“My stream keeps cutting in and out or stopping”
Sometimes congestion or Internet traffic can cause "buffering”, where audio seems to cut in and out, or stop altogether. Buffering is very common, it allows your computer to build a ‘buffer’ of an audio stream to feed from if there are network issues, but the size of the buffer is limited.  Buffering can be caused by a multitude of reasons such as:

• Your internet provider is overloaded with users.
  Like cars on the motorway, traffic on the Internet is subject to traffic jams. When things are busy on the web, part of the audio information can be lost. When too much information is lost, the tuner will have trouble playing our stream.
• Poor connection to your Internet Service Provider (e.g. Xtra, Ihug, Orcon etc)
  You may have a poor connection to the internet. If you're using a dial-up connection with a modem, try disconnecting then reconnecting to the internet. Sometimes this will give you a better connection.
• There is an outage on the internet in the path that you take to get to our servers.
  Just like electrical power failures, Internet failures can sometimes play havoc when attempting to connect to our stream.
• You are running too many things on your computer at the same time.
  Close all unnecessary programs.
• Surfing the web while listening to our Internet stream.
  If you try to browse a website with lots of graphics for example, your computer may not have enough capacity to simultaneously listen to our online stream.

Try changing the amount of buffering in Windows Media Player. Do this by first opening Windows Media Player, then selecting Tools > Options/Performance and change the buffering to 'Custom'. Try setting it to 30-60 seconds of content. Click "Apply" and then "OK" and you're done.

“I'm listening, but the sound keeps cutting in and out, and my player says ‘Buffering...’ a lot.”
A: Try this:

• If you're listening to the MP3 stream, try the RealAudio stream instead. It is lower quality but requires less of your internet connection. Even with a high quality Internet connection, other network conditions may make it hard for you to receive the consistent 64Kbps needed for our MP3 stream.
• Get the latest version of your chosen player. Visit the web site listed in the About dialog of the player. Alternatively, many players have a "Get Latest Version" feature built in.
• If you're using RealPlayer, stop it from playing and select the View -> Preferences menu option. Click on the "Transport" tab and then the "Automatically Select Best Transport" button. This will test and optimize your method for connecting to RealAudio servers.
• If you're using an MP3 player, increase its "Streaming Buffer" preference. This preference is well hidden in some of the players. (For WinAMP, choose the Options -> Preferences menu item, then Plugins -> Input. Select the "NullSoft MPEG Decoder" item and click the "Configure" button. Select the "Streaming" tab and increase the "Streaming Data Buffer" value to 128K, for example.)

Q: Why does the stream "buffer"?:
A: Online audio requires that you have a connection that can handle the bandwidth (16Kbps for RealAudio, 64Kbps for MP3 in our case) and more. That much data is coming in to your computer, and when your computer can't keep up, your computer will "hiccup," pause, or perhaps disconnect from the music stream.
Many things can cause your computer not to keep up:

• You don't have a fast enough internet connection (modem users can't listen to the MP3 stream, for example)
• You are doing other things such as web browsing, email, etc. while listening, and those may take away too much bandwidth for the audio stream to continue
• A slow computer or older, broken audio players sometimes fail to decode the audio stream into music fast enough, and either quit or "hiccup" to catch up
• And the #1 reason: we can't control the Internet. Even if you have a good DSL or cable internet connection, and you are only using it to listen to streaming audio, the specific route your computer uses to connect to KGNU is unpredictable. Sometimes this route may have stops along the way that cause problems. There's really nothing that can be done in this case.

We are in the process of updating our router which should help with the buffering issues, but we still recommend the above mentioned options be changed on your local machine as an attempt to assist in resolving the issue.