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Old 2006-01-04, 02:13 PM
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ssamadhi97 ssamadhi97 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Old Europe
Re: FM vs. Digital Radio

Quote:
Originally Posted by alchemy71085
And the SA of two samples from both sources point to FM as being the superior recording.
Thing is that you usually listen to your recordings, rather than watching their SA.

That aside, short answer: Depends.

Long answer: Unfortunately this is not entirely a "black & white" issue. The final quality of each recording depends on a lot of factors. For example the quality of the FM broadcast depends on the quality of the reception, on the source of the broadcasted audio (remember that it might just be a decoded version of the digital broadcast stream), the gear used for recording on your end, etc. On the other hand the quality of the digital (mp2) stream depends heavily on the bitrate (even though 192kbps seems to be the most common bitrate at the moment, a digital radio broadcast can actually have 128-384kbps) and the quality of the mp2 encoder.

Generally digital broadcasts do have an edge though, because given enough bitrate (preferably 256-384kbps) it's relatively safe to assume that they'll sound better than FM. No reception / noise floor issues etc.
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