Ariane Web Radio

Ariane Web Radio sits at 315 of 710 in France's listing, in the body of the list rather than at either end. This is where most of a national dial actually lives, and it is the part a country hub's first fifty rows never reach.

The open count against Ariane Web Radio is two, which is enough to know the stream has been played through the directory and not enough to compare it with anything. Small counts are the normal case out here, and a ranking built from them separates stations by luck as much as by interest.

Language and country do not match up the obvious way here. Ariane Web Radio transmits from France, where French leads the listing, and broadcasts in Arabic, which five of the country's stations use.

The shelf for the language holds 199 stations, led by Algeria. A station like this one broadcasting from France is what stops that shelf from being a second copy of one country's hub.

At 160 kbps the stream is on the better side of France's dial, where the median is 128 kbps. Not dramatically so, and bitrate is only one of several things that decide whether a stream sounds good, but it is the one the directory records.

Its audio comes straight from radio.de-lussigny.com, an address unique to this entry in France's listing. That is the simplest case there is, and it is the one where pressing play tells you the whole truth about whether the station is on air.