[q]

It must be either your speaker's or your ear's becuase it sounds crystal clear to me.

All your recordings are always crackily for me!

Yes, same here. They sound crackly, and also like they've been recorded using the default settings for the Windows sound recorder (and yes, before you say it I am well aware you use Linux).

There's a possibility it my encoding of the digital stream, because all of the clips sound identical to that. I'll have a look at the settings later and see if I can tweak them at all.

What settings do you use? What source do you use - DAB, DTT, Satellite, Cable, FM? If you use a digital source, do you encode them to one big MP3 and then cut out the relevant clips and re encode those to MP3 again?

Also when I downloaded the clip of Chris Moyles' mixing, I found that although the clip was mono (you could tell from both hearing it and looking at the audio level meters in audition), yet it was encoded in stereo.

I'm not an expert on the real time streaming protocol, but I don't think its flexible enough for what you want, and although the BBC could host multiple streams for the different bandwidths, why would they, why would the average Joe need a 128 bit download of an entire radio program. Answer; they don't, its only people that record it that wouldn't mind that feature. Besides there's probably some copywrite reason behind it on top of that.

Well, I'd love to listen again in stereo at 132kbps Real rather than whatever they use now (32kbps stereo). The settings they encode at sounds so lifeless, flat and generally, ugh.

I always ensure I do clips are of the best quality. I would capture from FM, but I don't have the appropriate leads to connect my stereo to the computer. Also the interference from the computer screen causes all sorts of fuzzy sounds on FM.

So I usually record from DTT to a wave file, edit the clips out and then save them to MP3 or WMA (although I prefer the latter as it does not sound so bad when you re encode it). Re encoding MPEG2 > MP3 isn't an ideal situation, though. I would capture from FM if I could, as Downcount's clip of the R1 jingle sounds really 'rich' and full of life.

[DC]

I think Console uses NTL as his source for Radio 1. Where as I use FM, becuase you get a really good sound on it here in the midlands (becuase there aren't many hills). I get no interferance with it from my screen though, although my eyes are starting to hurt *radiation*

[Console]

What source do you use - DAB, DTT, Satellite, Cable, FM? If you use a digital source, do you encode them to one big MP3 and then cut out the relevant clips and re encode those to MP3 again?

I do use NTL as downcount said, and yes I encode it as one big 128Kbps 44100 Hz mp3 and then cut it to smaller mp3's but I don't need to re-encode it as I have tools that can cut mp3's directly, although I do because I like to add fades and I have to re-encode it to add a fade.

Also when I downloaded the clip of Chris Moyles' mixing, I found that although the clip was mono (you could tell from both hearing it and looking at the audio level meters in audition), yet it was encoded in stereo.

They're encoded in joint stereo, although I used to do it in stereo and am again with my new setup, because it saved space. Although i do occasionally encode the longer clips (CPC's and the large requests) in mono and sometimes halve the bitrate as well.

[q]

But when i used to have dial up. It used to change itself on listen live, to match your connection. Cant they make the quality higher and make it so it matches peoples connections. And about the bandwidth thing, the bbc have their own servers, so it shouldnt be much of a problem to cater for the bandwidth should it?

What you speak of is called "Surestream" and I think the BBC extensively used it up until a while ago when they changed to fixed bitrate streams on clips (apart from the live streams which are Surestream; you can tell when the quality suddenly drops).

The BBC have their own network and servers, so capacity isn't really that much of a problem. They have since withdrawn public access to their bandwidth graphs at support.bbc.co.uk for whatever reason, but in the past I seem to remember they had fairly extensive network of servers both in the UK and abroad and connections to the internet. So no, I doubt if upping the bitrate would cause the BBC's connection to fall over.

GB ISPs are supposed to be trialing "multicast" to help to deliver the content more efficiently - in that instead of the clients making a direct connection to the BBC's servers, the BBC pipes in a feed to the ISP which is then broadcasted within the ISP to its users, thus reducing the load on the BBC's bandwidth links and servers. Although for whatever reason some ISPs seem to have yanked the trials or are no longer participating in them.

PIPEX, my ISP say that "We have been trailing Multicast but due to technical issues Multicast is no longer available to customers via our network. We are planning to trial the service again sometime later in the year but there are no availability dates yet."