Station or subscription recommendation needed

jimmy

New Member
I listen to classical music and I am looking for a audiophile quality lossless internet radio station or a subscription streaming music service with high bit rate streams. Does anyone have any recommendations?
 
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Support

Level 1 Support
Staff member
Hi Jimmy,

Its quite unlikely that you will find a "loseless audio" internet radio station as they are mostly streamed in mp3 format.

However, under the 'Classical' section of our sites listings you will find some stations that broadcast at 256kbps mp3 (which is probably the best quality that you will find other than at 320kbps mp3). These can be found here: Classical Radio Stations :)
 

General Lighting

Super Moderator
Staff member
Indeed - unfortunately technology hasn't quite reached the stage where you can get this high quality audio online for broadcast (and even doing so can be contentious due to fears over piracy as well as technical limitations).

Though the stations I am most involved with play electronic dance music, recently we have been streaming at
256k for recorded programmes and where possible, 192k for live (as our DJ's/presenters are often using home studios and residential broadband connections which have limited upstream bandwidth).

A lot of trance producers from North Europe have a classical music background, and as a station with extra bandwidth/bitrate we encourage our DJ's to go for the dynamic ranges and levels of the classical stations rather than the youth stations (and you can definitely hear the difference).

Coincidentally there is a 256k stream from AVRO (a Dutch public broadcaster) playing classical music at higher bitrate. Might be worth a listen - public broadcasters do still (where budgets permit) try and raise the bar of audio quality and the Dutch tend to know their stuff when it comes to this anyway..

AVRO Klassiek portal
 

jimmy

New Member
Hi Jimmy,

Its quite unlikely that you will find a "loseless audio" internet radio station as they are mostly streamed in mp3 format.

However, under the 'Classical' section of our sites listings you will find some stations that broadcast at 256kbps mp3 (which is probably the best quality that you will find other than at 320kbps mp3). These can be found here: Classical Radio Stations :)
I have been listening to BBC because they offer streaming at 320kbps in WMA. I was actually looking for something better. What about those paid music streaming services? I am in the U.S.
 

Support

Level 1 Support
Staff member
I have been listening to BBC because they offer streaming at 320kbps in WMA. I was actually looking for something better. What about those paid music streaming services? I am in the U.S.

Its very unlikely that you will get much better than the BBC streaming at 320kbps. Even with the paid music streaming services.

As General Lighting stated:

unfortunately technology hasn't quite reached the stage where you can get this high quality audio online for broadcast (and even doing so can be contentious due to fears over piracy as well as technical limitations).
 

General Lighting

Super Moderator
Staff member
Do they not have something like Beatport or Junodownload for classical fans?

if Jimmy is prepared to pay for music he'd be much better off downloading it in the uncompressed WAV format and playing it back locally. If the rest of the recording process is up to his standard then there is no further loss in quality from a CD.

Broadcasting any genre of music is always going to be a trade off between ultimate audio quality and other technical and commercial considerations. Even your Band II classical radio station on FM has its frequency response and dynamic range limited, lest the pilots at the local aerodrome (who use similar radio frequencies for comms) might hear the music in their cans, and that isn't a good thing at all!

The intention is normally to showcase the skills of a particular composer or performer or group, encourage discussion about the music and alert people to new compositions or performances so people can add to their personal high quality music collections rather than replace them...
 
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Support

Level 1 Support
Staff member
Even your Band II classical radio station on FM has its frequency response and dynamic range limited.

Yes, exactly. ;)

The intention is normally to showcase the skills of a particular composer or performer or group, encourage discussion about the music and alert people to new compositions or performances so people can add to their personal high quality music collections rather than replace them...

:yes:
 

jimmy

New Member
Do they not have something like Beatport or Junodownload for classical fans?

if Jimmy is prepared to pay for music he'd be much better off downloading it in the uncompressed WAV format and playing it back locally. If the rest of the recording process is up to his standard then there is no further loss in quality from a CD.

Broadcasting any genre of music is always going to be a trade off between ultimate audio quality and other technical and commercial considerations. Even your Band II classical radio station on FM has its frequency response and dynamic range limited, lest the pilots at the local aerodrome (who use similar radio frequencies for comms) might hear the music in their cans, and that isn't a good thing at all!

The intention is normally to showcase the skills of a particular composer or performer or group, encourage discussion about the music and alert people to new compositions or performances so people can add to their personal high quality music collections rather than replace them...
I do not wish to do any downloads. I would just like to stream lossless for now.
 

jimmy

New Member
Its very unlikely that you will get much better than the BBC streaming at 320kbps. Even with the paid music streaming services.

As General Lighting stated:
I just signed up for MOG's free service and even though it streams at 320kbs as BBC does, it sounds noticeably better. I am assuming MOG is using another codec besides WMA.
 

General Lighting

Super Moderator
Staff member
MOG uses 320K MP3.

Although the BBC historically has a good reputation, especially following the economic depression and political changes in the UK it increasingly finds itself having to do more with less (like many other public broadcasters of Europe - and our country places less value on the arts these days. My view (as someone who has previously worked on a fair bit of their equipment) is their tech and production standards have slipped in relation to other Northern European nations.

Also there are still lots of complex issues at hand in getting a live performance from a concert hall via a national broadcaster to the listeners (it has always been normal in Europe to share resources and skills for this via the EBU) which would not affect a service streaming often studio recorded performances directly to the listener...
 
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