"New radio formats sacrifice sound quality"

[Cookiepuss]

A new MSNBC article seems to rip on podcasting for reasons of sound quality and more. Referencing the recent Wired edition on podcasting/satelite radio. It does not seem a surprise that MSNBC would take issue with podcasting. After all. . .they own an awful lot of radio stations ;)

Te article reads:

The headline on the March issue of Wired proclaims “The End of Radio.” Inside are stories on the satellite radio wars, the coming digital radio boom plus radio recording devices and even podcasting. I disagree with the whole premise. (more) (http://undergroundmedia.org/new-radio-formats-sacrifice-sound-quality/)

[allthewhile]

you know, i listen to npr because of it's deep soothing bass and subtle, mid tones. or not.

[cid92]

Actually the article rips on satellite and the quality of the feed that comes from it. He mentions podcasting once in the article and it was more in passing than anything else.

I will admit that he is right in some aspects of satellite radio. We have XM at home and some channels have the worst sound. Nothing better than digital warbling and shimmering coming from your stereo.

Luckily, most podcasts are encoded in relativley decent bit rates. The only show that kills me is FTL (sorry Ian). I've tried listening several times but 19kbps MP3 files are just horrible. I know the file size is nice but I'd rather listen to 30 minutes of nails on a chalkboard.

[Ian]

No need to apologize. Thanks for trying to listen. :) I used to encode them at 16kbps. At least talk is tolerable at 20kbps, in my opinion at least. Actually, in two years of giving out archives, yours is the first quality complaint I've had!

The primary reason for the medium/low bitrate choice is inclusion of dialup users. It's easy to assume that because I use broadband, that most others must. In fact, I always have to remember that not all of our listeners have internet, let alone computers!

Plus, the alternate reason for 20kbps is when I release an archive collection set on DVDs, they will be very high quality, hopefully giving our listeners who collect the archives an extra reason to buy them. <rubs hands together> lol!

[cid92]

The primary reason for the medium/low bitrate choice is inclusion of dialup users. It's easy to assume that because I use broadband, that most others must. In fact, I always have to remember that not all of our listeners have internet, let alone computers!

Fair enough. Not knowing what your bandwidth limits are, if you even have any, but it would be cool to see two versions of the audio out there. Low bitrate encoded for those on dialup that need the small file size than a slightly larger file for the high speeders. Even 48kbps would work wonders for the show. I think 64kbps works best for mostly talk podcasts.

Just a thought.

As for the quality. I know that this is just podcasting and you're right that 19kbps is tolerable for talk, but the digital warble just grates on me. Apparently my pristine ears can't handle it :D

[Cookiepuss]

Well you could always do an "audiophile" version that is lossless, perhaps FLAC or SHN files. Then you would have a low bitrate for the "common folk" and the "audiophile" for those with descriminating Auditory Ossicles. :lol:

(j/k) ;)

[Ian]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I will take them under consideration. Actually, you may find it interesting that we feed the network 56kbps via ISDN. At the network, the satellite uplink is only 56kbps. We actually stream live at 64, so our live internet listeners actually get the highest quality feed. Plus sometimes the internet listeners get "bonuses" where we pot up the mics during breaks and screw around, play audio, test stuff, and make fun of some of the network spots. I feel that the high bandwidth live feed vs low bandwidth archives gives listeners an extra reason to tune in live...

I suppose if you were really savvy you could record the live feed, and make your own archives. :D

[cid92]

Well you could always do an "audiophile" version that is lossless, perhaps FLAC or SHN files. Then you would have a low bitrate for the "common folk" and the "audiophile" for those with descriminating Auditory Ossicles. :lol:

(j/k) ;)

I wouldn't go to the extreme of lossless for better versions of the show. SHN and FLAC are too **** big for podcasts. I think slightly higher encoded MP3 would just be a touch better. It just sounds cleaner. I've listened to a few of the FTL casts and it reminds me of audio through Real Player. There is just something about 19kbps audio. The top end of the audio is sheared off and it shimmers and warbles throughout. The audio just sits out there in midrange and has a flat quality to it. When I want to hear something about ferral cats I want some high end and less shimmer ****** :wink:

Did a very unoffical experiment. This past firday's first hour. The original MP3 file is 5.4MB. I decoded the file to WAV and then re-encoded to 48kbps MP3. File size grew to 12MB. Of course sound quality did not change since I wasn't able to encode the original source but you get the picture (I hope). Increasing the encoded bit rate will jack up the file size but it's not out of control and the sound quality would be a bit better.

[Ian]

Well, one thing that cannot be said about FTL is that we don't respond to the demands of the market.

I've been up all night testing and tweaking my encoding rates...

As of this most recent show our quality has increased over 20%! Kbps is up from 20 to 24, my sample rate has increased from 16000 Hz to 22050 Hz, and I'm now capping the bandwidth at 5512 Hz, so shimmer is pretty much gone. I think it's more polished now, at a minimal cost to dialup users.

Hope this helps, cid.
Ian

[Barefoot Radio.com]

Hi Ian,

Listening to your show, I have to agree that a higher bit rate would be fantastic.

Regardless of bandwidth issues(which are valid), the quality of the show you produce MERITS a higher bps sound file.

Hope you take it as a compliment because I mean it and I'm an audio fidelity junkie.

[Ian]

Thanks Paul, that's why I've boosted the rate to 24kpbs, and tweaked out the upper bandwidth shimmering. The archive sounds much smoother now without significant costs to dialup users.

Eventually I'll release all our pre-syndication shows as a collection on multiple DVDs at 96-128 kbps... right now though my time is dedicated to recruiting new radio station affiliates.

Thanks for listening!
Ian

[cid92]

Cleaner sounding cast at 24kbps. Listening to hour one of Saturday's show. A thousand times better and the file size is still small enough for dialup users to grab the show.

Amazing how some small tweaks can make a huge difference.