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Hi!
I was wondering what source (music) files you guys are using for your radio broadcasts? I remember reading a very interesting discussion on this forum between Leif and Jesse, basically saying one should use the highest possible bitrate file (320k) to avoid poor quality down the audio chain. It does make a lot of sense indeed.
In this digital age, we started to acquire all our music from iTunes a few years ago and have now all our music in their iTunes Plus format, which is ACC 256k (.m4a).
And since we are completely re-thinking our set-up, I was wondering if that is good enough to guarantee seamless quality to our stream from the start or would you recommend converting these files into another format? I realize upping the bitrate makes little sense. But how about Flac or Wav or else?
Many thanks for your input!
Cheers 🙂
Audio
You can’t gain any quality from converting those lossy encodings to lossless, unless the decoder you’re using for real-time playback is totally junk, which is not likely.
That being said, the only way to up the quality is by getting better sources. Preferably lossless (FLAC is nice) that’s been ripped from CD using Exact Audio Copy in Secure mode, with AccurateRip, with 100% (no errors) logs.
If you’re paying SoundExchange royalties (if you’re playing any music they represent online) for your statutory license to US Office of Copyright, then you’re allowed to fill your library however you want. Yes, that makes it perfectly legal (for a company operating within the USA) to add items to your music library however you see fit, including file sharing. So if you’re paying royalties to SoundEx, then I recommend joining a website like what.cd to build your library. If you’re already paying out royalties, then there’s no sense in supporting a huge somewhat greedy company like Apple. One huge greedy company (SoundEx) is more than enough eh?
If you’re not in the USA paying those royalties, then… What you might consider is contacting the artists/labels directly either to get serviced, and/or buy the CD directly from them and rip them yourself. You will then keep your own quality control, and you’ll get a direct connection with the artists. That’s one thing most artists LOVE to do is promote themselves. The changes of getting denied by any but the largest labels & artists is pretty darn slim. 8)
Lastly, have fun. It’s spring time in the northern hemisphere. Enjoy the tunes.
Thanks Jesse,
We are indeed located in Europe. Unfortunately, unless you have gained a bit of reputation labels seem to shun you. We will follow your advice and contact artists or labels now that we gained a bit of traction and convert our collection over time 🙂
Zeb
PS: Looking forward to the new Motor City setting to become available on the next BBP releases 🙂
I use plain ol’ uncompressed WAV files. Music from TM Studios (http://www.tmstudios.com). I don’t know if they sell outside of the USA or not.
It makes no sense to use anything but wav files ripped straight from cd. You keep the original quality and storage the days is just not an issue.
There’s tm century and msaoldies.com for library material.
Sorry just new to BAO and new to this forum. This is my first reply.
Very honest with you guys i started netcasting last year and considerably picky with the sound quality.
For sources i mostly play wav, flac, m4a, and some (less) mp3.
Started as an audiophile, i have heaps collection of CD that i started to rip to mp3 but could not make eargasm to me. Then rip them again to PCM /wav and some flac.
here is the sound http://www.classynetradio.com
I made custom preset and would love to share too.
Waves – direct rip from a CD – album version (as long as it's not completely different to the radio version) – compilation albums tend to run processing to make them all sound the same on the album – waves played to air in your automation system – storage is cheap today there is no need to data compress.
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