[James Tanner]

Hi All,

Playing around with my Music Vault (Windows and M-Audio 192 Sound Card) and MAC Pro Laptop and have been experimenting with internet wireless radio.

Wondering on how folks out there find the quality as compared to a wired cable box system?

Also any recommended stations I should try.

james

[Nels Ferre]

James,

Not Internet radio per se, but check out Last FM.

www.lastfm.com

I tried the running the output from my cable box (both Toslink and coax) into a couple of different DACs and experienced hum.

BTW none of the DACs were yours.

Regards,
Nels

[werd]

James,

Not Internet radio per se, but check out Last FM.

www.lastfm.com

I tried the running the output from my cable box (both Toslink and coax) into a couple of different DACs and experienced hum.

BTW none of the DACs were yours.

Regards,
Nels

Tried that one and it works, sounds best on 16 bit, typical mp-3 ftp server

[Bassmann]

Internet radio is brilliant ~ long live the internet

[satfrat]

Try http://mvyradio.com/features/mvyradio_live.php James. Martha's Vineyard's mvyradio plays a good mix of adult progressive & alternative rock along with having live bands in their studio.

Cheers,
Robin

[denjo]

Hi James

The radioio station is excellent - 128 kbs! Sometimes I think it sounds better than my analog radio!

Best Regards
Dennis

[niels]

If you are into classical music, then the national norwegian broadcast is for you.
They stream in 320 kbps and you wont hear any difference from say a cd or sacd, its that good. It also blows any FM radio out of the sky.
mms://straumr.nrk.no/nrk_radio_alltid_klassisk_l

[AnthonyH]

I love internet radio and think that it has more scope (ie more bandwidth and no restriction on number of stations) than DAB or RF. Still haven't found a decent stand alone system.

Mmmm.... a Bryston Internet Radio, the IR1, that would be nice!  At least Bryston would get it right first time.

[James Tanner]

My cable company here broadcasts in PCM 48K.

The highest resolution I can get on Internet radio is 320 kbps on some stations. The 320 kbps stations seem to have better bass than the 192 or 128 - or is it me? Does anyone know of stations using more than 320?

I guess my question for those more knowledgable than myself is how does the bits per second translate to the sample rate used.  I noticed on the BDA-1 that the sample rate coming in from the internet radio is 44.1K

I know CD quality is 1400'ish mbps.

james

[AnthonyH]

Hi James

I think you mean 320 kbps (Kilobits per second) rather then mbps (Megabits per second). If only!!!

(1k is 1000 rather then the normal software programmers 1024)

Digital Audio is measured in two ways: Bit Rate Resolution and Sample Rate.

Bit rate is the number of bits that are processed per unit of time or bits per second. bps. Sample Rate is the number of samples per second taken. 1Hz = 1 sample per second. RedBook CD is 44.1kHz = 44,100 samples per second.

Sample rate x channels x bit rate = kbps

44,100 x 2 x 16 = 1,411,200 bits per second (bps) = 1,411 kbps

This is where I may go wrong

if 1,411,200 / 2 / 16 = 44100 (CD audio)

then...

320,000 / 2 / 8  = 20,000 or +- 20kHz maximum sampling rate

Then again, internet streaming audio may be compressed (like MP3) so the actual uncompressed data will be larger and therefore quite close to CD quality.

Hope this helps.
A

[James Tanner]

^
Thanks Anthony.

james

[toocool4]

I think the best radio station I have ever heard is Fip radio in France.
For me I listen to all music as I think if you only listen to a particular genre you will miss a lot of good stuff, so I am open minded.

Most radio stations have a play list / genre that you hear everyday Fip will play everything and anything, the beauty of Fip is you never know what is coming next.

The link is http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/fip/endirect/ then click the play button and enjoy.

I listen to Fip at work.

Chris

[satfrat]

I'd like to add that I very rarely listen to internet radio myself as I seldom get the same satisfaction that I get from my own downloaded HD library. Add that with a 4500+ album library and a radio feature of the J.River Media Center 13 that allows for random playing of the library in a large number of bracketed formats (gendre, times played, year, artist, etc, etc, etc,,,), I find little reason to downgrade to internet radio myself,,, other than to just experiment.


Cheers,
Robin