An excellent thought, for our purposes it may be a bit of 'overkill'...
But this is a community project, and if you'd like to create and maintain such an addition, we can see how the rest feel about it... the current admin team has about all it can handle.For one, even in our present configuration, Ken spent many hours developing back-end scripts to help the team in auditing streams... it's a lot simpler and faster now, but still very much an 'admin' chore! And very much 'subjective'... even with the 'broad' criteria we're using now for 'quality', each of us has a slightly different 'ear' on it at times! Also we've noted that the 'quality' of a given stream can vary during the course of the day, for many reasons!
Incidentally, the new PWS scripts the team produced will sync back to the master files on NOAA Weather Radio ORG when it updates... I'm not sure, but I think they look for changes hourly, and self update with active streams only... I'm a bit behind in that area...
Generally, although the 'team' hasn't really discussed it in depth, I think the basic 'paradigm' is "a degraded stream is better than NO stream" in most locations, even though we may 'flag' it as 'marginal quality'.. we're reluctant to 'disable'.. and are more prone to 'disable' a 'worse' stream if there is an 'alternate' available. They're 'flagged' on the main list for the 'user' as well as the provider.
To see "how we're doing" simply compare your stream to either the 'reference track' or one of the 'disabled' mp3 tracks. Set your encoder within the published guidelines, and except for reception, you should be good to go.
The major quality factors and possible solutions are listed in the grid on "quality" page... and generally the biggest offenders are simply due to the provider failing to check and / or compare his own stream with others or the reference!
Reception is the biggest woe, followed very closely by, volume levels, single channel, and aliasing... hum is a prevalent artifact, and there's many a reason for that...
Personally, from a 'user" perspective, the 'volume' difference is my biggest pet peeve.. for an extreme example hear the "Bad Experience" audio track... lots of 'users' will move from feed to feed as much out of curiousity as for 'need"...
I too use the midland WR-300 ... two of 'em... one for Frankfort KY, which feeds directly from Broadwave, and the other for Owenton KY which feeds from BUTT to WxRadio Dyndns... The Frankfort Rcvr uses the built in rod, and Owenton has the homebuilt 'ugly' attached, since I'm 'fringe' for that transmitter... also have a Kaito portable with excellent speaker quality, but streams virtually the same as the Midlands, and cost more. Also have an old Radio Shack hand-held with lousy speaker, but streams about the same as the Midlands and Kaito...
BTW, the Owenton transmitter reception is used for the "poor signal - solved" audio example.
Personally, I'd hate to see us get involved with consumer / provider 'suggestions'... for several reasons:
First, it's difficult enough to entice someone to begin streaming, it seems. Look at all the "which station should I buy" threads and discussions...?
Heck, start cheap if that's what you own, get it online, ... a radio can always be upgraded if that's really the source of a quality issue!
Makes us look too commercial.
...and how would you rate the Raspberry Pi RTL SDR, whose streams also vary in quality, and which we've numerous providers?
The device itself is immaterial for our puposes if the providers get too far out of whack with our established 'experiential' guidelines for streams... and don't check themselves online frequently. There's some fancy radios out there providing crappy streams.