Check for Silence in Audio Streams

2019/05/23 by Leave a comment

We’re happy to announce a new volume detection feature for audio streams.

Our AUDIO check is great at making sure your stream is up and running but until this update we didn’t have a way to tell if the audio playing was dead air. Silence detection is an important part of providing audio streaming and NodePing can now send you notifications if your Internet radio, podcast, or other audio stream is playing silence instead of your content.

Our volume detection samples 10 seconds of your stream and computes an average decibel level of the audio. If that detected volume level is lower than your configured threshold (-90 to 0 with a default of -45) your AUDIO check will fail and you’ll receive any configured alerts.

Dead air detection takes more resources (CPU, RAM, bandwidth) so the new feature is only available in our “Provider” plan.  If you’re a current NodePing customer and would like to try it out, please let us know and we can provide a temporary free upgrade for you to kick the tires. If you don’t yet have a NodePing account, please sign up for our 15-day, free trial and then go to the billing section and upgrade your trial (still free) to a “Provider” plan to get access to the new feature in your AUDIO checks.

For more information check our AUDIO check documentation or contact us. We’d love to hear what you think of the new feature and what you’d like to see next.

Filed under Announcement, audio, NodePing Updates Tagged with , , , ,

Monitor Streaming Audio

2012/08/27 by Leave a comment

We’re happy to introduce our new audio check type.  Now NodePing can monitor HTTP streaming audio servers and notify you via email, SMS, and even voice alerts when your audio streams go offline.

The new audio check is available now and can be used to watch HTTP streaming audio services like ICEcast and SHOUTcast servers.  Set the target of the check to the URL specified inside your pls file.  If your pls file looks like:

NumberOfEntries=1
File1=http://example.com:8002/

Set the check target to “http://example.com:8002/“.  The check briefly connects to the stream and reads the headers returned to determine if the audio steam is up or down.

Many thanks to all who gave their “+1” to this new check type.  Your feedback and suggestions help us prioritize which enhancements and new check types our development team works on. If you’ve got a need for a specific check or an enhancement to an existing check, please let us know in the comments below or email us at support@nodeping.com.

Filed under Monitoring, NodePing Updates Tagged with , , ,