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BBC launches 'HD radio'


JasonB

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The BBC has announced plans to launch HD Sound - "an extra high-quality audio stream" - for online radio.

It will be available for special live events, starting with Electric Proms on the Radio 2 website this month, and for all Radio 3 output from December.

BBC audio and music director Tim Davie said it was "a signal of our commitment to innovate in digital radio".

HD Sound uses improved encoding and higher bit rates to boost quality.

The BBC said improvements in sound would depend on the size or quality of speakers or headphones.

It said HD Sound also offered a wider dynamic range, accentuating the difference in volume between quiet and loud sounds.

It is hoped HD Sound can be incorporated into the BBC's iPlayer and Radioplayer as the technology develops.

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What they mean is standard digital radio is 128kbps, radio 3 will be upped to 320.

Ahhh...(muses for 5 minutes...cogs wherring...) ,I see....cheers. Did make me wonder quite literally, thinking things like ...quiet...loud...speakers....and I've got bad hearing!! :oddcake:

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What they mean is standard digital radio is 128kbps, radio 3 will be upped to 320.

I didn't know this. It really annoys me that audio has never been given as much consideration as the visual medium. Why make it 128 in the first place? That's less than 50% of the actual true sound than if you heard it live!

Reminds me of the days when iTunes first came out, and people used it to rip all their music to mp3 en masse and bin their CDs - without understanding iTunes was (unfathomably) default to create mp3s at 128kbps... :rolleyes:

As far as I'm concerned, audio is a vital, precious commodity which people do not appreciate in this rather 'digitally disposible' age. The whole point of different bitrates back in the day was to make file sizes smaller. But now that disk space isn't such a scarcity, it doesn't matter in the slightest. It should be global law that all musical audio is created and maintained 320kbps! Ok I'll go find a sofa now. :sweatingbullets:

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