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 meet the minimum quality requirements to allow their sets being uploaded to TheMixingBowl. All other internet radio stations are broadcasting nuked sets of low quality (sets that would be available elsewhere in much higher quality). The above mentioned list of Radio Stations can be considered to represent a Whitelist of suitable radio stations.

Acceptable Bitrates

Minimum acceptable bitrates for internet broadcasts need to be taken into account. If you have a choice between different broadcasting formats, choose that one with the highest quality and that means that with the highest bitrate. One has to know that all digital formats used to broadcast music are lossy and do not contain all the original audio information and low bitrates are extremely lossy and can easily sound very bad.

The minimum requirements for the bitrate are:

• MP3: 128kbit/s,
• MP2: 144-160kbit/s,
• AAC: 128kbit/s (the older AAC format is not better than mp3),
• AAC+: 64-80kbit/s (the newer AAC+ format is really good at lower bitrates),
• OGG: 64-80kbit/s (the mainline OGG format),
• OGG aoTuV: 48-64kbit/s (a heavily optimized audio codec, the best available).

Apart from all these minimum considerations, try to avoid streams sounding "crispy" with lots of distortions at higher frequencies. Also, try to avoid WMA and RA broadcasts. Usually, WMA and RA broadcasts at bitrates >64kbit/s do not exist. That make sets recorded from these sources unsuitable for TMB uploads. Do never upload internet broadcasts with low bitrates to TheMixingBowl

Ripping Internet Streams

- Suitable programs

- Guide to use the programs

Editing Ripped Internet Streams

- Suitable programs

- Rules for editing digital music files

Preparation Finish

- Preparing uploads...