Personal impact of BBC action of removing higher quality streams

[ColinR1956]

Dear all,
Rather than hijacking and cluttering up another thread I would like to state rhe personal impact the recent change that the BBC has made.
I listen to the BBC national broadcasts for a few hours every day mainly radio 3 and 4.
I suffer from tinnitus and and mild deafness, the quality of the music or speech is very important as the clear and more detailed it is the less concentration is required to listen and the more enjoyment I get from listening.
Until I purchased my current system I had almost given up listening as the effort was too much to sustain over an hour or more.
Yes, I can get streams of the radio on my system via Airable, but these streams are broadcast at mp3 quality and there is a marked difference.
BBC Sounds is only available via my phone and Bluetooth, so again the quality is compromised to a significant degree.
I hope these comment are supportive of restoring the lossless streams that used to be provided by the national public broadcaster

[tommyrot]

Hi Colin,
I can appreciate the points you raise. I must ask, have you contacted the BBC about them? Hearing from people who are disproportionately affected may help wake the Beeb up a bit.

This BBC mayhem has forced me to use Airable on my Linn system, so I can confirm there are high quality streams available for at least BBC Radio 3, 4, and 4Xtra. I have these stored as presets. Below are a few screenshots from my control device showing the bitrates.

Just prefix the usual secure web protocol characters to these and replace ellipsis with a forward slash.
ibb.co...0C4HpR2
ibb.co...PTGd6MX

I think you need to (laboriously) browse the tree of Airable radio stations. From memory, I believe these appear in the High Quality category.

I'm afraid there's a 'but'. But in the fortnight that I've been using Airable, the service has proved somewhat choppy. Today, streams are taking 1 minute to load. Yikes. My internet service is fine – webpages load instantly. As is my LAN – I can play from my NAS instantly. And my NAIM radio playlists (played through MinimServer) play instantly. So, it's definitely Airable. I've contacted Airable directly, but there are one or two telling threads on the Linn Owners forum, which suggest to me that Airable isn't particularly rock solid, unlike MinimServer. So, as Simon can magic up a way out of this hole, I aim to switch back.