Calling all radio heads - how to optimise my sound?

I've just had a quick listen to R3 on the iPlayer via ATV. I have to say, it seems fine to me, e.g. I can't detect a lack of dynamic range. I did notice that the announcer's voice sounded muffled but music sounded fine.

I don't have a DAB tuner anymore to do a comparison.

Could it have something to do with the type of music played.  Have you done the same comparison but with Classic FM?

I have an aesthetic and clinical aversion to Classic FM, so no I haven't tried that comparison yet. But in the interests of open-minded enquiry, I will. 

Meh...of the two I prefer Classic FM. Purists ridicule it but it at least makes classical music accessible. Imo Radio 3 comes across as a pompous and elite 'members only' club and doesn't at all encourage me as an outsider to join. Radio 3 reminds me of the days McCartney used to talk about where the classical musicians in Abbey Road refused to eat at the same tables as the Beatles and EMI's other rock/pop acts.

Sorry Major but that just sounds like inverted snobbery. Yes, I know Classic FM is an excellent intro to "classical" music, I just find it too bland. 

Personally I don't find Radio 3 elitist at all, it's enlightening and for someone like me, who has listened almost exclusively to "rock and pop" for forty years and only in the last ten years turned to other music, it's an informed source as I discover wonderful new sounds. The classical canon, not just the well-known bits, the less familiar orchestral, choral, operatic and solo instrumental music of the last few centuries are all given time and airplay. 

My particular interest of late is music of the last 150 or so years, from orchestral to jazz to modernism and beyond. Radio 3 is the only place I can conveniently access all this. All housed under one roof with an erudite voice often on hand for added insights. 

Glad you like it
Wouldn't do if we all liked the same things would it?
It would still be interesting to know why the DAB feed is superior to online streaming. You would think they came from the same source.

Its not the source that differs, but the encoding and bitrates applied on the various platforms.

Personly I've always found internet streams better than feeds from DAB/DTT/DSAT (which all use the ancient and horrendously inefficient mp2 at to low bitrates)

So if DAB is using older inferior lossy transcoding, you'd think it should sound worse than streaming. Interesting. Worst of the lot where I live, and consistently by a big margin, are Freeview radio stations, Radio 3 included. They all sound far too processed.

I also own an AppleTV3, but find that the Squeezebox Touch is vastly superior when listening to Radio 3HD at 320kbps.

Even so, it's good to have a decent DAB tuner to hand.

Although no DAB+ broadcasts are currently being transmitted in the UK I am sure they will do so in due course. While DAB+ utilises a supposedly lower bit-rate, this offers the much higher quality AAC codec.

The Yamaha T-D500 to my knowledge is the only DAB+/DAB/FM tuner currently available.

MajorFubar wrote:

Glad you like it Wouldn't do if we all liked the same things would it? It would still be interesting to know why the DAB feed is superior to online streaming. You would think they came from the same source.

True enough, MF. 

Anyway, I'm also still puzzled by R3 sounding better as a DAB broadcast than as an iPlayer stream. As stated yesterday, all other stations I've tried sound better streamed than DAB-ed, just not R3. 

There's enough difference for me to hang on to the DAB player. Essentially, it's now become a one-station player. Others I can stream. As my DAC has several inputs and a good remote, it means the DAB can hog the coaxial input, the optical input deals with all AEX content and the HDMI receives all disc based media. 

So much music, so little time etc. . . 

i bought the denon dnp720ae a month ago and really like it,plenty of bass too,for less than 200 quid is a no brainer..