OK, now I know there are many, many stations that now stream on the 'web, but I'm curious to know of some of your favorites - both in terms of programming, as well as the fidelity of the stream itself (i.e. bitrate).

I'll start:

KEXP. 90.3. Seattle; a great variety, lots of indie, classics, crossover, etc. I need to revise my station list in the Audiotron as right now I only get the 128 kbps stream (which does not sound all that great, however, the sheer variety of what I can hear on any given day is often enough to mitigate my wishes for a high bit-rate stream). Here's the link:

http://kexp-mp3-2.cac.washington.edu:8000/listen.pls

I really dig this station at times, because I use one of my Audiotrons (circa 2005) that is connected to my 990 to stream what I think is a VERY cool station, and send it to zone 2 - which feeds my whole-house system.

I'm sure that I will think of some others (WDET being one here in the Detroit area, primarily for one very, very cool show - Ann Delisi's Essential Music), but if anyone out there has any favorites or streams that feature either interesting / cool content and / or a high bitrate, feel free to post them here.

Thanks,

Mark

I too enjoy WDET.
There is also 90.9 WRCJ during the day for classical, evenings for jazz.
Or 89X on Sunday mornings for retro.

Do any of them also stream? I guess part of the appeal of streaming is that it allows me to listen to things that I couldn't otherwise do via terrestrial RF transmission. One of the things that really turns me off to Sirius/XM etc is while there seems to be great variety, the bit-rates are so low that I just can't listen to it (which is why I see no real value in sat radio). Thus, with KEXP (for example), while I am not at all crazy about 128 kbps, the shows are so great that I am willing to check my intolerance of sub-standard audio in order to hear some really cool and obscure tracks.

Back to WDET...I wonder how many web-listeners Ann Delisi's Essential Music garners each week. I really love that show - she always plays great tracks, and has some great back-stories behind the tracks, their production etc.

As far as WRCJ, yes, I have listened to them via conventional FM (as I do for WDET), and you're right - there's some great stuff there. I have not been using the tuner in my 990 due to the issue my unit appears to have with comb-filtering on analog sources, but I have a NAD 1600 and a 1700 (old-school analog FM), and the WDET and WRCJ signals sound really good, albeit level-compressed. There are times that I think I should buy another 1600, or a similar tuner (alone) from NAD, feed its tape out (or just output if a tuner) to an outboard A/D and take that into the 990.

Thanks for the input.

old_school_2

Yes, I know WRJC streams but it is of pretty low quality.
This Station is a listener supported station (not NPR) and have not the financials for a higher quality system.

I enjoy WCPE. the classical station.com