Slashdot Mirror
Traditional Radio Endangered By New Tech
Rob wrote to mention a Reuters article discussing the danger to traditional radio posed by new new technologies. From the article: "The radio industry could find itself at the kids' table in the media banquet hall, as new technology threatens the business, advertising executives said this week at the Reuters Media and Advertising Summit. Satellite radio, digital music players and the Internet are slowly encroaching on traditional radio's stronghold on local entertainment and advertising. Plus, radio ads themselves are less memorable and creative, these executives said."
I get Sirius while at work at my desk. I don't have the antenna up high or anything, its in the standard position on the boombox. FWIW I work in a highrise on the 23rd floor, with a Window view.
By the way, Sirius lets you stream all the music stations to your computer (windows media player required, works on Mac or Windows). So you can subscribe and listen to music without the radio, pretty much whenever you're online.
You get the BBC World Service in the US as well... around 1am in the morning when they are running syndicated stations. It's great for night driving to keep you awake :)
I actually know some construction workers in MA who tape it overnight and then listen to it at work instead of the normal programming.
Beep beep.
Sucks is a strong word, but hi-fi it ain't. I went back and forth with Sirius over the sound quality, and they were pretty responsive and helpful, but they couldn't fix it. Lots of assuming that "my equipment was bad" - I was discussing my home system and mentioned the various high-end (real high-end, not 'audiofile' "good-sounding speaker wire and shakti stones" crap) parts, like my semi-custom AVA amplifier, and they mentioned that I might "upgrade" to Pioneer or Yamaha, for example. But the bottom line was the sound issues are a function of the encoding. It's not very good. The kicker was when I hooked up to the streaming audio over the internet and it was absolutely no different than the broadcast sound.
It's *very* obvious in the DJ speaking voices, but it happens in the music similarly. The worst is a sort of a "hollow" reverb effect.
By the way, the best feature IS the streaming audio, which is free if you subscribe to the broadcast service (or, is included, if you prefer that perspective).
I listened to mine on broadcast for 6 straight days on a car trip, and I had a lot of opportunity to compare it to FM stations along I-80. The best Sirius channels are nowhere near as good in terms of audio quality as a good FM station, and the talk channels are worse than AM. I tried various encoding schemes from CD to compare, and somewhere in the range of a 96 kbps MP3 was pretty comparable to the very best Sirius channels. In other words, just barely good enough for most people, and not a whole lot worse from what a lot of people tolerate on their iPods (128 kbps is what I think you get from the ITMS - whatever it is it's on the edge of tolerable quality-wise). Which I guess is what they were shooting for.
couldn't even find a bit rate low enough to replicate the worst of the talk channels.
I think it's *probably* worth the money, but if you are expecting CD quality sound you will be sorely disapppointed.
Brett