Stream Selector

LOCATION	Click Link below to Start Stream
Southern Pacific Coastal Mountains, Costa Rica	"TRUE LIVE" STREAM***	Morning RECORDINGS
The Ball Farm SE of Austin TX USA	"TRUE LIVE" STREAM***	Morning RECORDINGS
Lakeside West Austin TX USA	"TRUE LIVE" STREAM***	Morning RECORDINGS

To use other Mpeg players with Costa Rica live stream, copy and paste this link: http://66.55.144.67:8047/stream.m3u
To use other Mpeg players with The Ball Farm live stream, copy and paste this link: http://66.55.144.67:8074/stream.m3u
To use other Mpeg players with Lakeside Austin live stream, copy and paste this link: http://66.55.144.67:8134/stream.m3u

*** TRUE LIVE - Our goal is to provide non-stop live streams. However, when dealing with the Internet and working around the people that provide the streams, we sometimes play recorded back-up material to fill in at times when the live stream is not available. The format of our recordings are about an hour in lenght with the only interuption, at the start, being the streaming station identification. Recordings of a given stream are played back only on that stream's link.

Current Status

Update May 9, 2012 - The original Lakeside Austin stream is back so we now have three "True Live" streams. Humming birds have been active at this location. We should have back-up recordings for The Ball Farm in the next few days.

The last improvement at Live Nature Songs was the addition of the Ball Farm Stream. This new stream is connected via Road Runner Turbo service and is very clean. The Nature Phone is currently located close to the house on the property for Internet access reasons. We are working on a wireless link that will allow the Nature Phone to sit between two ponds about 1000 feet through the woods away from the house. This will be a great sound source particularly at night. One of the ponds had dried out only once in the last 35 years.

The Nature Phone has arrived in Norte Costa Rica. We are having issues with maintaining a steady stream because of the quality of the Internet connection available. To improve the stream, we have dropped the speed down to 64kbps. Sometimes the Costa Rica stream will run for a couple hours but when it drops, the back-up server recordings start to play. The server is automatically switching between the live stream and the recordings. The plans are to, in about six weeks, move this Nature Phone to a more remote area that should have a better Internet connection. At that time we should be able to return to 128kbps.

The Nature Phone intended for northern Minnesota is assembled. We are sorting out some equipment issues now but hope to get that Nature Phone installed in the next month. This Nature Phone will be sitting right on the lake. We should be able to hear Ducks, Geese and Loons when in season. I am told there is a train that goes by about a mile away a couple times a day. Very little air traffic.

We continue to look for more rich sound source locations. Let us know if you know someone with nature sounds that might be interested in cashing in on their sonic gold.

Surround Sound

Right now we were on-line streaming Mpeg stereo audio with the first few Nature Phones. You can listen to our stream on on most computers and on iPhones or iPads with Safari. The surround stream is off-line until there are enough people requesting to listen to surround to justify having separate streams for both surround and stereo available.

Note: The streams may have loud man made background noises at different times.

Our Goal: To provide high quality live feeds of nature’s songs from around the world.

Combine prerecorded with live nature streams to provide quality content more of the time
All stream data generated by our custom surround sound microphone array
You will hear little deliberate music or voices in our nature streams

Back Ground

At this point in time there is little surround sound available on the Internet. In order to provide the live program material desired for this website, an Internet appliance has been developed that will capture sound in four 90 degree quadrants, digitize that data at the microphone array, compress the audio data then stream it to our server so we can make it available to the Internet. These Internet appliances will be weather proof and connect wired or wirelessly through the Internet.

Why live sound feeds? - Because if you have ever purchased a recording of nature sounds, after about the third time you listen to it, you begin to anticipate what you will hear next.

Why surround sound? - When our sound streams are fed into your surround sound home theater, it will give you the sensation as if you are in the center of that location where the sounds are streamed from. We may currently be the only live surround sound feed on the Internet.

Encoding

Stereo:

The nature streams we now provide are encoded into the Mpeg format so most any MP3 player can listen to our stereo stream.

Surround:

We have the ability to stream in four channel surround encoded in Vorbis. This means that a Vorbis decoder is required to listen to our surround streams. If you wonder why Vorbis? Because Vorbis does the best job of compressing four channels of audio data into 128kbps. MP3 on Linux streaming servers is stereo only. In order to listen to live nature surround, you will need to stall a Vorbis decoder on your computer system. Then you will need surround sound adapter the connects to your computer so you can drive four speakers. Send us an email stating you want to listen to surround sound streams so we can send you the link for the surround sound stream.

Please note:

Over time, we will be adding sound sources from all over the world. The sound sources we have are a mix of premium and good locations. The sites we have now are intended for listers to experiment with the concept of getting HD stereo nature sound streaming from the Internet. These stream are on-line now in Mpeg stereo and located where nature sounds are generated.

Keep in mind that because this is a live stream, the flow of the sounds at a sound source will be regulated by nature. As we grow with more sound sites, we will provide a method by which you can select which of our sound sources you wish to listen to at a given time. We also intend to provide one channel that is a best of all of our sound sources at a given time so you won’t need to be surfing our channels for the best sounds.

We are on-line, streaming 24 x 7 so you can come back and check it out whenever you have time. When you come back to listen, we will welcome feedback on how we are doing. Also improvement suggestions will be appreciated. Hopefully, you will be as excited as we are about this total new concept in audio entertainment via the Internet.

Nature Phone - is a surround sound microphone array that can be used to collect live nature sounds or for high quality audio surveillance.

Sound Source Providers - If you are interested in being a sound source provider, click the sound source provider tab for more information.

Sound Source Location - Here is a link to the Austin sound site photo's. View the first Live Nature streaming location