Optimizing Internet Radio.

[majorloser]

The Red Chicklet Demon is still on the loose. This got one. Unsigned of course.

Maybe he doesn't like organs

 

[TLS Guy]

Maybe he doesn't like organs

Yes, probably something weird about the bloke like that!

 

[davidtwotrees]

I have two devices that stream internet radio in my rig. The first one is almost three years old now. The Escient Fireball SE80 streams internet radio. It has about 100 pre loaded stations. I must admit I never really explored these outside of a cursory glance.The quality did vary greatly on these sources...........but I can't say that I ever made an effort to compare which dac was doing the work (processor or source) and weather or not applying the dolby effects had much to do with sound quality.
The second source is my bluray player, the Samsung 2550. This streams Pandora radio(as well as Netflix) and, to my ears, the sound is superb, even with dolby algorithims! I have not done a ton of tweaking with this, but it sounds as good, or better than any FM broadcast. In fact, it sounds almost as good as the 320kbps files that are stored on the Escient's hard drive. I do listen to mostly pop music. The Samsung, and it's competition, the LG bluray, are excellent machines, and I would not buy a bluray player that didn't have streaming capability. I like my Samsung that much.

Thanks for the, as always, insightful and informative post, Dr. Mark.

 

[pzaur]

The Red Chicklet Demon is still on the loose. This got one. Unsigned of course.

I bet the demon hasn't even posted in this thread. Actually, I bet they haven't posted in a long time.

-pat

 

[TLS Guy]

I have two devices that stream internet radio in my rig. The first one is almost three years old now. The Escient Fireball SE80 streams internet radio. It has about 100 pre loaded stations. I must admit I never really explored these outside of a cursory glance.The quality did vary greatly on these sources...........but I can't say that I ever made an effort to compare which dac was doing the work (processor or source) and weather or not applying the dolby effects had much to do with sound quality.
The second source is my bluray player, the Samsung 2550. This streams Pandora radio(as well as Netflix) and, to my ears, the sound is superb, even with dolby algorithims! I have not done a ton of tweaking with this, but it sounds as good, or better than any FM broadcast. In fact, it sounds almost as good as the 320kbps files that are stored on the Escient's hard drive. I do listen to mostly pop music. The Samsung, and it's competition, the LG bluray, are excellent machines, and I would not buy a bluray player that didn't have streaming capability. I like my Samsung that much.

Thanks for the, as always, insightful and informative post, Dr. Mark.

Very interesting post. I had no idea there was a Blue Ray player with that feature.

I think the reason I'm not getting good results with surround algorithms, is that I have been doing a lot of listening to the Proms lately. The Royal Albert Hall is a very ambient space. It is the ambient envelope, that disproportionately suffers in lossy codecs. The surround algorithms, need the ambient envelope to make a decent stab at recreating the acoustic space. I suspect it is the degradation of the ambient envelope, that gives rise to the strange effects when playing back a 128kbs Internet stream.

I hope members post more ways of capturing Internet radio.

I don't think we have discussed this topic much, and I think now is a good time to give it an airing. I'm glad I started the thread. Thanks again Jamie, for getting our attention.

 

[davidtwotrees]

There are a couple of streaming blu ray players out...........Audioholics just reviewed the latest LG model here that sports wireless streaming. Both my media devices are hardwired..