The Radio Stinks!

[brucered]

[rant]I have known it for a long time. But while on my morning drive, I was listening to broadcast radio (not satellite) and it sounded all muffled and distorted, like a really crappy MP3. I'm not saying it has to all be played on vinyl like in the early days of radio or even CD like the 90's, but at least use a lossless version of the song. Don't get me started on the crap they play. I've noticed that on some Satellite radio too when I'm driving with someone who has it, they sound awful.[/rant]

I'll be the first to admit, I have been playing vinyl for the past 15y or so and got in before the boom. If that makes me a hipster, so be it. To my 42y old ears, I won't say it sounds better then CD's and I listen to them for fun. I actually listen to the entire album and not just pick and choose what songs I listen to or what the radio wants me to hear. They are large, have to be stored and cleaned property and aren't the most convenient, but I don't care. After vinyl, .FLAC (lossless audio) are my most listened to. I have a large NAS filled with Bootleg Live Recordings of various bands and most of my CD's are ripped to hard drives for convenience when we just want to play random music.

Gone are these days.

 

[ouch]

AM or FM?

 

[brucered]

AM or FM?

FM, maybe that's my mistake. I don't know what I even bother turning it on any more.

 

[ouch]

Does your car radio have an aux input? My kid's been using that for years. Of course, some of it makes me want to drive off a bridge.

 

[Phog Allen]

Even worse is the non stop chattering and ads. Content? What's that anymore? Even If you listen to oldies stations it will go like this; Classic rock = Boston, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benetar, a few handfuls of other over played anthems, and then the half hour dose of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rinse and repeat.

Classic country= Kenny Rogers, Johnny Lee, some mid 70s urban cuhboy, etc. Then every thirty minutes another Cash song. Even if some of us are not slavish devotees of the Tennessee Two sound. Rinse and repeat.

These days I try to.live with Pandora and when travelling carry a flash drive with a few albums on it. Back to OT. Sound is bad these days. And the satellite provider is no better.

 

[dpm802]

In the car, I'm mostly a Talk Radio kinda guy ... the only time I listen to music is Saturday night when I'm on my way to a nightclub, they broadcast the DJ Live on an Oldies station, so I can tune in and get a feel for what the night will be like.

Granted, when I listen to these broadcasts, the music sounds weak. I have a tin ear and I'm tone deaf, but even I can tell its not sounding like its supposed to. Still, I'm just listening to hear what songs he has picked, and once I get there, if I go out to my car for a smoke, I turn the Live radio back on so I can track when the songs are over and when the band comes back on.

At home, I usually leave the TV on 24/7 as background noise. I have some old vinyl records but no phonograph to play them on.

 

[dpm802]

The only CDs I own are a half-dozen Beatles re-releases that were offered at Starbucks several years ago. These are Digitally Re-mastered albums that were done in Ultra-High Definition Audio and recorded onto the disk with extreme bandwidth. Some of the tracks are almost 1 Mega-bit per second, about 5 times as much as your average high-quality MP3. When I play them on my boombox, they sound amazing, I hear things in the tracks I never knew existed.

But I've tried several times to copy them into digital format so I can load them on my tablet or send them to a friend ... no matter what I do, I can't duplicate that extreme bandwith, and the tracks sound weak and tinny every time except if I'm playing the original.

Is there a software I can use (Android preferred) that will copy these albums in their native resolution? Everything I've tried before has compressed them and squeezed the life out of them.

 

[brucered]

Is there a software I can use (Android preferred) that will copy these albums in their native resolution? Everything I've tried before has compressed them and squeezed the life out of them.

The only ripping software I have ever used is EAC (exact audio copy). It's PC software for extracting audio in various formats but allows you to do it in very high quality or .wav format. They take 40x more space (guessing) then then a .mp3, but actually sound like the CD.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

MP3 vs .Flac
http://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-flac-the-high-def-mp3-explained/

 

[dpm802]

The only ripping software I have ever used is EAC (exact audio copy). It's PC software for extracting audio in various formats but allows you to do it in very high quality or .wav format. They take 40x more space (guessing) then then a .mp3, but actually sound like the CD.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

MP3 vs .Flac
http://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-flac-the-high-def-mp3-explained/

I have plenty of room on my laptop hard drive, and depending on how much the ripped files occupy, I may upload them to Google Cloud Drive. And there is lots of room on my smartphone and tablet SD cards.

I have a CD player in my car, but I'd rather play them from a digital file if I can.

Thanks!

 

[brucered]

I have a CD player in my car, but I'd rather play them from a digital file if I can.

Thanks!

I play the .flac files on my Android when camping. Once ripped, you can pretty much play them on anything.

 

[dpm802]

I just downloaded EAC, but Windows10 won't install it. Probably something simple I'm overlooking.

I'll troubleshoot it when I get home from work tonight, but right now I need to get ready for work.

 

[August West]

Can't offer much opinion on car sound systems, but as far as content, seek out "college" radio stations.

 

[brucered]

Can't offer much opinion on car sound systems, but as far as content, seek out "college" radio stations.

Yeah, that's what I try to listen to as well. Unfortunately, the best one in town was shut down a few years ago and is only online now.

When it was around, I'd send in requests and one of the DJ's used to intro them with a goofball radio voice "It's time for Bruce's email request of the day". I'd request some odd stuff but stuff I knew they could dig up.

I miss that station.

 

[Phog Allen]

I just downloaded EAC, but Windows10 won't install it. Probably something simple I'm overlooking.

I'll troubleshoot it when I get home from work tonight, but right now I need to get ready for work.

EAC can be daunting to set up but Hydrogen Audio web site used to have a great tutorial for doing so. Great ripper BTW.

 

[TexLaw]

I also was going to recommend looking for a college station, but it sounds like that fort already has burned to the ground for you. I know the feeling, by the way, and it really does stink.

 

[SpaceCadet1]

We have a decent jazz station based at a local community college. That's about all I ever listen to on the radio.

 

[ElectroMike]

while on my morning drive, I was listening to broadcast radio (not satellite) and it sounded all muffled and distorted, like a really crappy MP3.

For this reason I've been a Satellite subscriber for about 10 years now. Not that they offer great quality sound but at least no commercials and I can pick out my favorite music type without turning the dial.

When I'm at home and in a mood for music, I run my full home audio set up with separates and a sub, etc., make my floors shake and listen to either digitally re-mastered .wav files or best quality digital I was able to obtain years back before it was compressed to skeletonized mp3's.

When I'm at a gym, then it's Pandora time, since the gym machines and people around make enough noise that I can compromise sound in my ear buds.

In a car, I'm mostly a Talk Radio person.

I hope you can get the raw music files transferred without losing quality in the evolving digital world!

 

[Joezamboni]

The people that I know that drive a lot either have satellite radio or a nice collection of music to listen to. Don't know how other areas are, but HD radio greatly improves quality and many stations will have "sub channels" on the same address with even more content.

I a lot of aftermarket radios have some sort of easy phone integration with either Bluetooth for other features like apple CarPlay. Just did a CarPlay install on a car recently and was impressed.

 

[pbrmhl]

I'm biased, but for content (ignoring technology), check out kexp.org, kcrw.org, wxpn.org, wfuv.org, etc. There was a great article in the New York Times yesterday about KEXP.

 

[Cosmos Mariner]