On Jan 11, 7:09*am, sms88 wrote:
On 1/10/2012 9:29 PM, MotoFox wrote:

And it came to pass that Richard Evans delivered the following message
unto the people, saying~

Actually I'm not sure, but in the past there have been broadcasts in
foreign countries, at up to 320k, and never at any bit rate higher than
that. Also I thought the limit for mp2 was 320k, but I might be wrong
about that.

MP3 tops out at 320k. MP2 tops out at 384; sample rates, 32000-48000 Hz.. I
don't believe MP3 is used over the air, but it is widely used for Internet
audio streams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-1_...nical_specific...

(Oh yeah, and MP3 can't claim to have won an Emmy....)

LOL.

In the real world of radio what matters in terms of audio quality is
what radio listeners perceive. There have been extensive tests comparing
perceived audio quality of the different digital sources.

The iBiquity codec is based upon the AAC+ (HE-AAC) codec. "Scientific
testing by the European Broadcasting Union has indicated that HE-AAC at
48 kbit/s was ranked as "Excellent" quality using the *MUSHRA scale.[8]
MP3 in the same testing received a score less than half that of HE-AAC
and was ranked "Poor" using the MUSHRA scale. Data from this testing
also indicated that some individuals confused 48 kbit/s encoded material
with an uncompressed original." Look at figure 9 at
http://www.ebu.ch/fr/technical/trev/trev_305-moser.pdf.

Also read
http://www.nrscstandards.org/Reports%20ref%20docs/iBiquity%20Gen%203%....
You can see where "near CD quality" came from in figure 3.2. As that
report shows, the big problem with analog radio, is in impaired
conditions. Unimpaired, some analog radio was only a bit below the
quality of digital. Impaired, digital fared far better than analog
because of the multipath on FM analog. Of course the big problem is that
in impaired conditions, at 10% power, it would be difficult to even
receive the HD signal. That's why it's so important for radio stations
to increase their digital power.

Where we need to move to is FM HD Radio in pure digital at higher power.
It's the best transition to digital (at least the best one that anyone
has come up with), that preserves the present FM band during the
transition. It's time for the FCC to set some dates.

The consumer electronics industry has made a huge commitment to digital
radio, as evidenced by this years CES. Now it's the broadcasters turn to
take advantage of the increased penetration of digital receivers, and
increase power levels. The stations that have not yet added digital
service need to get with the program as well.

A Noisy Car/Trunk driving on a Road is not exactly
the best environment to judge Audio 'quality' in.

IBOC will become accepted {Standard} when the
FCC Mandates that all new AM/FM Radios built
for the US Market are IBOC Compliant and have
Plug-N-Pay SAT Radio built-in.

~ RHF