How good is Sky HD?

[admin_exported]

So, how good is Sky HD as a source?

If you are listening to the radio through a Sky HD box using an optical out to a Cyrus 8XPd QX how good is the Sky HD box as a source? Is it just a case of the Sky box being a transport for the signal and all the clever stuff happens int the Cyrus DAC?

 

[davejberry]

Even through optical to my AV amp, i think that the radio channels on sky+ (not HD) sound pants. No better to my ears than low bit rate mp3. Local fm is considerably better. I use the same amp to play CD and stream lossless files from my PC and both are significantly less compressed and sibilant, again, using the amps optical input.

 

[daveh75]

It depends on the channel/bitrates to an extent. Radio channels on Sky/Freesat use MP2 encoding at bitrates between 64 and 256 kbps.