podcast sampling rates

One of the TPN hosts got an email from a listener last week saying:

Any chance of cranking up the sampling rate on your podcasts?  48k bit/s is very painful on the ear, at least to my ears.

The decision to make all TPN shows 48kbps 22Khz mp3s was made very early on in an effort to create a uniform experience for our audience as well as make sure that TPN podcasts would play well on all kinds of different players. In 14 months since then, I don't think I've ever received a complaint about the bitrate before. In fact, early on I had a few people who were audio geeks telling me that 48 was too HIGH to encode plain old speech and that we should drop it lower to reduce the filesize.

So I'm interested in your feedback - should we increase, reduce or stay the same? What's the trade-off between quality and filesize?

Comments

[Roger]

I think the sample rates are fine, if you want to up the quality I think better mics would show a bigger improvement - and also leave your door open!

[Aaron Heath]

keep em where they are mate

[Rob Irwin]

They're fine. The guy who complained probably spends his spare time in hi-fi stores bending the ears of salespeople and berating the virtues of speakers he can't afford to buy. When people start bitching about sound, I just switch off...

[Ewan Spence]

I'd say pure voice at 96K/22.05, voice and music at 128K/44.1. There are some shows we have that really need the extra sampling rate...

[Bruce Moyle]

Having it set to 44.1 at 48kbps (mono) works nicely for us, but not completely needed. The issue I have alot of the time with TPN casts is the quality of the mics used, especially yours Cam. I find it sometimes hard on the ears, and make sure that I don't listen to G'Day World or the Movie Show using earphones as it gives me a headache sometimes. I don't think the bitrate is the problem, due to the fact other hosts on your shows, especially g'day world sound alot better and clearer, even though skype.
Now I don't know if your complainer is talking generally about all TPN shows or a couple of specific shows. But for my money, everything is fine, just see if your mic can get a bit more thinkness to it's sound.

[Bob M]

It's fine.

[Phillip Molly Malone]

Fine here too!

[david]

One major issue I have. I have a pocket pc and BT headphones. Unfortunately most of the BT A2DP audio stacks only stream files if they are in stereo. So this means there are only a handful of podcasts I can stream, unless I go through the pain of converting the files to stereo. Worth keeping in mind as more people use BT headsets (and why wouldn't you).

David.

[william dutton]

crank up the quality on the music shows, such as the rock show, melo monday etc, the quality for the rest is fine, also if they want to play with the audio going to the left right channels, please keep at last 10% of the sound on the otherside so that headphones don't feel like someone wispering into one ear then the other. also it allows to have depth and placement. back left, front left, centre, etc.

[Mat]

The bit rate is fine, by biggest audio quality gripe is the differing levels of the people in conversation. This leads me to turn the volume right up to hear one person speak only to be blasted out of the car by the next person. Forget the bit rate - sort out the levels ! Some shows are much worse than others for this...

[Nicole Simon]

I hate it when the quality is too low as I am a sucker for a clear crisp audio. The longer podcasting lives, the more it is important to improve qualities of the recording. For example make sure that at least the recording site does not sound as if they are through a telephine filter too.

I myself have found a headset for skype that does let me sound good enough, the one before did let me sound like telephone, metallic. I also do myself in 80 kpbs lowest - I found out that a lower bitrate messes with my voice.

Setting up levels is a must, and if you have more than one person on the call, they need to level it on their site.