Transmission1

I thought DAB would be better than it is. I got an idea of how bad DAB really is after hiring a car in the US with Sirius Satellite radio fitted.

Fartblood wrote:They do indeed, but you rarely get absolutely perfect listening conditions, especially when on the move. Provided the broadcasters don't ram oodles of stations onto the same channel, like the BBC are wont to do, as a practical matter DAB is often better. With every metre through the air that the signal travels, it is subject to loss, attenuation, distortion and interference - DAB does not suffer these losses, right up to the point where the signal starts to break up. 10 miles from the transmitter is as good as parked next to it, which FM isn't.

Try listening to Kerrang! on DAB, then flick back to FM if you want a demonstration.

I'm sorry but i can't. I only listen to well mastered cd's at home. I was hopefull that digital radio would be fully exploited and give me another source of quality sound, but all they have done with it is give us less. So the few stations i can put up with will soon be no more.

Ive not had a car stereo for about 7 years. I don't travel in rush hour.


i presume kerrang is compressed on fm but not dab? I have heard the same example before. Is it a sales pitch?

Some broadcasters, especially the beeb, cram oodles of stations onto the same channel with bitrates of as little as 90odd kB/S, and it sounds chuffing awful. That's down to greed and/or penny pinching, rather than a reflection on the potential technical ability of the system.

Fartblood wrote:Some broadcasters, especially the beeb, cram oodles of stations onto the same channel with bitrates of as little as 90odd kB/S, and it sounds chuffing awful. That's down to greed and/or penny pinching, rather than a reflection on the potential technical ability of the system.

I do like BBC 6 Music, but it does sound very thin compared to a lot of the other stations. Also Absolute 80's, fantastic station

they may kill FM and MW (LW is pretty dead anyway.. well around here it is) but theres always SW >_<


hehe i have a DAB radio and tbh, its the worst thing for trying to get any station on.

im a bit into my rock, so i listen to kerrang radio.. they say that they are national on DAB radio, but i canna find them on it heh.

they need to improve it a little more for me to swich over to it. besides, i like my old radio more.

and i cant see that they will get rid of it (for now)... theres still loads of money in it. they may get rid of MW (sux cos i listen to Gem AM) as its.. well its old heh. hope they dont mind.

John-the-Dragon-Man wrote:
hehe i have a DAB radio and tbh, its the worst thing for trying to get any station on.

im a bit into my rock, so i listen to kerrang radio.. they say that they are national on DAB radio, but i canna find them on it heh.

I get Kerrang on DAB over here off the West Yorkshire transmitter, but it's in very poor quality mono
I also get Kerrang through my Cable supplier (Virgin) in top quality stereo. In fact quite a few of the stations I listen to are better quality on Cable than on DAB. If I had known this I would have steered clear of buying a dedicated DAB tuner and just run the audio direct from my Virgin box to my amp. You do get a better selection of channels on the DAB tuner (mainly regional stuff), but DAB is supposed to be about the sound quality. So I would much rather lose a couple of regional channels which, to be honest, don't play the kind of music I listen to, in favour of 6 Music, Absolute 80's, Kerrang etc in top quality stereo

I can't get Kerrang here, but at womans family's place in Cov they can get it in glorious stereo DAB, a real treat, lovely signal.

I'm a Planet Rock man meself

Fartblood wrote:I can't get Kerrang here, but at womans family's place in Cov they can get it in glorious stereo DAB, a real treat, lovely signal.

I'm a Planet Rock man meself

All hail Planet Rock!

It's a great station. Along with Arrow, Rock and Absolute Rock it's worthy of its transmitted audio power

^^ i dont get any of them here, this place is a total dead spot for DAB and TV stations. we have a Vbox here but tbh, i just listen to music stations over the t'interweb. i have a nice 5.1 sound system hooked up to the pc so when my mum and dad is at work, the house rocks. heh

thing is though, if we could get good reception here we would listen to the stations on it :/

RogerD wrote:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8102797.stm

Good bye to Radio then, getting rid of AM and FM will kill it for sure.

Where's the audience?
At home? No... too many other things to play with
In-car? No... iPods and CDs
Kids? No... iPods
Housewives? No... women have to work these days

Who's left? And will they buy a new radio and put up with the lousy sound quality?

The only thing radio is good for is news on the hour, and for waking us up in the morning and getting us out of bed because we can't stand lying there listening to it

What will the frequencies be used for then?

Railfan227 wrote:

RogerD wrote:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8102797.stm

Good bye to Radio then, getting rid of AM and FM will kill it for sure.

Where's the audience?
At home? No... too many other things to play with
In-car? No... iPods and CDs
Kids? No... iPods
Housewives? No... women have to work these days

Who's left? And will they buy a new radio and put up with the lousy sound quality?

The only thing radio is good for is news on the hour, and for waking us up in the morning and getting us out of bed because we can't stand lying there listening to it

What will the frequencies be used for then?

More DX

Fartblood wrote:They do indeed, but you rarely get absolutely perfect listening conditions, especially when on the move. Provided the broadcasters don't ram oodles of stations onto the same channel, like the BBC are wont to do, as a practical matter DAB is often better. .

This is the nub of the problem. Due to the fact that the UK was one of the pioneering early adopters of the DAB concept, we are now stuck with the hugely outdated MP2 compression algorithm. It sounds alright but it's hugely inefficient in bandwidth terms so in order to squeeze as many channels onto any one multiplex as possible, the bitrate is compromised and quality suffers.

Of course there is DAB+ which uses AAC++ compression techniques but having had so much money invested in the existing infrastructure and consumer equipment, it is hard to make that leap to a more workable standard.

I personally use DTV-B to listen to BBC Six Music. If you do an A/B test between a feeble inefficient rendition on DAB and a high bitrate MPEG-4 source, the difference is outstanding.

To my mind, although it will do little to inform policy, we should think of combining both radio and TV broadcasting over the same carrier as DTV will become ever more mobile and DAB doesn't yet work mobile.

In the meanime, I'm sure there are a few years of work left to go for my Band II RSL rig

thedeerhunter270 wrote:I thought DAB would be better than it is. I got an idea of how bad DAB really is after hiring a car in the US with Sirius Satellite radio fitted.

I 100% agree with this.

Do we really need DAB... do we really ?

To me it seems the radio service we have does the job well...so why bother fixing it if it isnt broken ?

Maybe its along the same lines as that total waste of good snap n bacca 'D St*r'...what a complete non starter that is!

My works motor has DAB an its pants when im travelling about the place esp in the sticks...crap quality and not right good coverage compared to FM/AM...

Yet another waste of taxpayers hard earned folding

I think you guys complaining about not being able to get many stations have old radios. The new ones have a new format that they call DAB+ I think. It's more efficient that the old one so it should also sound better. My brother recently got a iPod dock with a built in DAB radio. This one has DAB+ and it get 60 stations! Thats on the small antenna that came with it.

I didn't use to like DAB, but now it seems good. I don't really like digital on radio normally, as formats and encoding algorithms and such change so much, you have to buy new equipment every 2 years. This being an example. But DAB+ seems to be working, until they bring out DAB++ or something and you have to buy another new radio.

I don't think the AM band is going to be killed off. Anyone heard of DRM:
http://www.drm.org/summary
Basically the digital version of AM