In reality, out of all the streams listed, only a couple dozen are streaming only one channel, and the majority of them are third party streams, and not this WxForum community generally..,.
Last report showed 54 or so streams with Stars... not bad... many others are 'on the verge' and just need to tweak a bit of volume up or down, or other minor or something similar...
the parameters are pretty liberal in most cases... and not every parameter is easily measured, such as inherent hum, some types of noise... so a few 'get away' with some of that, but
still get a star... so be it... Availability of stream over last 7 days is most weighted, with volume 'window' second.
One thing to remember about the Stars... they're a measure of a Stream's 'performance not necessarily any provider'... though the key elements rest with the provider, most of the time.
Yep, if the stream is encoded as stereo, and most streams are, then both channels equal are desired... at least that throws the audio to the middle... Not everybody listens with a desktop... and is especially annoying to someone with headphones, ear buds, switching between streams... or is 'deaf' in the ear that a single channel is on... also gives more 'apparent' power to the stream. Lot's of reasons, and we mention two channels several times in the how to, quality, etc... We prefer to think of it as 'MONO'... since 'left only' or 'right only' is 'Grossly irritating Unbalanced Stereo".
Regardless of that, availability and volume parameters are the most important. But NO Star for 'single channel' ! In effect, it becomes a 'volume' parameter.
Another Star Preventer is too low a stream Bit Rate, and or Sampling Rate ... but a 'bad strem' is still better than No Stream, especially if there is no alternate available for that area.... Initial Criteria is spelled out in the 'tool tip' in the legends.
And these criteria and the principle have been / are being / hashed out, developed, and refined over months, not just on the 'spur of the moment' and are the results of long term observation, monitoring, experiments, discussion, and Promises Made to NOAA....
Coming soon, the 'analysis suite' tools and notifications for providers, .... still wrestling with some things... Ken and Doug don't have much hair left.
When that goes live and folks submit a form and subscribe, each provider will know the 'objective' status of the parameters used, and will be ale to
check the actual 'current' status, as well as the 'daily' analysis, which completes, currently, about 11PM ET, or any 'random' samoles,....
"Availability' checks are run hourly to see if each stream server accessible at that time...
Lots of goodies...
Save a life!
Mike