How To Listen

About Players

There are a wide variety of music players that are compatible with StillStream. The best one for you to use will depend on a wide variety of factors, so it hard for us to recommend a particular one. Plus, it is our goal for the station to be hearable using nearly any standard player, so we try not to push any particular one.

In general, though, we find that our listeners have success using the following combinations. Your mileage may vary, so you should choose the combination that best suits your needs:

Direct Listening versus Proxied Listening

StillStream offers two different mechanisms for listening, one called "direct" and the other called "proxied".

In general, using a direct connection is much better than using a proxied one. This is because the stream will be more reliable for you, plus it will slightly reduce the load on the StillStream servers. However, using a direct connection requires your computer to be able to tune into a so-called "high numbered port", which some corporate firewalls and routers disallow for security reasons unrelated to streaming.

For this reason, StillStream offers proxied connections as well. The proxied connections work over the same port number as regular web page connections, so nearly all firewalls and routers will allow this traffic to pass. If you are unable to use a direct connection, then we encourage you to try to use a proxied one.

Please avoid using a proxied connection, however, if a direct connection works for you. It will give you a more reliable listening experience and will also help keep the load on our servers as minimal as possible.

Connecting Directly

Sometimes a particular media player may not be completely compatible with the various playlist files we have set up. Nearly all players allow you to directly tune in to a URL, however. So, if you have trouble using any of the preset playlist files we have set up above, you can try using one of these URLs.

Note that we have two URLs. This is because StillStream actually has more than one streaming server. One is the primary server, which is hosted at the stillstream.com URL. The other is a so-called "relay" server, which simply echoes everything broadcast to the primary server. This arrangement will allow StillStream to add additional relay servers in the future as our listening audience grows.

The relay server broadcasts precisely the same stream as the primary in exactly the same level of quality, so there is no disadvantage to tuning into the relay versus tuning into the primary. However, it is helpful to StillStream for you to use the relay instead of the primary, since the primary is typically full or nearly so, so we encourage you to tune into the relay whenever possible.

So here are the direct URLs to use if all else fails: