Odd fetching of radio

[Vangelis forthnet]

On Sat Feb 20 09:03:47 GMT 2016, J wrote: 

> I don't recollect reading about changes 
> to the way podcasts are made available by the BBC
> (snip)
> as being 128Kbps mp3 with a sampling rate of 44.1KHz
> (snip)
> where the generation of podcasts fits into the bigger picture
> and a clue would be welcome

 Hi J 
 Pardon me for being thick, but I don't quite get 
the gist of your query.
 First thing is I don't fetch podcasts that often, 
so not really the person to ask :-(
 With "--type=podcast", GiP 2.94 fetches MP3 audio files 
in almost the state they have been already prepared by the beeb; 
if you also add "--no-tag" to the command, they should be 
identical to the files you get by downloading (e.g. via browser) 
from the BBC podcast pages directly.
GiP 2.95dev has been already patched so as not to "mess" 
with the original ID3 metadata.

 If you ask about the bitrate of the files, it has been 128kbps 
(CBR) for many podcast series for a long while now. 
I do recall in the past that 128kbps (Joint Stereo) was only 
reserved for files with music content, while "talk-radio" 
would only come as 64kbps-mono, but you are now 
more likely to get 128kbps irrespective of content. 
64kbps-mono is still being used, at least for 
World Service offerings...
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03dq87h/episodes/downloads)

 As for the SR of 44.1kHz, I remember asking our own "Jim web" 
some months ago why it was still used for shoutcast MP3 live radio, 
his "connections" told him it was to afford compatibility with as 
many "legacy" devices as possible. I assume the same reason 
could be argued for MP3 podcast files...

> if one uses aactomp3 anyway 
> to output an mp3 file via GiP

Unless I am bound by hardware limitations, 
I tend to avoid transcoding like the plague :-)

Regards