Are radio broadcast cds used at radio stations great in audio quality compared to live albums by the artist?

Question

I wanted to purchase a music CD online of one of my favorite bands. It features music from live recordings that have been used on their compilations and in singles. The CD in questions is a broadcast CD used by the radio station and not a bootleg and even includes a cue sheet. I was wondering if the quality of CD's like these are worth buying when these same songs are also availablie in bootlegs that are definitely of lower quality than CD's you can buy from a store or from a reliable online merchants. Or are radio broadcast CD's known to have quality issues or are they just like buying a live album issued by the artist? The CD I'm talking about is an original Westwood One CD broadcast that includes commericals and not a CD-R.

Answer 1

Are you saying that the CD is just a recording of what went out over the air on a certain day?  The fact that you say commercials are included leads me to believe this.

If that is the case, the quality will probably be fine (as long as it is not the transmitter feed), but since radio stations employ dynamics processing, the audio will all sound one consistent volume.  Ever notice that you rarely have to change the volume of the radio as each song plays?  

BUT...

If you are saying that the CD is just a copy that the radio station was given to put on the air, it will sound as good as it did when it was mastered.  The cue sheet you are talking about shows the jock where all the significant events are within the recording according to elapsed time.  This way, they know when to cue and seg the cut on air.

I'm fairly certain that if it comes from a radio station, you have nothing to be worried about.  With the advent of HD radio, program directors are very careful to ensure nothing but high-quality audio is aired because the old addage "garbage in, garbage out" is magnified to say "garbage in, disgusting-rancid-pile-of-horsecrap out".