Home Radio Road

Which tuner to get and getting the most from it. Thank God, for the radio!

ALL of these use data reduced / non-linear encoding IE WAY LESS info. than CD

IF, as you may find, the quality, esp. noise and spuriae, is better than a particular station or stations sound quality on analogue FM, that does NOT mena that they are better in an absolute sense.

It can NOT, by definition in musical infomation and detail sense, be better, than -

"an UN-Eq'd and dynamically uncompressed FM signal through a good directional antenna driving a good sounding tuner into full limiting."

I very much doubt that they are using any higher data rate than 192KBPS.

I actually am in a ppositiion to make these comparisons. Dynamically uncompressed FM all the time from one station. And, I know that you need at least 512 KBPS using non-liner encoding, and adjusted to maximise transient response, to even get close to straight analogue FM, musically.

The national publicly owned ABC runs a national, satellite distributed, and analogue terrestrial transmitted, Classical and Jazz FM network, no dynamic compression is used except for a little peak limiting to avoid overmodulation, their audio eng. people have adapted MPEG2 @ 512 in the way I described for the up and down sat. links. Powerful transmitter.

We also have a local arts and music community station that also cares about its sound and is purely analogue. They have only a small transmitter of less than 10mw. AND, from 'midnight to dawn' they go automated using MP3'd music files.

It is easy to make the comparisons, and I am a reference listenr fo the ABC and the local mob.

When the ABC stopped using analogue upa and down links they did NOT announce it, (?!) I noticed and rang up. Not for the first time, mind you, having complained about the output here, and had fixes started, several times before. One was a soft whine in one channel.

Even on live broadcasts, the ABC is just NOT as clear as the local station, acceptable yes, but noticeable in comparison.

The midnight to dawn sound on the local source is a significant and noticeable down-shift, at changeover.

Lastly, one of the principles of clear thinking I picked up from logic is that if two diametrically opposite propositions are put, there are but three possible real and true 'states of nature', only ONE of which IS the true state.

1. prop/n A is wrong, and B is right.

2. Prop'n B is wrong and A is right.

3. BOTH are wrong.

This really does need to be applied by all 'philes, to the low-rez MP3, ATRAC, camp versus the high sampling, longer word length => high data rate approach, of SACD and DVD-A.

VIZ> they CAN"T both be right, and I am pretty confident that the high data rate approach IS.

and yes I do think digital red-book CD is not good enough, a pretty strong position for a HIP classical fanatic, and micro set-up vinylist, there has been very little or no vinyl for this taste, for a long time now. SO I do listen to CD a lot, and have a handful of comparison possibilities, esp. the Hogwood/ACAM Paris Symphony.

The CD doesn't win, sorry!


Timbo in Oz
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio Scrounger
Peace


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