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Internet radios vs tune in radio ( or any other radio app)


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[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1457704387' post='3001142']
Radio Four is enough for me and it should be enough for anyone. :lol:
[/quote]

Radio 2 is acceptable while Thought for the Day or interviews with any front bench politician of any stripe are on.

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I don't know about the Philips one, but I got a Sonos Play:1 for similar money (£150ish) and get plenty of use out of it.

DAB signal is patchy at ours so station choice is very limited. With the Sonos I can have my alarm clock set to play ABC Disco/Funk :sun_bespectacled: :biggrin:

All my music media library is stored on a network attached hard drive so I can listen to whatever I like wherever, without having to leave the PC on.

Surprisingly decent sound & volume for such a dinky box.

It's all controlled from PC/phone/tablet so it doesn't need to be placed anywhere particularly easy to get to - which given how cluttered my place is, is a big benefit!

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The problem with DAB is that in order to maximise revenue Ofcom have opted to cram many more stations than originally intended into the bandwidth meaning that the broadcast bitrate is severely compromised over what was original intended.

IIRC the best way to listen to DAB is via a cable set-top box, because that gets a much higher bitrate than the signal that is broadcast to air.

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[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1457704387' post='3001142']Radio Four is enough for me and it should be enough for anyone. :lol:
[/quote]

Radio 4 was the main reason I bought an internet radio some 7 years ago. On-demand and fast-forward/rewind within programmes was a great convenience. Unfortunately things have changed at the BBC's end and I have to keep a tablet by my bed to get the same functionality.

For live streaming only, I don't think internet radios offer any advantage.

Mine uses the Reciva portal. Things may be different on other systems.

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I have a Roberts internet radio.

I've found it great when we're booked to do a gig in some far off place, say Athens for example, and the promoter is telling us that such and such a radio station is helping promote and wants to interview etc....rather than taking his word for it I can check to find out if he's BSing or not by having said radio station streaming into the kitchen/office all day...


Promoters can't get away with jack anymore.

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My living room amp is Internet and network linked. I can control it via my phone or tablet and I get to listen to US/Canadian rock radio stations with excellent sound quality.

I also use it to tune in to whichever "unsigned" show is playing my bands music.

The DAB reception in my house used to be quite good (I was an early adopter of that particular tech) but these days it's none existent.

So, in summary, Internet radio as a stand alone unit; I probably wouldn't buy.
Internet radio bundled in to some other device that you plan on buying anyway; definitely preferable to an app or having to have a pc running.

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[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1457708973' post='3001198']
The problem with DAB is that in order to maximise revenue Ofcom have opted to cram many more stations than originally intended into the bandwidth meaning that the broadcast bitrate is severely compromised over what was original intended.
[/quote]

Yes, I've read about this as well. When being launched, DAB promotion focused on its quality improvement over standard broadcasting, and very good it was too. But, as you say, in practice they've wound up the compression to lower the bit rate to cram more stations into the available bandwidth and wrecked the quality, which I've read is no better than FM - indeed I recall reading an article where BBC R3 classical music fans were complaining it is actually for worse than the R3 FM transmissions.

Imagine CDs being hailed as a big leap forward in music quality but when launched they were actually recorded as 128k MP3s!

Having said that, I'm a fan of DAB and have a couple of DAB radios, but then I never listen to anything other than BBC R4 :)

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I can see the point. A lot of people listen to the radio in places where running a computer wouldn't work.
I have the radio on in the shed at home and the workshop at work, lots of tradesmen listen to the radio on site.
We're not all within reach of a computer all day.

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