In article , Dave Plowman (News)
scribeth thus
In article ,
James R wrote:
Why bother with the radio when you can listen through a PC. As always,
if it is "digital" it's crap - so sounds like a Medium wave station on
a good day. Some stations are mono with low bitrates like the "crystal
clear" DAB system the UK was inflicted with. Worse than FM stereo!

You may not have noticed that Mr Lesurf is mainly interested in classical
music and R3 uses a higher bitrate than other DAB stations. Which will in
most cases sound better than FM if you have a less than perfect signal for
that.
Other option is a FreeView tuner for radio. Not everyone will want a
noisy PC in the room if they're doing serious radio listening.

BTW - I've never heard a decent DAB radio sound as bad as MW.


Which seems to be why a lot of people are buying DAB so as to hear Radio
5 live better. Which is quite clear in my car on AM ...

Course your mileage may differ)..
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Mike O'Sullivan
scribeth thus
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
James R wrote:
Why bother with the radio when you can listen through a PC. As always,
if it is "digital" it's crap - so sounds like a Medium wave station on
a good day. Some stations are mono with low bitrates like the "crystal
clear" DAB system the UK was inflicted with. Worse than FM stereo!

You may not have noticed that Mr Lesurf is mainly interested in classical
music and R3 uses a higher bitrate than other DAB stations.

Not consistantly. They use (barely acceptable) 192 kbps in the evening,
but frequently this drops to 160 during the day.

For a serious state broadcaster the BBC could use 256 K or better on
satellite but they steadfastly refuse to do so.

Even the TV uses 256 K on Freeview!..
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Jim Lesurf
scribeth thus
In article , Dave Plowman (News)
wrote:
In article , James R
wrote:
Why bother with the radio when you can listen through a PC. As always,
if it is "digital" it's crap - so sounds like a Medium wave station on
a good day. Some stations are mono with low bitrates like the
"crystal clear" DAB system the UK was inflicted with. Worse than FM
stereo!

You may not have noticed that Mr Lesurf is mainly interested in
classical music and R3 uses a higher bitrate than other DAB stations.
Which will in most cases sound better than FM if you have a less than
perfect signal for that. Other option is a FreeView tuner for radio. Not
everyone will want a noisy PC in the room if they're doing serious radio
listening.

FWIW In recent years I have ended up preferring R3 via DTTV. This is using
systems which have decent FM tuners that allow me to do A/B comparisons
whenever I wish. IIRC I've summarised the reasons on this group more than
once, so won't recap.

Also, it seems to me at present at least plausible that decent stations
with mp3 rates of 192kbps or higher should not sound poorer than DTTV R3 -
provided of course that the broadcasters provide good source material and I
can get reliable 'reception'.

Hard for me to assess this at present as I'm just using my computer's DACs
and an application to act as tuner. If nothing else, I have reasons to
expect the computer part of that to be less than 'audiophile'. :-) But I
may well try out an 'internet radio' if my experiences in the next few
weeks make that seem worth exploring. At present I am simply exploring and
finding out what may be available.

Slainte,

Jim

U should get a satellite receiver Jim and hear what your missing..

All the ones we've got have got SPDIF outs..
--
Tony Sayer

In article ,
David Looser wrote:
Where I live in East Anglia, MW is pretty much useless. The only station
I can at anything approaching usable quality is BBC World Service,
everything else is buried under a mush of interference. OTOH I do get
excellent BBC FM from a transmitter just a few miles away and I also use
digital satellite for stations that aren't on FM. Until recently I had
never listened to DAB, but I bought my daughter a DAB radio for
Christmas (she's a fan of BBC7) and I was pleasantly surprised at how
good it sounded after seeing DAB regularly rubbished here.

Indeed. But of course it's fashionable to slag off DAB - even from those
who normally listen to their music off low bitrate MP3, etc. To say
128kbps DAB sounds worse than MW is simply nonsense and does no credit to
its opponents.

