Live365 internet radio stations

2fivers

Does anyone know if there's a reason why some stations on this net service sound fuzzy and others are clear as a bell?

I was listening to an Irish station this afternoon, and although the music & DJ were good , it was hard to concentrate on because it was like listening to a slightly muffled or mis-tuned radio. However, other stations that I listened to today were crystal clear, like CD quality.

My question is : Do you choose a level of broadcast sound when you sign up to live 365, and if so, why would anyone choose to sound like they were down a well? Is it to do with cost?

Cheers.

mlink73

It depends on what bandwith they broadast. It all comes down to cost at the end broadcasting with 32 or 64kbit is much cheaper then broadcasting with 128kbit but it sounds muffled.

If you choose to have a radio stream enabled for up to 100 listeners with 64kbit it's less than half of what you pay having a stream for the same amount of listeners with 128kbit, and another factor is that your upload needs to produce a constant speed of at least 128kbit to broadcast without interruptions. With all the content rates here in Ireland it can be very tricky to keep that stream up without loss of connection.

2fivers

Thanks Mlink.

I went back and looked, and the stations I thought were clear were 64 and 128kbit respectively - very listenable, whereas the Irish station was broadcasting at 32kbit, and was very murky indeed.

Pity, because the content was good, but because of the reception, I couldn't listen to it for very long.

Trick of the Tail

It also depends whether the webstream is being fed direct from the radio station with a dedicated audio processor, or whether they've taken the cheap option and the webstream is fed from an FM tuner.

This method is a bad idea.

A.