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Sound quality of Today FM on internet radio

  • 27-03-2018 12:17pm
    #1
    gazza87a
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26 ✭


    I recently bought a Roberts i93 internet radio. When playing over Wifi Today FM seems to be the only station that has a really flat sound to it. Has anyone else experienced this? I need to turn the volume right up to get a good sound, then if i change to another station it get blasted out of it.


Comments

  • #2
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,967 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    Interesting... let me check this out.


  • #3
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,967 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    I measured the raw streams off 3 stations - Today, FM104 and 98FM. Today FM stream is very inferior - amazingly it's only mono at 64 kb/s! This is awful quality for an MP3 stream.

    In addition, Today FM is also about 3dB lower in terms of "volume" compared to the other two. I measured them against each other with a LKFS meter.

    Today FM - Mono MP3 @ 64 kb/s - LKFS reading -19.1
    FM104 - Stereo MP3 @ 128 kb/s - LKFS reading -16.6
    98FM - Stereo MP3 @ 128 kb/s - LKFS reading -15.4


  • #4
    gazza87a
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26 ✭gazza87a


    Thanks for that debug, really interesting.. 
    wonder why they steam inferior quality.. Its really noticeable.


  • #5
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,967 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    gazza87a wrote: »
    Thanks for that debug, really interesting.. 
    wonder why they steam inferior quality.. Its really noticeable.

    Probably a combination of cost savings (less bandwidth used) and a lack of attention to their stream audio settings (it's certainly too low in addition to being of poor quality).


  • #6
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,967 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    In addition to the streams for Today FM on their web site and on TuneIn, there is a separate stream used on LiveRadio.ie. Although the bit rate is better and it is stereo (96 kb/s) - the right channel is about 3dB louder than the left! Overall, it has an even lower audio volume than the main mono stream.

    ...sack the engineers!


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  • #7
    Mr Snow
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,660 ✭✭✭Mr Snow


    JDxtra wrote: »
    I measured the raw streams off 3 stations - Today, FM104 and 98FM. Today FM stream is very inferior - amazingly it's only mono at 64 kb/s! This is awful quality for an MP3 stream.

    In addition, Today FM is also about 3dB lower in terms of "volume" compared to the other two. I measured them against each other with a LKFS meter.

    Today FM - Mono MP3 @ 64 kb/s - LKFS reading -19.1
    FM104 - Stereo MP3 @ 128 kb/s - LKFS reading -16.6
    98FM - Stereo MP3 @ 128 kb/s - LKFS reading -15.4

    what does lkfs mean?


  • #8
    JDxtra
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,967 ✭✭✭JDxtra


    Mr Snow wrote: »
    what does lkfs mean?

    It's one way to measure loudness. See some details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKFS


  • #9
    RastaRed
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 316 ✭✭RastaRed


    I've emailed them about this numerous time, never got one reply


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