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RE: Here's A More Direct Source

Posted by JURB (A) on December 10, 2016 at 09:49:58

In Reply to: RE: Here's A More Direct Source posted by Bromo33333 on December 9, 2016 at 13:56:03:

"At higher bitrates it's OK for casual "radio" listening, but I still prefer FM radio to it."

Well then you must be listening to classical on stations with analog equipment and no bunch of digital crap embedded.

I find the rock stations way too compressed, and I mean dynamic range compression. The idea is to sound louder, the idea of which should have been abandoned on the FM band. On AM they did it so when you were in your car out of town and didn't know where the stations were you could hear them better.

A digital FM stereoplexer quantizes at 19 KHz. I think, compared to vinyl it sounds like shit.

For the next generation of digital they need to make the pieces very small. Forget about the 20 KHz limit, make it 40 KHz. Make the lower limit like 4 Hz. Then it is easier to design output filters with less phase shift and not so steep a rolloff. Then the number of bits/bytes. Regular CDs were 16 bit. Try about 48 bit and the real golden ears might just like it, or at east not be able to tell.

With today's technology a format like that would yield such short playing times on a DVDR that it could go the way of the betamax. Beta was better but the shorter playing times is why many went with VHS. Looked like shit but you could get three full length movies on one T-120 tape. Beta had a better picture and actually came out with (AFM) hifi sound first, but IIRC in beta 3 you only got 5 hours on a standard tape. That is not enough for two full length movies.

However, I think we are going into a time when we are going to see HDD recorders, put a 1 TB in those and you can afford to use a much higher format. Karaoke machines already do that, as do some DJs. No more busting your back carrying all the CDs, the other equipment is damn heavy enough. They might already have a higher format HDD recorder that I just don't know about yet.

Anyway, about FM, maybe it is partly where you live or that you have a truly superior tuner, but in general I have found MP3s to sound better than most FM. Listening to rock that is. The hillbilly station I think does a little bit better but that might partly be because the music is slightly different.

I do think I got lucky with the sound system in my music PC. Not so with my laptop, it has no dynamic range at all unless you go to the player (VLC) and turn its volume almost all the way down, not the PC volume. An external DAC I am sure would fix that. Maybe one of these days.

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