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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gnuman who wrote (71841)	12/14/1999 12:16:00 PM
From: benwood	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Gene, I had to try out your station at home this AM since I don't have an audio board at work. I tried both KING-FM here in Seattle plus that 580ckww.com. Both were essentially equal in quality. To me, they both sound like the little portable transistor radio I had as a kid -- clear, fairly small BW, minimal base, plus a small degree of stereo separation. But that small speaker sound. I also noticed some time-based distortions much like a distant station that drifts a bit, but more subtle. While 20kbits/s certainly goes a long way thanks to their smart compression technology, I would say that it's close to AM quality, not FM, not CD, and not DVD. It's just marketing hype to say it's near CD sound quality (perhaps there are some stations at 40 kbits/s that would fare a bit better?). It's certainly acceptable for basic radio, though, but with KING-FM, I get a far better sound and much greater stereo separation by flicking on my over-the-air-waves stereo. The "full motion" news clips and ads I've seen are generally in a small box and come off with 2-3 frames per second, sometimes slower. True, it's full motion, but only as a novelty. I have seen a few clips that were in the 100-140 kbits/s range, and they were much better although very short. Watching the news at 140 kbits/s would do in a pinch if it were broadcast that way. Still, 5 of those running in my workplace would take up close to 100% of our useable network bandwidth. That said, I do think this is great technology. You really get something good for almost nothing. I love the ability to tune stations around the US and the world. The baseball games I've listened to, btw, are only 6.4 kbits/s, and the quality is quite a bit lower. But it's only talk, and it's passable.