Peel on Demand

[John Bravin]

Dumb Mistake in Birmingham PostListening to Peel on BBC Radio on Demand via the Internet, I sense the quality has diminished considerably from a while ago.  The BBC Radio on Demand website says:

Unlike other forms of broadcasting, the cost of streaming has a per capita cost which is not diminished in proportion to the size of the audience. Ironically, due to the growing success of our streaming services, including audio-on-demand from the online Radio Player, the BBC was faced with rapidly rising distribution costs. 

With a finite budget, the choice was to reduce bandwidth of the live stream or cap the number of simultaneous users. By far the least disruptive option to most users was to reduce bandwidth - in this case by reducing the maximum bit rate - of the live stream. This results in a slight reduction in sound quality, noticeable to users with fast connections. 

Has anyone else noticed this drop in quality, and does anyone know what the actually quality is - no where can I find any indication of the sampling rate.  This question becomes less academic when Peel moves to the God-forsaken late night slot and I use this facility rather than stay up till the early hours.