I also wonder how many who say 'internet' radio sounds better than DAB are
comparing like for like. Do they have a DAB tuner fed into the same sound
system as their PC? Or are they comparing their PC sound system to a DAB
portable radio?

--
*Do paediatricians play miniature golf on Wednesdays?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
Which seems to be why a lot of people are buying DAB so as to hear Radio
5 live better. Which is quite clear in my car on AM ...

Course your mileage may differ)..

R7 in my case. ;-)

--
*That's it! I‘m calling grandma!

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , Dave Plowman (News)
scribeth thus
In article ,
David Looser wrote:
Where I live in East Anglia, MW is pretty much useless. The only station
I can at anything approaching usable quality is BBC World Service,
everything else is buried under a mush of interference. OTOH I do get
excellent BBC FM from a transmitter just a few miles away and I also use
digital satellite for stations that aren't on FM. Until recently I had
never listened to DAB, but I bought my daughter a DAB radio for
Christmas (she's a fan of BBC7) and I was pleasantly surprised at how
good it sounded after seeing DAB regularly rubbished here.

Indeed. But of course it's fashionable to slag off DAB - even from those
who normally listen to their music off low bitrate MP3, etc. To say
128kbps DAB sounds worse than MW is simply nonsense and does no credit to
its opponents.

I also wonder how many who say 'internet' radio sounds better than DAB are
comparing like for like. Do they have a DAB tuner fed into the same sound
system as their PC? Or are they comparing their PC sound system to a DAB
portable radio?


Dave I sometimes wonder if theres something wrong with your hearing;?..
--
Tony Sayer

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

I also wonder how many who say 'internet' radio sounds better than DAB are
comparing like for like. Do they have a DAB tuner fed into the same sound
system as their PC? Or are they comparing their PC sound system to a DAB
portable radio?


I'm no great enthusiast for the concept of "internet radio". I appreciate
"Listen Again" to allow me to catch up on Radio 4 programmes I have missed,
but the quality is crap, so I don't bother with internet music. But as I
said I was pleasantly surprised by DAB, it sounded fine to me.

David.

In article ,
tony sayer wrote:
I also wonder how many who say 'internet' radio sounds better than DAB
are comparing like for like. Do they have a DAB tuner fed into the same
sound system as their PC? Or are they comparing their PC sound system
to a DAB portable radio?


Dave I sometimes wonder if theres something wrong with your hearing;?..

There's definitely something wrong with yours if you agree DAB sounds
worse than MW.

--
*Many people quit looking for work when they find a job *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , tony sayer

wrote:


Have a look at Bayern Klassik 4 and France Musique dunno what their
like
on the net but there're sure good on Satellite)..

URLs?

The problem I am having is that searches via google and some of the
specific pages on this don't seem to turn up the listings of stations
I'd
expect. No idea why. Maybe I'm not choosing the correct search strings
or
whatever...


Radio Webcast - Free Streaming Classical Music:
http://www.classicalwebcast.dds.nl/



Slainte,

Jim

--
Change 'noise' to 'jcgl' if you wish to email me.
Electronics
http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

tony sayer wrote:
In article , Mike O'Sullivan
scribeth thus
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
James R wrote:
Why bother with the radio when you can listen through a PC. As always,
if it is "digital" it's crap - so sounds like a Medium wave station on
a good day. Some stations are mono with low bitrates like the "crystal
clear" DAB system the UK was inflicted with. Worse than FM stereo!
You may not have noticed that Mr Lesurf is mainly interested in classical
music and R3 uses a higher bitrate than other DAB stations.
Not consistantly. They use (barely acceptable) 192 kbps in the evening,
but frequently this drops to 160 during the day.

For a serious state broadcaster the BBC could use 256 K or better on
satellite but they steadfastly refuse to do so.

I normally listen on FM of course, but yesterday I checked on the bit
rate on Radio 4 yesterday morning and it was 128 kbps. Noticeably
inferior to FM.