BayStBroker
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For vintage tuner enthusiasts... (from https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-sound-quality-of-a-same-song-broadcasted-on-FM-Radio-compare-to-MP3-encoded-at-320kbps)
How does the sound quality of a same song broadcasted on FM Radio compare to MP3 encoded at 320kbps?
Scenario: I had an experience where I was listening to radio from an FM station with my stereo set up at home. I also had the same recording on MP3 format. The radio version sounded better over and over again while I was listening to the song on the same set up. The receiver was set to "stereo". Can there be any reality to this situation based on the technology described?
Answer:
[FONT=q_serif]Douglas Currens, eclectified
Answered 1 Dec 2011
[FONT=q_serif]I used to produce "The HiFi Show" on Pacifica's KPFT-FM (91.7 if you're keeping score) in Houston back in the 70s. I would regularly disable our Orban signal processor and sometimes even go entirely mono to eliminate the noise of the stereo modulator during my show. The sound quality was just amazing, but I had to watch the gain VERY carefully to not "splash" over our allotted frequency if I overmodulated (the FCC would not have been happy). I would even go out to make live uncompressed recordings or binaural recordings for special headphone shows. My point being that FM can sound great (especially with a great tuner on your end), but the process of making it "competitive" often ruins the fidelity, or at least alters it enough where "fidelity" is no longer the operative concept. PS, there's a great sounding cheesy-looking tiny plastic Sony HD tuner, the XDR-F1HD if you're into trying for "good" FM. HD radio, BTW, does not mean High Definition, but rather Hybrid Digital, essentially different subchannels of digital audio of varying number and quality buried in the frequency bandwidth of an FM analog station. Anyway, this little black box has a very good sounding tuner and analog audio stage for whatever the engineering reason if you're unhappy with your stereo's FM tuner. And it does add all those HD subchannels as part of the bargain.
One last addition to the above good comments. When the word "compression" is used in conjunction with MP3 or AAC formats, it means DATA compression (which is to say file size), not DYNAMIC compression (similar to automatic level control or ALC in cheap recorders), which has traditionally been used by FM stations in the "loudness wars" to keep the average signal level nice and loud, and is still depressingly used even recently in remastering CDs. There was some justification in FM use, as many tuners had (and still have) mediocre sensitivity and barely adequate signal to noise ratios, so you were "helping" the listener by boosting the softer musical portions above the "hiss" of the tuner, and also boosting the apparent average loudness of your station's signal in the process. Anyway, google "loudness wars" and you'll get an "earful" about the terrible things currently being done to CDs with very wide dynamic range potential, where sometimes a newly remastered CD is FAR more dynamically compressed than older CD pressings, or even 30 or 40-year-old LPs! So dynamic range compression in broadcasting and CD mastering is used as a tool to make the music seem louder. Psychoacoustic "lossy" compression in music player codecs is designed to throw out what is considered "inaudible" information, but should have no actual effect on the dynamic range of the music being encoded, just some of the fine detail (how "fine" depends on the bit rate). Two different types of compression for two different goals. I'll take a 320k AAC or MP3 over an FM signal for maintaining dynamic range and not screwing around with other parts of the music as much as broadcast processors, no matter how expensive.
But shame on record companies who take a potentially reasonable (if not ideal) format like 44.1/16 CD and find a way to make it worse than it has to be![/FONT]
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How does the sound quality of a same song broadcasted on FM Radio compare to MP3 encoded at 320kbps?
Scenario: I had an experience where I was listening to radio from an FM station with my stereo set up at home. I also had the same recording on MP3 format. The radio version sounded better over and over again while I was listening to the song on the same set up. The receiver was set to "stereo". Can there be any reality to this situation based on the technology described?
Answer:
[FONT=q_serif]Douglas Currens, eclectified
Answered 1 Dec 2011
[FONT=q_serif]I used to produce "The HiFi Show" on Pacifica's KPFT-FM (91.7 if you're keeping score) in Houston back in the 70s. I would regularly disable our Orban signal processor and sometimes even go entirely mono to eliminate the noise of the stereo modulator during my show. The sound quality was just amazing, but I had to watch the gain VERY carefully to not "splash" over our allotted frequency if I overmodulated (the FCC would not have been happy). I would even go out to make live uncompressed recordings or binaural recordings for special headphone shows. My point being that FM can sound great (especially with a great tuner on your end), but the process of making it "competitive" often ruins the fidelity, or at least alters it enough where "fidelity" is no longer the operative concept. PS, there's a great sounding cheesy-looking tiny plastic Sony HD tuner, the XDR-F1HD if you're into trying for "good" FM. HD radio, BTW, does not mean High Definition, but rather Hybrid Digital, essentially different subchannels of digital audio of varying number and quality buried in the frequency bandwidth of an FM analog station. Anyway, this little black box has a very good sounding tuner and analog audio stage for whatever the engineering reason if you're unhappy with your stereo's FM tuner. And it does add all those HD subchannels as part of the bargain.
One last addition to the above good comments. When the word "compression" is used in conjunction with MP3 or AAC formats, it means DATA compression (which is to say file size), not DYNAMIC compression (similar to automatic level control or ALC in cheap recorders), which has traditionally been used by FM stations in the "loudness wars" to keep the average signal level nice and loud, and is still depressingly used even recently in remastering CDs. There was some justification in FM use, as many tuners had (and still have) mediocre sensitivity and barely adequate signal to noise ratios, so you were "helping" the listener by boosting the softer musical portions above the "hiss" of the tuner, and also boosting the apparent average loudness of your station's signal in the process. Anyway, google "loudness wars" and you'll get an "earful" about the terrible things currently being done to CDs with very wide dynamic range potential, where sometimes a newly remastered CD is FAR more dynamically compressed than older CD pressings, or even 30 or 40-year-old LPs! So dynamic range compression in broadcasting and CD mastering is used as a tool to make the music seem louder. Psychoacoustic "lossy" compression in music player codecs is designed to throw out what is considered "inaudible" information, but should have no actual effect on the dynamic range of the music being encoded, just some of the fine detail (how "fine" depends on the bit rate). Two different types of compression for two different goals. I'll take a 320k AAC or MP3 over an FM signal for maintaining dynamic range and not screwing around with other parts of the music as much as broadcast processors, no matter how expensive.
But shame on record companies who take a potentially reasonable (if not ideal) format like 44.1/16 CD and find a way to make it worse than it has to be![/FONT]
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