There are plenty of very good internet radio stations streaming at 128 and 192. My favorite eclectic station for the past few months has been RadioParadise.com (I also listen most days to KCRW for their terrific live music sets on Morning Becomes Eclectic).
128K is not CD quality at all, but I was shocked at the improvement when I finally hooked up my Dodson DAC to the S/PDIF output of the Audiophile USB (was just using the A-USB's built in DAC before). There is bass, there is air, there is a bit of a soundstage--but most of all there IS Music in those streams. What I mean is that even on low rate streams (assuming the station does a good job encoding I guess), a good external DAC can help the SENSE and feeling of the music come through. Sure there are fewer bits, but putting them back together well--and feeding them to good analog stage in your DAC and to your amps--brings life to it.
Although I have 4000+ LPs and 500 CDs of many genres, I am discovering so much terrific new music via streaming that fully half of my listening is not from my collection (but you should see the stack of Post-its with artist and tune names littering my desk!).
I am waiting for someone to start streaming at even higher bit rates, though software will need to adapt to allow for big pre-buffers to avoid pauses. I'd pay for the service.
On that note, I am sad to think that Sirrus and XM are only sending down 64kbps as someone posted. Not that their music selections are sophisticated or varied enough for my taste.
Regards,
Alex @ Hovland
