Best bitrate for online streaming (aka internet radio). Options

[uart]

I know that for most of us, as storage capacities have increased we've generally become less concerned about being economic with the bit rates of our encoded music formats. One area however where I"m still kinda interested in bit rate economy is when listening to internet streamed music such as "internet radio". The reason is simple, I've only got 10GB/month downloads and I'd prefer to not use more than about 30% of this for online listening, particularly as it's something that I'm often just using as "background" music.

With that said, what bit-rates to others here find suitable for online radio purposes. Personally I seem to find 64 kbps HE-AAC to be roughly equivalent to FM radio, though that's only a subjective judgement. Just wondering if anyone knew of any tests to establish what codec/bitrates are roughly equivalent FM radio for typical music listening purposes?

Thanks.

[IgorC]

Hopefully new codec Opus will hit 1.0 soon. A king on 64 kbps. Plus low delay make it ideal for such real time screnarios like radio (for those where low delay counts).

This post has been edited by IgorC: Jun 1 2012, 18:45

[uart]

Hopefully new codec Opus will hit 1.0 soon. A king on 64 kbps. Plus low delay make it ideal for such real time screnarios like radio (for those where low delay counts).

Thanks Igor. Yes I just now read the recent 64kbps listening test results and was amazed to see such a codec in early development beat out both he-aac and vorbis. Is seems very promising. I may upgrade my internet plan to greater a download limit at some time in the future, but meanwhile these efficient low bit rate encoders are huge benefit to me for online streaming.