of the server.

WHY WOULD YOU WANT THIS?
The warm crackly sound of AM radio in a variety of foreign languages, complete with static and interference is something that you simply can't replicate using any other plugin. If you are looking for authentic old-school radio tones to use as samples, to interject into a live performance, or just to spice up the intro section of your next song, this plugin is for you.

NoiseFloored

@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• State saving doesn’t seem to work; I’d expect a project restore/host plugin to take me back to the same website and frequency
• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

auxmux

Very interesting. Will try soon.

gusgranite

This is a little gem!

I would love to see a random station selector with an arrow to scroll through the stations at random

enkaytee

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• State saving doesn’t seem to work; I’d expect a project restore/host plugin to take me back to the same website and frequency
• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

@Blue_Mangoo Also it's not possible to apply effects in AUM...but I love the idea of this...!

Blue_Mangoo

@enkaytee said:

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• State saving doesn’t seem to work; I’d expect a project restore/host plugin to take me back to the same website and frequency
• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

@Blue_Mangoo Also it's not possible to apply effects in AUM...but I love the idea of this...!

Not possible to apply effects means it isn’t working at all. We will check this. Thank you for reporting it.

enkaytee

@Blue_Mangoo said:

@enkaytee said:

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• State saving doesn’t seem to work; I’d expect a project restore/host plugin to take me back to the same website and frequency
• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

@Blue_Mangoo Also it's not possible to apply effects in AUM...but I love the idea of this...!

Not possible to apply effects means it isn’t working at all. We will check this. Thank you for reporting it.

Sorry @Blue_Mangoo - it's working now - I restarted AUM and reloaded the plugins - do you want bug reports here or using Testflight? Thanks!

Blue_Mangoo

@enkaytee said:

@Blue_Mangoo said:

@enkaytee said:

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• State saving doesn’t seem to work; I’d expect a project restore/host plugin to take me back to the same website and frequency
• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

@Blue_Mangoo Also it's not possible to apply effects in AUM...but I love the idea of this...!

Not possible to apply effects means it isn’t working at all. We will check this. Thank you for reporting it.

Sorry @Blue_Mangoo - it's working now - I restarted AUM and reloaded the plugins - do you want bug reports here or using Testflight? Thanks!

Please report bugs here. Thank you.

Jumpercollins

@Blue_Mangoo Air Traffic and Police Scanners it is actually illegal to listen into these frequencies in some countries so watch out for stoney ground. So I would not add that into the app description otherwise Apple might jump on that fact. Sounds a cool app mind.

enkaytee

What I find fun is to pick a station so you see the tuning interface, then you can select different bands and scroll though the frequencies - if you have 'waterfall' enabled you can see an indication of the frequency and strength of signals being transmitted - some interesting stuff out there...!

stellare_modular

@Blue_Mangoo It stops audio when you use it in Drambo and close the UI same in AUM.

ashh

Working fine in Mobile Mode, AUM, 2018 iPad Pro, 14.4. I tried various filter bands and regions. Colour scheme was easy for a complete idiot to understand so everyone else should be fine.

Krupa

This is the radio AU I’ve been waiting for, lovely lovely lovely

lasselu

Not gonna try the beta but looking forward to the finished product...

aleyas

Just installed. Only getting audio while WebSDR is in the foreground. Audio drops out when the AU window is closed.
Can this be optimized?

Blue_Mangoo

@aleyas said:
Just installed. Only getting audio while WebSDR is in the foreground. Audio drops out when the AU window is closed.
Can this be optimized?

@stellare_modular said:
@Blue_Mangoo It stops audio when you use it in Drambo and close the UI same in AUM.

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

I don’t think we can solve this issue. The UI needs to be open. You can drag it off the screen though.

aleyas

@Blue_Mangoo said:

@aleyas said:
Just installed. Only getting audio while WebSDR is in the foreground. Audio drops out when the AU window is closed.
Can this be optimized?

@stellare_modular said:
@Blue_Mangoo It stops audio when you use it in Drambo and close the UI same in AUM.

@NoiseFloored said:
@Blue_Mangoo this is great! Quick test seems to work fine for the few sites I tried it with. A couple of issues:

• Audio is cut off when the UI is hidden, this is happening both in Drambo and AUM

I don’t think we can solve this issue. The UI needs to be open. You can drag it off the screen though.

