With its ability to transmit both video and audio to browser endpoints, it was only a matter of time before WebRTC made the leap to Internet radio. Specifically, a prominent radio streaming services company in Asia Pacific, RADIOactive, recently released Xeocoder, the first ever industry-grade live streaming encoder for the Opus format.
Put simply, Opus is a lossy audio format similar to MP3 that boasts shorter delay in transmitting data through various channels, while offering greater efficiency in terms of sound quality. To be completely accurate, Opus support does not equal WebRTC, but it is a required audio codec named in the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) WebRTC Codec and Media Processing Requirements draft.
As such, it is how Opus is used that really matters. In the case of Xeocoder, professional broadcast networks are able to provide Opus streams to listeners in native HTML5, making it basically a WebRTC implementation. Best of all, it does so at quality levels on par with plug-in-based Web streaming.
"Our mission is to provide leading broadcasters with the very latest in streaming technology," said Andrew Crothers, managing director for RADIOactive. "Opus is one of the most promising developments in live audio streaming in a long time and we're proud to be the first to market with a truly professional solution for the global radio industry. Xeocoder offers broadcasters extraordinary Opus quality matched with flexibility and low latency in a package which any radio station can easily get up and running with."
As Opus is now accepted as the default audio codec for WebRTC, it has already seen broad adoption from a number of top players, including Google, Skype, Mozilla and AudioCodes, which introduced Opus support to its 400HD IP phones earlier this year. RADIOactive, however, is the first to put Opus and WebRTC to use in service of Web-based radio.
Edited by
Alisen Downey
