Preparing releases from internet-based broadcasts

Internet Radios: Common rules, frequent mistakes and all about superior quality.

Basic Internet Radio Selection Considerations

• For TheMixingBowl of interest are only the stations offering DJ sets that you can't buy anywhere as that it is what TheMixingBowl is all about. Radio stations meeting this requirement are listed here.
• Only few Internet radio stations broadcasting DJ sets are suitable for TheMixingBowl.org as they do not meet the minimum quality requirements to allow their sets being uploaded to TheMixingBowl. Most of these radio stations are broadcasting nuked sets of low quality (sets that would be available elsewhere in much higher quality). A whitelist for high-quality internet-based stations broadcasting original DJ-sets can be found here.

Acceptable Broadcasting Bitrates

Minimum acceptable bitrates for internet broadcasts need to be taken into account. If you have a choice between different broadcasting formats, choose the one with the highest quality. One has to know, that all digital formats used to broadcast music are lossy and do not contain all the original audio information. Lossless digital broadcasts do not exist up to now. The quality of a digital broadcast is determined by two values, the bitrate and the frequency. Transparency means that the human ear cannot distinguish the broadcasted signal from the original high quality music set, low bitrates as defined below are a strict No-No for uploads to TMB.

• Frequency (almost independent from the format):
  • >40 kHz: transparent (such as the "CD-quality" of 44.1 kHz).
  • 32-40 kHz: near-transparent.
  • <32 kHz: one can hear the lower frequencies only, the high frequencies are cut off. Try to avoid broadcasts with this frequency.

• Bitrate (for the formats MP3, WMA, RA valid as a rule of thumb):
  • >192kbit/s: transparent.
  • 160-192kbit/s: near-transparent.
  • 112-160kbit/s: medium bitrates, one can easily hear differences to the original.
  • <112kbit/s: low bitrates, usually with lots of "crispy" distortions at higher frequencies.

Almost always, WMA and RA broadcasts at bitrates >64kbit/s do not exist. That almost excludes the use of these formats for uploading to TMB. Do not use these sources!

• Bitrate (for the more advanced formats AAC+ and OGG):
  • >160kbit/s: transparent.
  • 96-160kbit/s: near-transparent.
  • 64-96kbit/s: medium bitrates, higher frequencies are removed, sounds "smooth".
  • <64kbit/s: low bitrates, suitable for speech or mono transmissions only.

Do never upload internet broadcasts with low bitrates to TheMixingBowl

Ripping Internet Streams

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