[ssamadhi97]

Originally Posted by PaulHarald

So if we compare this to TV-land: Is a DIGITAL TV stream (audio) usually 256kbps? Or is it better?

Setting aside the fact that 256kbps do not always equal 256kbps (see next paragraph), I see 192-256kbps MP2 here (Germany) most of the time.

Originally Posted by PaulHarald

And for the non-digital TV with Nicam stereo: May the NICAM stereo signal be less compressed? In that case, the freq analysis of my LPCM audio capture would look better.

Debatable. While the bitrate is significantly higher, compared to AC3 and MP2 NICAM also lacks (to the best of my knowledge) any advanced encoding tools like the ability to throw away inaudible data first based on a model of the human hearing, making it less efficient. On the whole it's probably still better, but it might not be as much as you expect.

Originally Posted by PaulHarald

Why would standalone recorders have the options of 384kbps AC3 and the best ones even LPCM - the user manual says "for recording uncompressed high quality audio..."

Because even if the source is already lossy, encoding it again sacrifices even more quality. So you want to be able to throw as much bitrate at it as possible.