Operation Manual

NOXON iRadio Cube
48 ENGLISH
detailed technical descriptions there.
Unsupported formats
The NOXON supports MP3, WMA and AAC+ streams. RealAudio (RA) streams are not supported. Such
streams are becoming increasingly rare, however.
B1 - Synchronising multiple NOXONs
A request we received frequently was to implement the ability to "force" the NOXON to play content re-
motely. We initially questioned the sense of such a feature, as a decisive selling point of the NOXON is that
it's not simply a "dumb" receiver, but that it can actively determine what to play. With conventional trans-
mission systems, both wireless ones and those based on the household electrical grid, it's necessary to
choose the tracks to be played at the source—and constantly going off to twiddle with a computer in the
house can be a bit detrimental to entertaining the guests of your backyard barbecue.
Nevertheless, we have to admit that such receivers have one major advantage: they all play exactly the
same content when controlled centrally!
Being exactly in step acoustically is especially useful when using multiple devices. Some TerraTec custom-
ers use NOXONs to deliver chilled sounds to club lounges, while others have whole railway stations or
shopping centres covered by a small NOXON armada. It should therefore be possible to deliver the same
content to multiple NOXONs in a single wireless LAN, and that with a minimum of interventions—
preferably just one—at the NOXON itself.
The NOXON's Internet radio capabilities are the solution to this problem. But before we can take advantage
of those capabilities, we have to demystify the term "Internet radio" a bit. Strictly speaking, there's no such
thing as genuine Internet radio at the present—each Internet radio session requires a single, dedicated
connection to the server, which then streams the content to the NOXON (or any other receiver), not unlike
reading a CD in an optical drive.
The technology needed to create "clean" MP3 streams is open, and thus implemented in many programs,
such as Nullsoft Shoutcast for Windows.
As a result, it's not hard to integrate a simple streaming server in the local network capable of serving
identical content such as a playlist in Winamp or VideoLAN Client (VLC) to an infinite number of NOXONs
(actually, the number is limited by the bandwidth of your network). In other words, the technology is called
"Internet radio", but it really doesn't matter whether the server is located on another continent or in your
home, right next to your NOXON. All that matters is that the stream is available to the NOXON via TCP/IP,
and that there's enough bandwidth for the transmission.
B2 - Installation under Windows operating systems
Winamp and Shoutcast is a proven combination for Windows operating systems. A Winamp player with a
Shoutcast plugin provides the content to a local or remote Shoutcast server, which in turn broadcasts the
data to the terminal devices. Of course, Shoutcast server versions exist for Mac OS and common Unix ver-
sions, including Linux.
The combination can be installed quickly—visit http://www.nullsoft.com and download Winamp Lite, the
Shoutcast plugin and the Shoutcast server.
All of the programs can be installed via the Nullsoft installer and need only a minimum of configuration
work. The complete configuration of the Shoutcast server is stored in a single text file located by default at