Streaming rates -- who decides?

[Questor]

I've gone to several stations nationwide to hear their streaming audio, especially for music.

The quality of audio streaming varies so greatly. There are some where the volume is so low, others where it distorts. Then there are some which are out of this world, I think I'm living next door to Alice, the radio station.

The thing I've noticed is some use 32k while others use 80k. Sometimes I've seen as low as 11k.

What will it take to get the industry to decide on one, or maybe 2 at the very most, e.g., low for dial-up users, high for broadband?

Also, why do radio stations sometimes change to worser players? I used to get some really good quality from one CBS Radio used, something like player.it. Yet that appears to be dropped.

What do you think it'll take to get better quality with online streaming, esp. for music? Hopefully someone's listening.

 

[daypart]

What do you think it'll take to get better quality with online streaming, esp. for music?

Simple. Cheaper bandwidth. Bandwidth costs money. Think of bandwidth like water going through pipes. Higher bandwidth is like sending more water through the pipe, so you need bigger pipes to send it. Bigger pipes cost bigger bucks.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Also, why do radio stations sometimes change to worser players? I used to get some really good quality from one CBS Radio used, something like player.it. Yet that appears to be dropped.

This is a guess on my part. I have no first-hand knowledge. First efforts of streaming were quite simple. Send a simple, plain protocol, the receiving party can use whatever software they choose.

Now that streaming is viewed as part of the future, people like CBS are dropping generic streaming methods for a proprietary system that keeps a significan sized window on your screen and they can keep sending changing pictures to your screen and the audio will often say: "Look at your screen now. Click on the image of the bull moose to receive further detail from this sponsor." They may feel the need to give up some audio bandwidth in order to have some bandwidth to send pictures, buttons and catchy graphics.

 

[V.Riley]

Terrestrial station are still getting up to speed where Internet Radio Streaming is concerned. As the others have said above, it is related to cost and bandwidth. Internet Radio Stations have pretty much agreed that 128Kbps (MP3) and 64Kbps (AAC+) are the high quality standards for streaming audio. As for the low end, that varies. For instance you can go as low as 32Kbps with MP3 and still have Stereo, although your audio spectrum is much smaller.

Until Terrestrial Radio stations see Internet Radio as part of their future, they will most likely continue to go off half hazardly trying out different expensive proprietary systems, and various streaming rates. Instead of getting proprietary players that that have "must see" visual elements, they should be saying check out our web site for more details. It increases the traffic flow to the stations web site, which increases their ranking, and gets the listener to see other items of interest on the stations web site. In reality they should go with cheap and simple streaming technology that already exists and is widely used and accepted by the end users players. Believe it or not, there are still people out there that work for employers that don't allow you to install players/software/etc on their computers.

Of course, this is just my opinion, yours may vary.

 

[gunterm]

The deciding factor is cost, we get bandwidth really cheap so all the ad supported streams are 128k WMA