RMF Maxx ŚLĄSK

In Poland's ordering this is number 77 of 228, which is the middle of the list. The stations either side of it are a better guide to what the country sounds like than the head of the list is, because the head is the same few famous streams in every country.

Pop is one of Poland's headline genres in this directory, and RMF Maxx ŚLĄSK is one of 10 stations there leading with it. The country hub prints the same tag near the top of its own list, so this station sits inside the country's main sound rather than off to one side.

RMF Maxx ŚLĄSK streams at 48 kbps against Poland's median of 128, which is less than half the local norm. On a dial where 81% of stations reach 128 kbps, a rate this low stands out, and it usually means either a speech station that never needed more or an encoder that has not been touched in years.

The format here is AAC+, against a listing for Poland 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.

Its audio comes from rs202-krk-cyfronet.rmfstream.pl. Three other stations in Poland stream from the same host, which is a smaller sharing than the big platforms and often means the same people run them all.