Fw: What modes should I use to get the highest quality recordingon radio

[Christopher Woods (CustomMade)]

> On Mon, 16 May 2011 00:38:30 +0200, you wrote:
> 
> In the UK highest quality is/was flashaudio which is mp3 - 
> this used to be available for all programmes, but now only a 
> few radio programmes come as flashaudio ...
> Now flashaac will give the best quality mp4 files - thanks to 
> shevek & co's code.
> I use flashaacstd,flashacclow - there is probably 
> flashacchigh - someone can confirm this


I disagree. Flashaudio IIRC is just MP3, which is transcoded from the MP3
original audio by the sounds of it, even though I've been told that both
were encoded direct from the master source. The Beeb must've used an awfully
inefficient codec to get such poor results at 128kbps.

I did a comparative audio test with speech a while back (which I posted to
the list) - the MP3s sound noticeably worse than the AAC versions. I've not
intentionally downloaded MP3 versions of any shows since I first heard the
problems (manifested as low-end problems and 'warbling' in speech and music
in the MP3 versions).

Here's what I posted (on the 23rd of Feb, 2011). Listening to the audio
back-to-back will show just how inferior the MP3 versions are to the AACs...

> To show you what I mean about the MP3 vs AAC quality 
> difference, here's a quick quality comparison (randomly chose 
> an episode of The Archers, from Radio 4 the other day). The 
> first time is the MP3 encode, the second is the AAC encode 
> (served by default through the Flash player):
> 
> http://bit.ly/bbciprtest1al (~3.8MB)
> 
> Even on average speakers you should be able to hear a 
> difference - the MP3 is "rumblier", warbly and speech is 
> distinctly less clear with noticeable distortion under the 
> main frequency of the speaker's voice. If you use headphones 
> or good monitors you should be able to clearly hear the 
> inferior quality of the MP3 version.
> 
> Comparing the two clips spectrally also shows a visible 
> difference, there's less 'cohesion' in the MP3 clip, what 
> appears to be double-encoded noise and the frequency ranges 
> containing the speech energy are less distinct.
> 
> Neither speech nor musical content comes off well in the MP3 
> versions - either the iPlayer's using an *AWFUL* MP3 codec 
> (because both the AAC and MP3 files are 128kbps) or the MP3 
> version is being transcoded from the original AAC source, 
> which would explain a lot.