Good day everyone.
Several weeks ago I received a comment on one of the Iggy shows about the quality (or lack thereof) of the files we post.
For some background, when I took over operations on the site I didn't get any insight into the methods previous custodians used to capture the audio shared here, but doing so was something I'd been doing for awhile on my own. Harmony and Confidential are only 2 of about 70 programs that I capture and archive each week. ( Yes, this is a hobby that's gotten out of control :-/ )
I don't remember the specifics, but when I started I was using a recording solution that captured the stream as MP3 files encoded at 128kbps, which is my personal minimum acceptable standard. At the end of March, 2020 the Iggy shows I posted switched from 128kbps to 64kbps. File size decreased from 110 megabytes to 55 megabytes. BBC Radio changed their streaming infrastructure and I lost the ability to schedule and background record their shows.
Currently, I have to record the stream in real time, manually. Their stream is 96kbps served up from a content distribution network using the Advanced Audio Codec (aac). If I was able to simply capture that raw audio stream it would come down as an m4a file and take up about 90 megabytes.
I can also capture it as a 128kbps MP3 by modifying settings on my own software.
As I am not an audio engineer I can't speak to issues of quality when comparing codecs, but I captured MP3s at both 64kbps and 128kbps. Using a pair of CAD Audio MH510GD studio headphones, the 128kbps does sound a little... richer? Best I can describe it.
Both files are posted here and if you have a preference or feedback, I'd like to hear from you.
We do have "unlimited," storage grandfathered into our hosting plan, but are currently using over 160GB of disk space and if we ever have to change hosts, that's going to be a problem to affordably support. At current file sizes the archive grows by about 8.6GB per year, which would rise to 11.5GB annually if we move to 128kbps recording on both programs.
Is moving to the 128kbps file worth the tradeoff in file size? Please let me know your thoughts.