SWR3 Rock

SWR3 Rock sits in the tail of Germany's 1,409 entries. The tail is the part of a directory that goes missing first, and it is the part worth keeping: the head of every country's list is the same handful of national broadcasters, and everything that makes a dial local is behind them.

With three recorded opens, SWR3 Rock sits in the part of the directory where the numbers stop discriminating. The station's position in Germany's list should be read as approximate for exactly that reason.

At 96 kbps, this sits below most of Germany's listing, whose median is 128 kbps. 62% of the country's stations reach 128 kbps or better, so the dial around it is mostly higher.

The format here is AAC, against a listing for Germany overwhelmingly made of MP3. Both play in a browser; the difference shows up in how much quality survives at a given bitrate, where AAC has the advantage at lower rates.

36 of Germany's entries are served from liveradio.swr.de, this one among them. A shared host means a shared fate. If this stream is silent, the fastest check is not this station's own site but whether its neighbours on the same platform are playing.