Hello,

I love the sound nuances I hear from either radio or Winamp's many internet radio station. I don't know the exact difference, but the music coming from these sources sounds like it has more high-end and sounds, perhaps, more exciting than the same track played from my personal copy in Winamp (encoded with EAC/Lame). Perhaps the radio further compresses their music?

Does anyone know the standard audio manipulation that radio stations do to their music before broadcasting so that I can repeat this on my own PC?

You may ask "why would you want to hear it this way?" Perhaps I've been conditioned as a youth listening to radio to prefer this kind of sound manipulation?

thanks! JP

Nowadays almost every radio station applies some more or less ugly compression to the music, even to classical music. The most common compressor here in Germany is OptiMod.

I do not know if MP3 stations also do so, but won't be surprised if they do.

It sounds "more exciting" to you ??

To me, the exact opposite is true. Because of the way radio stations compress the audio, it actually sounds less exciting to me. The loss of dynamics makes it all sound duller.

Can you post a sample, recorded from the radio, and also post the same part of your MP3 file ? That way, we can hear what you are talking about.

Edit: Well, of course it could become quite a drag, waiting until they play a song you own on the radio.

It could also be artifacts from MPEG-2 (BWF) compression, or the effects of a weird lowpass filter and/or the signal used to control the stereo in the transmission.

i think i know what he is talking about. it might just be it sounds more exciting because when your in the car, your gazing off and not focusing to the actual track quality. its impossible to sound better than EAC/LAME combo.... ...but for the record, I too have thought the same for a brief period of time