BBC Streaming FLAC

[Confused]

Is anyone in the UK testing this yet?

 

Edit: Here in the US, the stream works through Firefox.

 

Yes, I have just tried it.  It took five minutes to get it up and running, but almost all of that time was spent downloading Firefox, which is needed in the UK also it would appear.

 

Sounded pretty decent, if you like dreadful organ music (no offence meant to those that do!).  I have only listened to the first few minutes because I have other things to do this evening.  Whilst the sound quality sounded good, there were some very strange noises / sounds that could be heard, but I think these were part of the recording.  For the record, my little Devialet display was indicating 44.1kHz, so it appeared to be working as advertised.  Very promising I have to say.  I'll give this a more thorough test when I have some time.

[Confused]

40 minutes ago, Cebolla said:

Presumably, you are listening to this via a Windows machine since Firefox always uses the default Windows audio device which appears to be set to 16/44.1kHz and hence the Devialet's indication. The stream is actually 16/48kHz as has been pointed out above, so you will need to change the Windows default audio device's setting to match in order to have bit perfect output to the Devialet.

Yes, you are absolutely right!  I did try this in a rush yesterday.  Normally I stream to the Devialet via mR/Mutec, but to try this I switched to Devialet's AIR streaming.  When I saw the Dev was running at 44.1kHz, I just assumed it was a 16/44.1 feed.  Later in the evening I read the posts above and realised what I'd done!  I only ever use Devialet AIR for compressed web based stuff like YouTube, and keeping the settings at 16/44.1 helps stability with the sometimes unpredictable AIR streaming.  I tried it again later, the Windows soundcard settings for the Devialet were indeed at 16/44.1, I changed this and the Devialet then indicated 48kHz as you would expect.  It sounded OK when I listened at the 'suboptimal' 44.1, to be honest.  When I have some time over the weekend I try a more extended listen at full fat bit perfect 48kHz.  Should be interesting.  I wonder if this would work at 24/192 or similar?  It does seam an awful lot easier than all this MQA stuff! 

[Confused]

I spent a bit of time listening to the BBC 'Taster' feed today.  I think it is impossible for me to draw any definitive conclusions to how good or bad it sounds in relative terms, it is not the kind of music I would typically listen to and I have no direct references as a comparison.  Having said that, I think I can conclude that in absolute terms it does sound pretty decent.

 

One observation I can make is that during the musical performances I was generally very impressed with the quality of reproduction, clarity and resolution were good throughout the frequency range, decent dynamics and so on, all reasonably impressive.  However, during the studio discussions I did not think it sounded so good, a case of there being a degree of sibilance in the voices.  Maybe bad microphone implementation in the studio?  I am not sure.

 

During the performances though, no obvious negatives stood out, so it was a case of being able to listen to the music undistracted by any such niggles.  Personally I would have to say well done to the BBC for trying this kind of thing.  A national broadcaster having a go at simple 'hires' streaming, without any of the MQA folding and deblurring confusions, this has to be commended in my opinion.  I wonder if they will ever extend the trial to 24/192 or similar?