how to get best "radio", from PC-amp-speaker

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gychang

gychang

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Joined 2005
#1
I enjoy my music from FLAC files of my CD collection, but I want some more variety of music.

I can get FM music and am reluctant to spend $ on outside antenna due to limited inherent fidelity. Tried 128-256bit internet radio but am not impressed. Cox cable TV radio section also does not seem hi-fi (but only played thru HDTV).

Is there a way to get a good "radio" perhaps with use of PC, etc.

thanks,

gychang
 
#2
Hi,

Streaming "radio" is hideous quality. I was very dissappointed even with the "Hi-Def" streams 🙁

Weather you use a radio PC card or tuner, you will need either a cable connection (if your cable provider supplies FM on its pipes) or an external antenna.

In some cases an external antenna can be better, depending on the quality of the cable provider's signal and channel assignment.

Tuner quality is important too. PC tuning cards are not classic Technics or Marantz analog tuners in quality.

Cheers!
 
#7
is the tuner with outside FM antenna for the best choice? (with inherent limitation).

I am basically interested in next best fidelity from CD.

Anyone listen to yahoo radio (launch) at high fidelity setting?

gychang
 
#9
theAnonymous1 said:
I'm not sure what kind of music your looking for, but the radio station KEXP has a 1.4Mbps uncompressed stream. On their main page in the upper left next to "Listen Live" click the small "players/1.4mb" link.
Click to expand...


thanks, seems to be pretty clear, not my kind of music, prefer smooth jazz, but thanks.

gychang
 
#14
I believe both XM and Sirius bitrates are pretty pathetic.

Try the audio section at archive.org; there's all kinds of music there, and some is in lossless formats.

There are often lossless albums posted on P2P networks, if those aren't illegal where you are. Also USENET, probably.

Myself, I mostly listen to DJ mixes, and there's an infinite quantity of those spread around the 'net hosted by DJs for promo purposes, by collectives and forums, or as archives of "radio" shows.
 
#15
Nordic said:
Most cheap TV cards for the PC have FM reception...
Click to expand...
In theory, almost any TV card can receive FM. All that is needed is that the tuner can tune to the FM band (almost all can) and the DSP able to decode FM or pass it though for software decoding (requires firmware support). A DSP able to decode TV, especially QAM-256, would be very powerful and potentially able to decode FM and still have lots of capacity left over for further signal conditioning.
As for quality, assuming the hardware is not too bad, it all lies in the algorithms. Since FM decoding doesn't actually take much processing power, many cards rely on the host CPU to do some or all of the decoding. That is because it is significantly easier to write code for a common CPU than a specialized DSP.
Of which, with GNU Radio, the algorithms can be modified by the user!
http://gnuradio.org/trac
 
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