KQED 128 AAC

KQED 128 AAC sits at 723 of 1,481 in the United States' listing, in the body of the list rather than at either end. This is where most of a national dial actually lives, and it is the part a country hub's first fifty rows never reach.

The open count against KQED 128 AAC is two, which is enough to know the stream has been played through the directory and not enough to compare it with anything. Small counts are the normal case out here, and a ranking built from them separates stations by luck as much as by interest.

Nothing else in the United States' listing leads with cultural news. The tag is self-declared, which makes it a statement of how the broadcaster positions itself rather than a classification anyone audited, and on this dial that statement is unique.

KQED 128 AAC publishes an HLS stream. That is a modern and perfectly good way to broadcast, and it is also why the button on this page may not start it: HLS needs a player that can read a playlist and fetch segments, which a browser audio tag does not do on its own.

Its audio comes straight from hls.kqed.org, an address unique to this entry in the United States' listing. That is the simplest case there is, and it is the one where pressing play tells you the whole truth about whether the station is on air.