New Internet radio show good enough for headphones!

Now at The Production Room Dot Net, another new Internet Radio Show for Broadband Users with sound good enough for headphones! Go to The Production Room Dot Net...Worldwide Internet Radio Scroll Down to the "Broadband" link, and click to listen in VERY HIGH QUALITY Real Audio 8 featuring ATRAC3!

Your comments on the show, and/or suggestions or requests for the next one are welcomed! By the way, ALL streaming content on my site is commercial free. I will NEVER try to sell you ANYTHING! It's there strictly for your entertainment, as a free service of The Production Room.

Mike Walker Owner/Operator "The Production Room"
Host/Webmaster "The Production Room Dot Net"

You CAN listen with a 56K modem!

Neruda you CAN listen with a 56K modem. But you'll have to listen to one of the formats designed for dialup modems. There are low-bit-rate (but still stereo) files in Windows Media, and Real Audio. The audio quality is poorer, but you can still hear the show.

Thanks Thomas

Well, the goal was "better than fm", which I think it is at only 64kbps. Better than MOST fm anyway. Of course the good fm stations (and they're RARE) can produce audio that rivals most anything. I wonder if most people know that prior to the US choosing the WORST of the (then) proposed systems for fm stereo (because it left bandwidth for other services such as background music on subcarriers. WOW, I would have hated for Americans to miss out on MUZAK!), that fm had a (potential) signal to noise ratio nearly as good as 16 bit digital, and frequency response to (and even beyond) 20khz? When introduced after WW-II (I know there was another failed fm band prior to WW-II) fm radio was THE HIGHEST QUALITY AUDIO SOURCE available, PERIOD (given a live broadcast, and good engineering). FM stereo traded SUPERB sonics for stereo imaging, at the cost of (sometimes far) higher distortion and LOTS more noise (except in the strongest urban listening areas). Hopefully digital radio will fix these problems for over the air.

As for increasing the data rate to 96kbps, I'll think about it. The problem is that I have limited space on my web site (who doesn't!), and the problem with high-bit-rate "netcasting" is that the higher the data rate goes, the fewer people can hear it (because of bandwidth limits). So it's a catch 22. I'm torn between being able to serve more people, with a greater variety of programs (I want to have more than one high-quality program at my site at once), and wanting to offer the highest possible audio quality.

Thomas, you've judged my show's audio quality by audiophile standards and found it acceptable. For that I am quite proud. But I hope you'll agree that judging it by INTERNET AUDIO standards, it's quite good! I'm certainly biased, but it sounds better to me than any of the 128kbps mp3 streams I've heard from Shoutcast stations. I now believe that ATRAC3 is THE most transparent low bit rate codec I've heard (although Windows Media is also pretty damn good for streaming at 64kbps). It was really a tossup which format to use for high quality streaming. In the end, I chose Real Audio because more people have the Real Player than the Windows Media Player, although that may eventually change. Thanks, and enjoy! Any other comments?

Quicktime

MacDef I have considered Quicktime. Although it IS better for low-bit-rate video, it actually doesn't (in my listening tests) sound better than Real Audio 8, and comes in a (VERY) distant third to Real Audio and Windows Media in terms of the number of players on people's 'puters. If I had unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited UPload bandwidth, I would unquestionably use Quicktime. I think it's a shame that it's not used more, but there are actually VERY few internet radio sites using Quicktime! (as compared to many more streaming VIDEO sites!)

Responding........

I appreciate the offer Aiotron, but for free I can re-design my site. It's really mostly a toy for me to play with streaming audio. I don't use it to solicit business, just to "play radio".

As for Thomas, digital radio is very exciting. There are several stations in the US now conducting experiments with IBOC (In band, on channel) digital broadcasting (fm, AND am stations). Perhaps the most famous of the stations that broadcast a digital signal fulltime now is WSM (650am) in Nashville, home of "The Grand Ole' Opry".

Stations now broadcasting digitally are doing it as a part of the research required before digital broadcasting "officially" begins, probably sometime in the first or second quarter of next year. They're brodcasting digitally now only to research how good the sound quality is, how far the digital signal goes (compared to analog), and how much (if any) the digital signal interferes with analog.

I've heard both the am and fm systems demonstrated at various conventions, and I can tell you they are BOTH better than anything available now in the analog domain. I'll say it here...the am system provides a cleaner, higher quality, wider bandwidth stereo signal than today's best fm stereo...with a signal to noise ratio as good as a cd. And with it's higher bit-rate, the fm system is even better (though the difference can be quite subtle. The am system is ASTONISHINGLY good, considering the limited bandwidth of am radio! AM stations are only 10khz apart, compared with 200khz for fm!

Then there's satellite delivered digital radio, provided by two different companies...XM radio, and Sirius radio. Both of these (competing and incompatible) systems begin broadcasting this year....each with up to 100 channels. The catch? They are both subscription services. If you wanna' play, you've gotta' pay!

I think the FREE (to listen) IBOC digital radio that will be offered by our local (US) stations will catch on much more quickly than digital high definition television, because the price of admission is FAR less. Manufacturers believe that once they get things "up and running", digital capability will only add a few bucks to the cost of our radio receiving equipment, and won't require any special antenna. Any antenna that works for analog am and fm will work for digital!

Don't worry Thomas about not being able to receive digital radio yet. You're not supposed to be able to hear it yet! It's still in the (final) testing phase!

Mike Walker

Nobody (in the USA) markets a true "digital" radio (for IBOC digital, as opposed to XM and Sirrius satellite radio) yet, because the FCC hasn't finalized the standard, yet. But it IS in the final stages of testing (on fm AND am stations), and all indications are that the tests are quite successful.

There's only one problem, but it's a BIG one if you own an am music station. AM stations are required to reduce the frequency response of the analog portion of their signal to 5khz in order to make room for the digital data. Granted, most am radios don't exceed 5khz frequency response, but some do...including some that aren't very expensive, like the GE SuperRadio III, and the "long distance am" radio from Radio Shack, both of which have switchable bandwidth, and in the wide position produce a very "fm-like" sound. For those who don't realize it, AM stations already had to reduce their high frequency response once in the 90s, when the "NRSC (National Radio Standards Committee) Pre-Emphasis Curve" was standardized to improve sound quality, and reduce interference on the am band, part of the interference reduction comes from a brick-wall filter at 9khz. NOTHING above 9khz survives the filter...important (for interference reduction) because am stations are 10khz apart. Anything beyond 9khz, and adjacent stations are "on top of each other". Probably most people don't realize that before the NRSC curve became standard, am stations had NO restrictions on their frequency response, and could actually transmit audio as "broadband" as fm! Unfortunately nobody heard it that way because most am radios are so damn bad!

Anyhow, IBOC digital radio KILLS the biggest problem for both am AND fm radio (especially stereo fm), NOISE! Both systems (am and fm) are 16 bit digital, which means a s/n ratio of 96db, just like cd!

Lots of radio stations are jumping the gun on declaring themselves "digital". And who can blame them...they've invested tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in digital recording/mixing/editing/distribution/transmission hardware and software. From hard-disk based recording and editing to all digital consoles, today's best radio stations are already digital all the way to the transmitter, where the signal is converted back to analog for transmission. Soon that won't be necessary!

As for the record companies, they seem to have no problems with IBOC digital radio, because both am and fm systems use lossy data compression. There is, at present, no plan to have copy-inhibit "flags" in digital radio transmissions. Hopefully that remains true!