Thanks for all the replies. I'm a happy camper. I did do an AB comparison with FM and Amazon Streaming (not high res) and the difference was palpable. My lossless stuff run through Music Bee and Foobar 2000 was a closer match. Very different tho. Again, FM was wider and looser. Lossless stuff was more polite. Refined, with less noise. But man FM is just so fun sounding!
Agree with everything. In general, Spotify Premium at "Extreme" (which is only 320kbps, but should be good enough to sound awesome) just sounds dead in comparison, especially when it comes to "airiness" in the high end. I have not compared against lossless yet. The cool thing about tuning in a radio station via streaming is that you can hear the "apples to apples" of the same song as on the radio -- and there is no comparison how much better FM sounds on my system. Part of the problem is that radio stations still seem to generally stream at very low bit rates (128kbs, sometimes 64kbps
) -- not sure why that would still be the case in 2020, but it seems to be, so their streaming feeds sound worse than they should.
When you hear about the technical limits of FM -- 50db dynamic range, low "equivalent bit rate", max frequency of 15khz -- all that stuff is both relevant and irrelevant at the same time. It's technically correct, but data isn't a reliable indicator of sound quality at all. For example, if you look at the 15khz frequency limit of FM -- that's real -- and you can't help but think that high frequencies would suck on FM, yet high frequencies and sparkle and shimmer (at least for me) is where FM trounces most digital. I pay almost no attention to "data" in terms of sound expectations -- listen to everything with a fresh perspective, it's either good or it's not good. It's either better or it's not better -- data means almost nothing. It's still very helpful to know the data to better understand what you are hearing because there are limits -- jazz sounds amazing on FM, but with pop music I can hear some limits (probably related to dynamic range). Unless it's a really great source (above Spotify Premium 320kbps), I'd rather listen to Jazz on FM than digital despite FM's technical "deficits". For pop music (not that I listen to it), I might prefer digital.
The same goes with LP technical analysis -- LP can be proven to be inferior to digital on a technical basis -- the same sorts of limits that exist with FM. Does that mean anything to the sound quality? The answer (in my opinion) is: yes and no. Let your ears decide and the answer about which is sound better is probably very situational. Those who are too afraid to listen, and do their "listening" via stats instead of listening, are missing almost all of the story line in audio.
