Lately when I listen to public radio it sounds like many FM stations are playing low quality MP3 files rather then the classic carts. Now I know times have changed, but so has the quality of music stations lately for the worst. This one popular FM station here sounds like they are playing 128k or lower quality MP3s. It makes me sick to listen to it after a while because I am a little bit of an audiophile. I miss the days when stations would spin actual records or have decent quality cart tapes. Here at my own pirate station we do use MP3s but I use 256k bitrate which is very close to the quality of CDs so most people don't notice it. Besides that we play a lot of real records here and reel taped music of high quality. This is probably a rant, but how many others here feel this way? It's like the DJs at the stations forgot that music can still sound good on ye old 15KHz FM broadcasting. I guess kids today don't know what it's like listening to classic radio when music was actually played back in full quality over air.
Sound quality is getting worse and worse. I blame kids and their damn cellphones and iPods driving the market... it isn't about 30Gb holding a few hundred great sounding tracks, it's all about having "gollygeewhizbang" 10 million low bitrate .mp3's that you could never listen to in three lifetimes
I was "trying" to listen to a local rock station (bad weather made the satellite Jazz station crap out temporarily) and there was so much aliasing, I had to just pipe music out of my computer.
I swear that it was 48K or something .mp3... the mids had phase shifts so bad it sounded like an 11M sporadic "E" SSB communications
I use 320K CBR or V0 in my studio.... even at 256K, Jazz can show artifacts.
As a side note, the satellite Jazz station does still spin vinyl on some pieces.... every click and pop comes through unfiltered, hehehehe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
