Are radio stations using mp3's?

[David]

It sure seems like the recording quality on the radio has gone downhill in the last couple of years. I'm wondering if they've switched to mp3's with too much compression. Anyone on the inside have the scope?

[stomachmonkey]

Was driving into work this morning and heard a song that I was sure was an mp3. The cymbal crashes are usually a dead give away.

I would think it makes sense to do it that way. A lot of upside to it, as well as downside.

Most listeners would never know the diff.

[FrayAdjacent911]

I'm pretty sure they do, to some extent.

I do know some radio stations do use Minidisc for playback sometimes.

[bryanthompson]

A lot of stations have gone digital with systems like Scott Studios (http://www.scottstudios.com/). They use MP4, if I remember correctly. I worked for a network that switched to Scott, and it's awesome. The stations I worked for used Minidisk and CDs before... I think they had an array of something like 96 players, all controlled from a crazy minidisk/cdplayer thing. It was a little before my time.

[FrayAdjacent911]

I'm a fan of Minidisc myself, but got into it recently with HiMD (1GB discs). I'm listening to some music on my portable player plugged into my computer at work.

Sadly, I think Minidisc will be killed off by Sony. They crippled it from the beginning by not marketing it, and not letting it become what it really could be - a great audio, and data, medium.

I'm not a fan of hard drive based portable players.. I don't need to store 500 CDs worth of music... who wants to look through all that to find what they feel like listening to?? With HiMD, I can get just under 8 hours of playback from files encoded at 256kbps, and more at lower bitrates. With older minidisc media, I can get about 2.5 hours given the same bitrates. Media is removable and relatively inexpensive. With a portable, a car head unit and a home stereo component, I can easily take my music everywhere I want it...

... but NO... Sony screwed the pooch on it. Geezus. HiMD could have been some serious competition for the IPod... but again, it was crippled from the word 'go'.

Anyway... that's my rant/hijack... carry on...