The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 21

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• smartypnt4 - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link

  Fixed now. Disregard.

• Crono - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link

  Excellent, was looking forward to this (what can I say, I like to listen to some interesting stuff when I'm driving). I want to know how soon before I can get the GPE ROM on my AT&T HTC One. It's already as smooth as butter with Sense 5, but would love to play around with almost-stock Android just to see how it runs.

• Crono - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link

  Also, I'm surprised you guys don't offer a smaller MP3 size at least as a secondary option. 32 kbps (CBR preferably) is enough for speech, unless there is some background noises you want us to pick up on, ha ha. 185MB is overkill for a podcast, unless it was a music podcast.

• Zink - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link

  +1 podcasts are half silence and speech doesn't need nearly the bitrate used for music. Less bits please.

• speconomist - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link

  I completely agree, this is waaay overkill.
  
  Half or even one third of the current bitrate would make more sense without compromising audio quality at all.

• Terminator02 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link

  This. I've been putting off commenting on the bitrate of your podcasts, but it is quite unnecessary to use a 204 kbps bitrate on a podcast as you currently are for the MP3 versions. I'd say 128 kbps is the absolute max needed for (non-music) podcasts, with 96 kbps being ideal in my opinion, and 80 or 64 kbps sounding fine as well.
  
  I would prefer that you not go any lower than that as it starts to sound significantly worse when you go below 64 kbps.
  
  This would not only decrease the strain on your servers, but allow us to start listening to the podcast sooner (for those of us who download it to listen on-the-go), as well as filling up less space in portable devices and using less bandwidth.

• Crono - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link

  64kbps is a good bitrate. I think 48kbps AAC is roughly equivalent.

• Eggrenade - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link

  I actually really appreciate the high bitrate. They use quality microphones and the podcast sounds really good. 200 kbs is perhaps a little more than necessary, but it would be a shame to add that gargley sound to such a nice recording. I'm certainly not listening to the quality of their voices more than what they voice, but I appreciate the quality nonetheless. I would prefer variable bitrate (constant quality) just to save space, but I'm not to picky about that.
  
  Great podcast, as usual.

• Terminator02 - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link

  It already is variable bitrate, the bitrate I posted was the average.
  
  I don't really personally care if AnandTech goes variable or constant bitrate, as it doesn't affect me, but I've been told that constant is more compatible with older devices.
  
  My recommendation would apply to the max bitrate if it's variable..

• Brian Klug - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link

  This is something we've been debating for a while, and even though I'm all for the really high quality audio I agree for mobile use it makes sense to have a lower bitrate. I'm pretty sure that's coming :)
  
  -Brian