The popular discussion board, which was started in the mid-1990s has been terminated by its current owners, Streamline Digital. It seems that the site was not making any money and thus the plug was pulled.
There are other engineering-type discussion boards such as The Virtual Engineer and… Hmm, Anybody?
Where a vacuum exists, nature abhors it. The question is, will anyone step up and fill the void?
One of our clients has or rather had a BEST FERUPS 18 KVA UPS. It has stopped working and I was given the following report:
Radio guy: The power went out, the generator started, then I heard a bang.
Myself: You heard a bang?
RG: Yeah, a big BANG!
Myself: You heard a big bang.
And so he did:
The primary damage is around two MOV’s mounted on the other side of the board. This is the power sense (voltage sample) input to the board. We have attempted to repair it, but alas, it is not repairable. A replacement board runs over $1,400.00 from Eaton Powerware. Since this unit also needs a new set of batteries, it is likely best to replace the entire unit.
If you have not seen this Youtube video, put down the coffee (or whatever) and move any spillable things away from the keyboard and enjoy:
As it turns out, 300 kbp/s or greater. At least in critical listening environments according to the paper titled Perceived Audio Quality of Realistic FM and DAB+ Radio Broadcasting Systems (.pdf) published by the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. This work was done by a group in Sweden that made various observations with different program material and listening subjects. Each person was given a sample of analog FM audio to listen to, then they listened to various audio selections which were using bit reduction algorithms (AKA CODEC or Compression) and graded each one. The methodology is very thorough and there is little left for subjective interpretation.
In less critical listening environments, bit rates of 160-192 kbp/s will work.
I made a chart and added HD Radio’s proprietary CODEC HDC, which is similar to, but not compatible with AAC:
| System | Codec | Bit Rate (kbp/s) |
| HD Radio FM; HD1 channel* | HDC (similar to AAC) | 96 – 144 |
| HD Radio FM; HD2 channel* | HDC | 24-48 |
| HD Radio FM; HD3 channel* | HDC | 24-48 |
| HD Radio AM* | HDC | 20-60 |
| DRM30 (MF-HF) | AAC/HE-AAC | 34-72 |
| DRM+ (VHF) | AAC/HE-AAC | 700 |
| DAB+ | AAC/HE-AAC | 32 – 128 |
| DAB | MPEG II, Dolby Digital | 192 – 256 |
| Blu-ray | PCM** | ≥6 Mbp/s |
| DVD | PCM, DTS, Dolby Digital | >800 |
| CD-A | PCM | 1,411 |
| Web Streaming | MPEG I,II,III, WMA, AAC, etc | 32-320, 128 typical |
| iTunes | AAC | 128 – 256 |
| Spotify | Ogg Vorbis | 96 – 320 |
| Wimp | AAC/HE-AAC | 64 – 256 |
*Hybrid mode
**PCM: uncompressed data
This is the composite Mean Basic Audio Quality and 95% confidence intervals for the system across all excerpts:
Over the years, we have simply become accustomed to and now accept low-quality audio from mp3 files being played over cheap computer speakers or through cheap ear buds. Does this make it right? In our drive to take something good and make it better, perhaps it should be, you know: Better.
Special thanks to Trevor from Surrey Electronics Limited.
