Could someone clarify what 320kbs means?

Jon

320 kbps (kilo bits per second) is usually used to describe the data rate of a lossy compressed data stream using often mp3 or AAC as the codec. This is sometimes used for so called 'hi defintion' web radoio station, but it is relative as the audio qulaity is less than that of CD often by quite a margin but better than many web radio stations that use very low data rates.

However 320kbps AAC sounds reasonable for general background  listening - but you wont get the intensity, dynamics and insight from the audio as compared to a CD stream or true high definition stream.

Simon

Just to add 

As you mention 

 44.1 Khz = 1411 Kb/s is std CD

When it comes to HiRes downloads, for example Naim's Antonio Forcione  'meet me in London' is:

  192 Khz = 9216 Kb/s

 Quite a lot of downloads are also offered at:

   96 Khz = 4608 Kb/s

So you can see the Kb/S rate is another way of defining the bandwidth of the various sample rates.

regards

Geoff

Geoff,

So I was thinking of buying a solid state digital recorder that could sample 24/192 to try to capture live recordings on iradio stations, but sounds like I'd be wasting my time as it sounds like hi-res radio is still not very hi-res?

Jeff

Hi Jeff

That's correct. The term 'hires' is relative. When higher bit rate radio transmissions, at for example say 320 Kb/s are compared to 120 Kb/s, the supplier may refer to them as 'high res' as a way of drawing attention to the better quality of their radio stations in comparison with the typical transmissions but this is at a totally different and much lower point on the quality scale than standard CD let alone studio mastered audio at 96 Khz and 192 Khz.

Basically if you only expect to capture music from internet radio stations one of the inexpensive USB attachable boxes which are basic A/D converters offering 44.1 (CD) quality will do the job and then some. Using higher quality than that is not going to improve the sound you hear at all.

Of course if you think you might want to record from higher quality sources such as Vinyl then investing in a digital recorder that does 24/192 would be more worthwhile.

regards

Geoff

So ... any suggestions for a 192/24 recorder?

If I can I put another question about 320kb/s:

1411kb/s =16bit*44.1k samples*2channel,

4608 Kb/s = 24bit*96k samples*2channel

9216 Kb/ = 24bit*192k samples*2channel

If 320kbps is a compressed file is it possible to know the number of bit and samples that compose a single second of music?  Maybe is 16bit*10k samples*2channel? or something else....

John Cage's 4.33 should be easy to compress as the algorithm only captures those parts of the music we need to hear to believe we are listening to the whole thing. It throws the rest away - so I'd expect the resultant file to be almost nothing ... not tried it though. 

Geoff,

Many thanks. I looked at a tascam machine. Want something that has similar functionality to my old revox b77. 

Jeff

Korg MR2

Balma01, you need to decode the headers of the the lossy file type to understand what the sample rate, channels and word size of the original audio file it represents. Some lossy files also use variable bit rate (VBR) which means the compressed data rate varies at any time depending on the complexity of the source file. Therefore there can be several variables that make up a lossy compressed file bit rate.

Simon

Thanks.