[FM] Internet Radio and Archived Music

[GEM]

Well i'm mostly a lurker here, but here it goes.
I listen to real audio a lot and find the sound quality to me more than
acceptable.  But i do have a cable modem and a pretty fast computer (mac
g3).  Before i made these upgrades i found the sound quality pretty poor.
The real audio G4 runs great and seems to have quality at least as good as
fm radio (though nowhere near a cd).  It seems, though, without a highspeed
internet connection one will never really have good quality streaming audio
or for that matter video.

--beth


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>From: "John R Pierce" <pierce@hogranch.com>
>To: <folkmusic@grassyhill.org>
>Subject: Re: [FM] Internet Radio and Archived Music
>Date: Sat, Mar 4, 2000, 12:50 PM
>

>> With all the discussion of Internet Radio, I've seen no discussion of the
>> sound quality.

(much snippage)
>>

>
> Its all about data rate.   I was messing with a 48k feed using MP3 and
> 'shoutcast' in 44k sample/second mono mode, it sounded great.  I've heard
> 36k 'Microsoft Active Streaming Format' stereo streams that sounded very
> good.  The new experimental 128k MP3 stream from KPIP (also
> shoutcast/icecast) is better than the best possible FM sound, but you need a
> DSL or cable modem or better link to hear it, and it does occasionally
> 'hiccup' when net congestion gets the better of it.
>