All of their stations have crappy, low quality streams to start with. It's almost like they are light years behind in Internet Streaming. LOL
What I could hear of the Cumulus streams sounded better than they have in the past. I guess they're improving their streaming infrastructure to match Clear Channel's. They just need to make them stable. I assume you're not a fan of the newer low-bitrate streaming formats like AAC+. But in today's world, they're pretty much a necessity.
IHR is pretty much geared toward smartphones that stream on the go over (mostly) 3G networks. In a perfect world, yeah, I'd love to stream in 320kbps mp3, but as the bandwidth becomes even more crowded, that becomes even less feasible. As a result, newer formats that allow decent quality at lower bitrates (like the 56k AAC+ that IHR uses) are becoming more common. As far as sound quality and reliability goes, it's the best of both worlds. It may not please audiophile snobs, but it sounds pretty damn good for what it is, and far better than streams sounded years ago.
