Sorry FM Brigade and Thank Goodness for streaming...

Easy answer.  The quality of streaming is, generally, pretty poor.  At 320kbps it's starting to approach high quality sound, but many of those streamed stations are at much lower quality.  A good quality over-the-air FM broadcast is MUCH better sounding.

I am a fan of computer-music only when it deserves my accolades.  Streaming is nice in that it makes a large amount of content available, but a good bit of it is at quality better suited to my iPhone and earbuds IMHO. 

Yes iradio is overall a good direction. The positives far outweigh the negatives but accessing it takes time so it can be frustrating. 

FM still sounds fantastic. If you are an avid listener of Radio 3 and Radio 4, every penny spent on a great under would be good value for access to all that programming.

On initial acquaintance, FM still seems to sound better through my SuperUniti than R3 hidef, but the latter is certainly not unlistenable.

Tony,

FM is hardly a dying format where I live in the US. But maybe your topic was meant to apply only to home hifi systems?

FM here is a vibrant source of music, sports, and news for commuters in cars, local shops, workers at construction sites, etc. The music stations I listen to while driving are DJs using CD sourced to the airwaves in real time. The ads seem to be paying the bills and I cannot see that format dying as long as people are driving cars to work, sports are being played, and houses are being built.

As far as the "investment", my car came with an FM radio. And the importance of SQ decreases as the speed of the vehicle (and road noise) increases .

Although FM is inherently a flawed medium, it sounds consistently better than any streamed radio service I have heard. Furthermore, when the signal is good, it's spookily good and can even seem better than local media such as vinyl. Provided the FM band has what you want to listen to, then there is a strong argument for listening to FM.

As for the blanket 'most of the stations people listen to these days are increasingly  through streaming  and countless worldwide broadcasting stations'...no, that's not so. Most people listen to FM, and most of that listening is done in the car, followed closely by kitchen radios, with a minority listening on main systems. If what you said were true, the ISPs would be crumbling under the weight of bandwidth limitations.

Finally, when it comes to listening to the airwaves, most people listen to one station only. There are very few who will swap stations, or when they do swap they'll swap for long periods. So nobody needs 10,000 stations. We just need a few stations which cover the genres - a few dozen would do, and that can easily be accommondated by FM.

Of course, if the bandwidth could be raised such that internet radio could deliver full-fat music, then from an audiophile perspective, this would be very welcome and should improve on FM.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

Just one note on car listening -- more and more people are listening to streamed music via their phones in their cars.  My son recently drove half-way across the US, and it probably never occurred to him to try to listen to broadcast radio. 

Living in a country Like UK, where  national radio delivers more choices in music tastes than e.g. in the US, my listening habbits and the selection of music has been increased with internet radio.
The problem is that quality is not important for the majority of users. People or the industry wanted digital television, and supposedly this gives higher quality, but since I am blind I have no idea if this is true or not. The politicians at least our local politicians only concern about radio is car radio, and there knowledge about streaming is absolutely nothing.

Claus

I seldom listen FM. In my car I normaly listen CD's. I only listen to FM when I am fed up with the selection of CD's I have in the car on a long drive (back and forth to the Netherlands). And when I am listening I am most intrigued by interviews etc...

I disagree, but you can site your source. I tend to change the FM channel in my car to search for a more likable song or to avoid commercials. There are six memory presets in my car's FM radio and I spend fairly equal time listening among 3 to 4 of them. That seems on par with others in my demographic, based on my commutes with them.

Yes, FM has a pleasing and familiar sound to me. The biggest downside I hear is the lack of a black background. I have not tried a tuner with my Naim gear. Makes me wonder how black is the Nat05 XS?

Mr Abela, you have a very short memory... I  DON'T!

I am a fan of FM and I do enjoy streaming. Both formats are compromises. However regrettably current web radio or so called 'iradio' is also flawed as it relies on a rather outdated concept of TCP session based streams for live or serial content. The world is moving to multicast here - but as far as I can see the focus on is on live or serial TV rather than audio/radio.

Multicast allows efficient data transmission as it effectively broadcasts the data to participating routers. This in turn means high definition or even regular 16/44.1 PCM can be effectively streamed. Unfortunately current web radio mostly being limited to TCP session based transmission can only economically use a lossy compressed audio codec - where 320kbps lossy is generally seen as good as it gets... Whilst this situation is maintained, the true audiophile experience (ie immersed in the sound/music) can only really be delivered by  VHF FM stereo and in my experience (BBC R2,R3 & R4 especially) .

When audio multicast arrives (or if) then I can wave good bye to my radios for music, but until then web / iradio is a distant cousin (great for curiosity like my SW radio - but not really hifi listening) - and so thank goodness for my FM NAT03

Simon

Joerand, Naim tuners do seem to have relatively low noise floor... yes its clearly not as low as CD etc, but its low enough to hear studio breakthrough and low level background noise that then 'blackens' when fading to recorded music for example.

Also keeping RFI off the antenna shield by using chokes and using a BALUN on the antenna across the dipole element helps keep the RFI off the FM signal if using coax. This in turns lowers the noise floor and blackens the sound.

Just like setting up a record deck, setting up a tuner, antenna and down-lead takes care and time if you are to be truly rewarded.

Simon

Bart, engjoo, HH, Joe, Bart, CT, Bert and Simon thank you all for your thoughts. While I may not agree with some of the views,  I respect them all.

KR

Tony