Why bother?

[SomeRadioGuy]

Have you tried 256 AAC-LC to see what difference you can hear?

Nope.. dont have the time to mess with that lately.

Check out KSKO's 128k mp3 stream and see how we sound. We're playing music now till 0200utc/9pm eastern

 

[xmtrland]

For my STL's if I have to compress I'm using Opus at 160k or 192K.

 

[Miss Tuned]

US: beer held. I can't even summon the words to describe how insane 24 kbit/s MP2 for music is. But I doubt discoverability is the motivation. How many listeners would realize the cause was a low MP2 bitrate DAB broadcast as opposed to just assuming "the station" sounded that way, whether listening on-air or via the internet stream?

I have a DAB+ radio (standard these days) and Android Auto in the car. The audio via the radio streaming on Android is far superior in quality to the many 32kbps AAC+ music stations that go out on DAB+, and I wouldn't dream of using DAB+ as my main listening platform these days given the level of 5G cell coverage (even where I live in the sticks) and the cheapness of unlimited data plans.

Most stations here (as in the U.S.) very heavily promote their app, incessantly, all day long in programming and imaging. They don't (apart from AM holdout TalkSport) explicitly say "get better quality sound with our app" on the air, but stations do promote it as their preferred way of listening endlessly.

 

[kevtronics]

US: beer held. I can't even summon the words to describe how insane 24 kbit/s MP2 for music is.

They were talking about DAB+, which uses HE-AAC.

This video is from 2019, but bitrates on DAB / DAB+ in the UK probably haven't gotten any better since then:

 

[Miss Tuned]

They were talking about DAB+, which uses HE-AAC.

This video is from 2019, but bitrates on DAB / DAB+ in the UK probably haven't gotten any better since then:

It's out-of-date as the majority of stations are now DAB+, but the situation hasn't improved as the broadcasters have used the extra slots made available by the better compression to go for more stations with lower quality. Mostly, they're endless automated spinoffs of existing brands, playing a single decade of music, I think I can get four 80s stations and three 90s stations.

 

[yeoldeschool]

Check out KSKO's 128k mp3 stream and see how we sound. We're playing music now till 0200utc/9pm eastern

I listened for a while and your automation and processing both sound good. Your streams (their encoding) sounded no worse but no better than what's to be expected from their particular bitrates and codecs.

Unless there are technical reasons you're running your main (128 kbit/s) stream in MP3 and your mobile (64 kbit/s) stream in AAC-LC, why not change the 128 kbit/s stream to AAC-LC, and change the 64 kbit/s stream to AACPlus (HE-AAC)? Those tweaks would dramatically improve their sound.

If compatibility concerns are why you're still using MP3 (and AAC-LC for the low bitrate option), I doubt you need to be concerned any longer. The first AAC-LC encodings appeared 28 years ago in 1997, and the first MP3 encodings appeared 31 years ago in 1994. There are only three years between those debuts, but three decades since those debuts and now. So I'd bet not one KSKO listener still relies on hardware like wifi internet radios, or software, that can't play AAC-LC. I would even bet HE-AAC, which appeared in 2003, would work on everything your listeners own by now.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

I listened for a while and your automation and processing both sound good. Your streams (their encoding) sounded no worse but no better than what's to be expected from their particular bitrates and codecs.

Unless there are technical reasons you're running your main (128 kbit/s) stream in MP3 and your mobile (64 kbit/s) stream in AAC-LC, why not change the 128 kbit/s stream to AAC-LC, and change the 64 kbit/s stream to AACPlus (HE-AAC)? Those tweaks would dramatically improve their sound.

If compatibility concerns are why you're still using MP3 (and AAC-LC for the low bitrate option), I doubt you need to be concerned any longer. The first AAC-LC encodings appeared 28 years ago in 1997, and the first MP3 encodings appeared 31 years ago in 1994. There are only three years between those debuts, but three decades since those debuts and now. So I'd bet not one KSKO listener still relies on hardware like wifi internet radios, or software, that can't play AAC-LC. I would even bet HE-AAC, which appeared in 2003, would work on everything your listeners own by now.

For the longest time, thats what was available and all that our gear or connections would support. Its ununder consideration to upgrade it, but it wont matter much on the radios most people listen to us on.

 

[yeoldeschool]

They were talking about DAB+, which uses HE-AAC.

This video is from 2019, but bitrates on DAB / DAB+ in the UK probably haven't gotten any better since then:

Oops. Thanks for catching that. I guess my faith in the English is partially restored -- although no more than my faith in us Americans. (24 kbit/s HE-AAC equates to those insane IBOC FM stations that have HD4s.)

 

[DJboutit3]

IMO min bitrate any internet station should stream at now days is 256k AAC or OGG it sounds decent enough way better than station streaming at 80 96 or 128. There are a few hosts that offer 256 or 320 Shoutcast or Icecast for $6 to $15 a month.

 

[Kasper]

IMO min bitrate any internet station should stream at now days is 256k AAC or OGG it sounds decent enough way better than station streaming at 80 96 or 128. There are a few hosts that offer 256 or 320 Shoutcast or Icecast for $6 to $15 a month.

And buffer every 5 seconds as mobile providers are still hit or miss with their consistent data? I stream at 128k and still get a few hiccups listening with AT&T.