There, I've said it. Compared to digital audio, old-fashioned analogue radio transmissions are at risk of interference and perhaps there would be some fuzziness which you could attempt to tune away. It depends on your tastes; interference isn't much of an issue with dance music, but may ruin the enjoyment of classical soundtracks. In the digital age, whilst the hiss has gone, any transmission issues will cause subliminal blips, or longer gaps of a second or two, to your broadcast.
The UK can still hear all three types of radio - analogue, DAB digital and online streaming. Give me the analogue hiss any day, because I can proceed to feed that audio into my computer and reduce or remove the hiss if I wish. Gaps are much harder to cover, and ironically, editing them out will recreate the effect of vinyl skipping. Once again, dance fans would appreciate the retro angle to it, but no-one else would.
When you "Listen Again" to a repeat of a radio show, you're a slave to the bit rate chosen by someone else to encode the streamed recordings. Thankfully Kiss100 has chosen a nice high rate for its shows from Armin Van Buuren and John Digweed, compared to that of early BBC broadcasts where the bit rate and resulting quality will vary.
At the present time, FM is such high quality if you have a decent hi-fi separate tuner, that you may as well enjoy it before it gets switched off. Preferably in the garden, on the seven days that make up an English summer.
Sunday, 5 August 2007
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