Internet radio stations that sound really good

RadioIo is a group of 60 Internet radio stations with 60 different formats. Broadcast all at 128bps.

This is not a rant against RadioRio as much as it is an appeal to support Public Radio.

IMHO RadioRio does not stand out from the crowd. Despite the rhetoric on the home page it is pretty much like any other commercial internet station. It has a mediocre mix, average sound quality (whatever the band width may be) and too many offensive commercials.

I listen to Public Radio stations because they tend to have interesting mixes, fairly decent sound quality (some despite relatively low bandwidth) and, generally interesting commentary. And I send them what little money I can because they need help keeping their streams on line.

Just my opinion. Whatever you listen to, enjoy.

JPO

Where is that "embaressment" smiley face icon when you need it?

In the preceding post I was of course referring to Radioio not RadioRio.

I'll adjust my meds before making another post.

Enjoy the music anyway.

Audiophile alert:

Today I discovered that 101.ru has a few dozen stations available in 128K WMA format, all of which really sound quite phenomenal. I'm currently listening to 101.ru "Spivakov Classic(al)" ...very nice indeed! I highly recommend that anyone with a good quality internet hook-up to their music system give the 101.ru stations a try.

Also, the programming on these stations is really quite eclectic for the most part but the performances and recordings selected are really very good and unique. Whoever selects the music has very good taste, I would say. They also seem to consistently pay great attention to audio quality on a consistent basis. I have yet to hear anything sloppily produced and broadcast on these stations.

These stations originate in Russia and are Russian language stations as well, but much of the programming is either in English, other target languages, or instrumental, so not understanding Russian is not a big issue.

This is pretty close to internet audio nirvana for me, I'm finding.

Radioio used to have reference quality streams. They went from a windows based platform to a Mac environment over six months ago (the company was sold).

The sound was at first terrible---thin and upper midrangy MP3'y. Totally unlistenable. Since then they dropped in some EQ but its still unlistenable on a high rez system.

I have built up an EQ session for their ambiant station in Patchmix if anyone is interested (I can email it to you).

I've tried all sort of EQ for their excellent classical station but I've yet to get a winning combo.

IO has great music but needs to address the audio quality.

Peter