I see. Won't work well in Drambo then unfortunately.
I'm really enjoying the variety of noise I'm getting with it though, so resizing it extremely small and pushing it to the side in Aum should be enough for some sampling sessions.
Cheers

Blue_Mangoo

Posted a video:

RockySmalls

damn! my favourite source goes overground
still , it’s nice to record in a proper bit rate rather than 7khz that the browser recorder on the nederlands one does..
seems to work aok in Apematrix ..
definitely a purchase for me..

Toastedghost

Hi guys try with Brusfri if you want to clear out some of the hiss.

Liquidmantis

I haven't even read the thread yet (morning meetings) but just based on the title I'm SUPER excited for this!

Jumpercollins

@Blue_Mangoo Love the waterfall displays reminds me of a military sonar I use to use ! Neat idea way out the box.

Blue_Mangoo

@Jumpercollins said:
@Blue_Mangoo Love the waterfall displays reminds me of a military sonar I use to use ! Neat idea way out the box.

Thanks. The waterfall is really cool. But we can't take credit for it; it's there in the SDR website by default. Most of the user interface is just the standard WebSDR website. Our contribution was figuring out how to hack the javascript on the site to get the audio buffers out and copy them into the audio unit output.

sevenape

This will be a must buy when it's released properly, So many lovely radio sounds.

sevenape

@RockySmalls said:
damn! my favourite source goes overground
still , it’s nice to record in a proper bit rate rather than 7khz that the browser recorder on the nederlands one does..
seems to work aok in Apematrix ..
definitely a purchase for me..

Yeah I agree I thought it was my little secret website! Having in it aum does make things much easier though

RockySmalls

@sevenape said:

@RockySmalls said:
damn! my favourite source goes overground
still , it’s nice to record in a proper bit rate rather than 7khz that the browser recorder on the nederlands one does..
seems to work aok in Apematrix ..
definitely a purchase for me..

Yeah I agree I thought it was my little secret website! Having in it aum does make things much easier though

true, though in general any delving into the radio band-o-sphere yealds at least an hour of weird stuff so it always needs hacking up into small parts for it to be useful .. be interesting to see if playing it live through effects is a workable way to go... or just ends up with even more gigabytes of unedited bloop

hogyard

I know people are asking already, but any way to keep the audio up in the background if you minimize the window on the UI? Using an iphone in Audiobus and Drambo and neither seems to work when you minimize the UI.

aleyas

@hogyard said:
I know people are asking already, but any way to keep the audio up in the background if you minimize the window on the UI? Using an iphone in Audiobus and Drambo and neither seems to work when you minimize the UI.

A decent workaround in Drambo is to load WebSDR onto track 1. In track 2 add something like an amplifier, then go into the extended rack view and connect the output from WebSDR (track1) to any module on track 2. Now you can place WebSDR into the small window size, and still be able to switch between tracks and views, and be able to freely process it.

aleyas

I think I found the best method to use this in Drambo without worrying about audio dropouts, and without sacrificing track 1.

On MAIN track, pin the module browser, and add new track modules until you exceed the 16 track limit. This creates a 'ghost' track that can be accessed from both views from the top right corner. On the ghost track (track 17) add WebSDR. Then add a Feedback Send module. On track 1 (or any track you want the WebSDR sound on) add a Feedback Receive module. Go back to the ghost track, click the 'fdbk receive' output, scroll to track one, and connect it to the Feedback Receive module itself. Now audio will flow from the ghost track to track 1. You can now put the WebSDR app in the small expanded view without losing audio. Make sure to turn the master level on the ghost track to 0.

If any Drambo users are interested in a video tutorial or more clear instructions just let me know.

id_23

Ooh gonna dig this!
That website was my fave too!
Great idea @Blue_Mangoo

hogyard

@aleyas said:
I think I found the best method to use this in Drambo without worrying about audio dropouts, and without sacrificing track 1.

On MAIN track, pin the module browser, and add new track modules until you exceed the 16 track limit. This creates a 'ghost' track that can be accessed from both views from the top right corner. On the ghost track (track 17) add WebSDR. Then add a Feedback Send module. On track 1 (or any track you want the WebSDR sound on) add a Feedback Receive module. Go back to the ghost track, click the 'fdbk receive' output, scroll to track one, and connect it to the Feedback Receive module itself. Now audio will flow from the ghost track to track 1. You can now put the WebSDR app in the small expanded view without losing audio. Make sure to turn the master level on the ghost track to 0.

If any Drambo users are interested in a video tutorial or more clear instructions just let me know.

Thank you very much @aleyas! These are both very nice work arounds.