Any guide to the bitrates/sound quality of different UK radio formats?, Split from: BBC Radio 3 320kbps stream / Topic ID: 94413 (TOS #5) Options

[icstm]

sorry to ask a slightly OT...
is there a good guide to bitrates/sound quality to UK radio.

Satellite >= DVT > DAB, but where is FM?
Also is there a list of bitrates anywhere for the TV sources?

[slks]

FM radio is an analog broadcast, so it doesn't have a bit rate and there's no single number to compare it with the digital broadcasts. With FM the main thing affecting quality is simply how good of a signal you pick up - is the signal strong enough, is there any interference, etc. Hissing and dropouts are symptoms of poor reception.

With digital broadcasts, you can't pick up a "fuzzy" signal, you either get the bits successfully or you don't. So, once you've picked up a digital broadcast, the quality's going to be determined by the digital parameters like which codec and bit rate is being used. Unfortunately I've got no idea what they use for the digital broadcasts.

[greynol]

With FM the main thing affecting quality is simply how good of a signal you pick up - is the signal strong enough, is there any interference, etc. Hissing and dropouts are symptoms of poor reception.

There are factors in the receiver that determine sound quality as well such as the stability of the local oscillator, performance of the quadrature detector, filters, amplifiers, etc.; but you're right it isn't as cut and dry as digital broadcast.