SWR 4 BW

SWR 4 BW is one of four entries in Germany whose names are the same but for a number, and this one's number is four. A broadcaster numbering its streams like that is separating feeds, not stations, so read the number as the part that matters.

At position 1116 of 1,409, this is one of the stations in Germany that almost nobody arrives at by browsing. That is the case for having a page at all. A station reachable only by knowing its name is a station most directories lose.

SWR 4 BW streams at 96 kbps, under Germany's median of 128 kbps. A lower rate is not automatically worse: speech carries perfectly well below the music threshold, and a station built for phones on a weak connection has a good reason to encode this way.

The audio comes from liveradio.swr.de, and 35 other stations in Germany are served from the same address. That is a streaming platform carrying many broadcasters rather than a station running its own server, which is worth knowing for a practical reason: when a platform has a bad night, a whole block of Germany's listing stops answering at once and nothing is wrong with any of the stations in it.