Are the songs off the radio same quality as their cd versions?

Question

Are the songs off the radio same quality as their cd versions?

Answer 1

Yes and no. Radio stations have to use compression in order to broadcast the music which makes it much less than CD quality. However, HD radio is supposed to allow CD quality audio to be broadcast, but will require an "HD Radio" receiver.  

Most radio stations do import music into their libraries at full, uncompressed quality.

@gearbox: What radio station do you know of that's ripping their music as mp3? I'm pretty sure an overwhelming majority uses some kind of uncompressed ripping, most notably .wav format. And if you think that 128 kbps is CD quality, you do not own a good pair of speakers my friend.

So to reiterate. The music starts at a radio station at full CD quality, and then gets compressed to less than CD quality unless you own an HD Radio, as most Radio stations these days broadcast in HD. That IS CD quality.

Answer 2

Dave and all is correct. The mp3s are not CD versions in the true since (as Cd is encoded a lot higher than most mp3s) but most get or use 128- 320kbps encoded from the ones I know (depending if they are on Am or not where a lower quality wouldn't matter as much).

The issue is when it's processed to boost the lows and even everything out (It's called compression and is used on top 40 stations, some country stations, and rock stations) the quality compared to the original is changed... also when it's fed out, the FM station has to roll off the high parts of the song (as most if I remember cut off anything higher than 15k hz in sound)....

So I'd say personally that FM is as good as a 128kbps mp3 file in my opinion as lower quality ones I can tell roll off the highs and subtle parts I love in songs.

The HD radio is actually a signal that is encoded in a way that the user thinks cd quality

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_radio is a good read on what I speak of.

But I will tell you that radio does play a lot of edited songs for time as cd listeners may want to hear the musical interlude of a song or language, but a casual listener may not.

For instance on that, I love country music and radio has cut almost 3 minutes out of a Keith Urban song I love, and a song by Taylor Swift is actually edited for language (as she hints in one song about something people could take as Homophobic)

Answer 3

All radio station tracks, on their local databases, are of a high quality. These are played within the studio and station at the usual high format (usually a format much larger than 320kbps), but once they are processed on the desk or electronically through the mixer, they are converted into a format, along with the overall feed that can be broadcast to the transmitter to listeners.

It is necessary to change the format to a FM supported format. The work is all done in the audio processor.

Most radio stations receive promotional CD's (which are amazing) and these are merely ripped off onto the systems for usage on the radio. Please note; this ripping and copying is approved by the copyright owner.

To put a long story short, yes songs off the radio are of the same quality as their CD versions in the studio, but they differ when processed for broadcasting.

FM, for example, is specially designed to broadcast in High-Fidelity sound.

Hope this helps.