[mcp6453[_2_]]

On 2/24/2012 2:09 AM, Trevor wrote:
"Marc Wielage" wrote in message
.com...
But the problem is, most FM stations choose to subdivide their bandwidth
into
multiple streams, and as a result, most of what you hear on HD Radio is
maybe
120kbps, at best.

We can only dream of that here, with most digital radio stations closer to
64kbs. :-(
The good news at least is that I don't listen to radio anyway, and I sure
don't need to buy a digital one! :-)
AM provides better coverage for news and traffic reports, which is all I
ever want on radio, and talkback radio seems to be the most listened too by
other people, and that sounds just as bad on anything, or at any bit rate.
CD's are for listening to recorded music!

I solved my frustration with radio the same way Trevor did: I stopped listening
to it. When I'm listening to online content, it's almost always from the
Internet. Most of the streams I listen to are 128K even for talk.

[Mxsmanic]

Marc Wielage writes:

But the problem is, most FM stations choose to subdivide their bandwidth into
multiple streams, and as a result, most of what you hear on HD Radio is maybe
120kbps, at best.

That's the dark side of digital. While digital in theory could provide very
high bandwidth of very high quality, all too often it is used instead to
create quantity rather than quality, e.g., 1000 channels of terrible image or
sound quality rather than one channel of superlative quality. The push is
always towards the lowest common denominator, because that's what makes the
most money.

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Marc Wielage writes:

But the problem is, most FM stations choose to subdivide their
bandwidth into multiple streams, and as a result, most of what you
hear on HD Radio is maybe 120kbps, at best.

That's the dark side of digital. While digital in theory could
provide very high bandwidth of very high quality, all too often it is
used instead to create quantity rather than quality, e.g., 1000
channels of terrible image or sound quality rather than one channel
of superlative quality. The push is always towards the lowest common
denominator, because that's what makes the most money.

Like "I can cram half a million (crappy sounding) songs on my iPod" is some
sort of nirvana.

geoff

[Marc Wielage[_2_]]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:09:45 -0800, Mxsmanic wrote
(in article ):

That's the dark side of digital. While digital in theory could provide very
high bandwidth of very high quality, all too often it is used instead to
create quantity rather than quality, e.g., 1000 channels of terrible image or
sound quality rather than one channel of superlative quality. The push is
always towards the lowest common denominator, because that's what makes the
most money.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Yep. A couple of years ago, Sirius Radio talkshow host Howard Stern had on
as a guest the person who came up with the concept of satellite radio 20
years ago, including the various techniques for signal compression. As the
story goes, they originally intended for Sirius to have _twice the bandwidth_
it does now, but the FCC forced Sirius to divide up their bandwidth with XM
Radio, which required twice as much compression.

As a result, the average Sirius channels are broadcast at about 64kbps
(according to most estimates), or 128kbps via internet streaming. This is a
huge step down in quality from what it could have been.

The same problem has happened in HDTV broadcasting, where many local stations
have taken a chunk of their available bandwidth and allocated it instead to
sub-channels, sacrificing picture quality for a little extra money. I hate
this. Unnecessary compression is bad.

--MFW

[Mxsmanic]

Marc Wielage writes:

The same problem has happened in HDTV broadcasting, where many local stations
have taken a chunk of their available bandwidth and allocated it instead to
sub-channels, sacrificing picture quality for a little extra money. I hate
this. Unnecessary compression is bad.

It's an unavoidable consequence of going from analog to digital. Once people
discover that they can delivery quantity rather than quality and reap higher
margins in the process, any additional quality provided by digital methods
goes out the window, and is replaced with quantity instead.

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Marc Wielage wrote:
On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:09:45 -0800, Mxsmanic wrote
(in ):

That's the dark side of digital. While digital in theory could provide very
high bandwidth of very high quality, all too often it is used instead to
create quantity rather than quality, e.g., 1000 channels of terrible image or
sound quality rather than one channel of superlative quality. The push is
always towards the lowest common denominator, because that's what makes the
most money.
------------------------------snip------------------------------

Yep. A couple of years ago, Sirius Radio talkshow host Howard Stern had on
as a guest the person who came up with the concept of satellite radio 20
years ago, including the various techniques for signal compression. As the
story goes, they originally intended for Sirius to have _twice the bandwidth_
it does now, but the FCC forced Sirius to divide up their bandwidth with XM
Radio, which required twice as much compression.

As a result, the average Sirius channels are broadcast at about 64kbps
(according to most estimates), or 128kbps via internet streaming. This is a
huge step down in quality from what it could have been.

The same problem has happened in HDTV broadcasting, where many local stations
have taken a chunk of their available bandwidth and allocated it instead to
sub-channels, sacrificing picture quality for a little extra money. I hate
this. Unnecessary compression is bad.

--MFW



The entertainment industry has always gotten the short end of the
Sherman Act.


--
Les Cargill

[Les Cargill[_4_]]

Mxsmanic wrote:
Marc Wielage writes:

The same problem has happened in HDTV broadcasting, where many local stations
have taken a chunk of their available bandwidth and allocated it instead to
sub-channels, sacrificing picture quality for a little extra money. I hate
this. Unnecessary compression is bad.

It's an unavoidable consequence of going from analog to digital. Once people
discover that they can delivery quantity rather than quality and reap higher
margins in the process, any additional quality provided by digital methods
goes out the window, and is replaced with quantity instead.


People (in general) won't pay for quality, so this preference is
revealed by price. If quality had mattered, reel to reel would have
eclipsed vinyl.

--
Les Cargill

[Mxsmanic]

Les Cargill writes:

People (in general) won't pay for quality, so this preference is
revealed by price. If quality had mattered, reel to reel would have
eclipsed vinyl.

One of my family elders invested in a very good reel-to-reel system once, and
it still whipped anything more recent even after its owner was long gone. I
was amazed by the quality the first time I heard it. And it was a high-end
prosumer system, not an actual professional system.

Tape is one of those technologies that is fairly open-ended. You can always
run the tape faster with more aggressive noise reduction and get better
results, within broad limits. But things like 8-track cartridges gave it a bad
name, I think.