No change to enforced DAB...

Cressers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 799719.stm

rdt

Signal strength has to be seriously boosted before any changeover, as currently, for large numbers of households, signal is too weak for portable DAB radios used indoors, unless the radios are placed upstairs near to windows, at just the right angle. Current situation is a bit of a joke...

DAB should be scrapped, not FM, and then look at introducing a Digital radio standard whose technology has not come out of the Ark. DAB+ for example.

rapid_uphill

I bought one of the first dab hifi seperate radios about 10 years ago and the reception is still sh!te i paid £200 for it aswell.

Cressers

I wonder what the imperative is to force an analogue switch off that no one wants...

daviesee

Cressers wrote:

I wonder what the imperative is to force an analogue switch off that no one wants...

Money for the Government from mobile companies.

New improved gizmos for the mobile companies to sell.

For the conspiracy theorists - there is a suggestion of controlling cars using black boxes and no doubt a whole ream of other possibilities.

Cressers

That's what I thought as well...

eh

I have two DAB radios and the quality is fine. However, if they think I'm going to replace my car radio, portable radio etc. with new DAB ones they can stuff it.

Pross

I've got DAB in the car and love it. My only problem is that on the hour, pretty much every hour the signal cuts off. This is mainly on Radio 5. I have to tune into a new station then go back to 5 and it's fine again. Has anyone else had this happen or is it just a dodgy radio?

Cressers

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainmen ... 545573.stm

How can they know by what means, be it analogue or digital, that people listen?

White Line

Cressers wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment_and_arts/10545573.stm

How can they know by what means, be it analogue or digital, that people listen?

A large boost in DAB sales?

Limburger

There is a nice editorial on the whole DAB debacle here which points out that DAB is old tech and the sound quality isn't actually as good as FM.

I tried a DAB radio once and found it useless in the extreme.

nwallace

Limburger wrote:

There is a nice editorial on the whole DAB debacle here which points out that DAB is old tech and the sound quality isn't actually as good as FM.
.

Odd, on DAB i get a great signal and clean sound. But on FM there is this constant hissing sound in it.

plowmar

DAB radio I got seems not to hold tuned stations and has to retune each time I switch it on.

A complete pain and quality not the best, I am supposed to have an outside aerial though but that defeats the point of it being mobile if I have to plug it in.

As with digital TV and the analogue wave band there it is a complete money making scheme with us the consumers with no choice.

nwallace

additionally unlike TV where you can bribe users with things like HD and 3D Radi ois fairly static, you buy one and only replace it when it dies, yet TV's people buy every few years becasue they are bigger and better.


Note that the difference between SD sky and HD sky is not just in the output but also in the encoding method, Sky have taken advantage of the "need" for HD to use a more efficient codec and upgrade many customers boxes to suit. There may be a point at which SKY say to all custoemrs with SD boxes, right guys, time is up we are switching off out "SD" channels and they are all now "HD" of course all that would be is switching SD content to Mpeg4(?)

No doubt the 3D boxes will support even more possible codecs and eventually the "old" HD boxes will be redundant as all customers will need a "3d" box.

Cable companies can do the same.

But for the government to suddenly decide that all DAB transmission should be switched off in favour of DAB + just won't happen.
The BBC can't really do it, and the commercial channels are too scared of losing their audience to do it.
So no one is driving the implementation of better technology in digital radio.

Some people think that Satellite radio is a better deal, but sod paying for radio.
What's Digital Radio Mondial like these days (Digital signals on AM bands)

larfingravy

bought a DAB radio - it's cr*p

Still using my olf FM radio/tape player

guilliano

We have a DAB radio at work and no matter what station it's tuned to it constantly loses signal. Just like a mobile phone it just cuts off with no warning rather than an obvious weakening of signal first. Digital sucks. I have the same problem with freeview at home, yet never had a problem with analogue transmission.

arthur_scrimshaw

Like rapid_uphill I bought the first available tuner ( a Videologic which then became Pure) for £300 over 10 years ago, the quality was fine, but then all the stations (only BBC at the time) were broadcasting at 192kbs, then the BBC started adding stations and so the cake got sliced thinner and thinner so now only Radio three regularly transmits at this level, most are a 128kbs (which on blind listening test has come out as noticeably worse quality than FM), and now lots of commercial stations have lowered the bar even more by broadcasting in mono!! Can you believe it!! mono in 2010? I've even heard speech broadcasts at 64kbs, we're almost going back to medium wave quality.
The only more annoying thing is the variability of the signal strength which here on the South Coast is regularly reduced to avoid peeing off our Continental neighbours.
Sorry - there is a more annoying thing, the horrible harsh 'warbling' of the low strength digital signal. Give me a bit of gentle fm hiss any day.

I feel better for getting that rant over!!

NWLondoner

I did exactly the same as Arthur. My trusty old Videologic is still going strong.

Where i live FM was never 100% so DAB is an improvement.

Yes i can and sometime do listen to radio via my sky box but after 2 boxed dying within 3 years (bloody thomson boxes) i try not Sky for radio anymore.

daviesee

nwallace wrote:

But for the government to suddenly decide that all DAB transmission should be switched off in favour of DAB + just won't happen.

Not quite suddenly.

This has been on the cards since 2002 and the ball got rolling in 2008.
The original switch over date was for 2012 but this has been rolled back to 2015.
People weren't sure about the complete switch over to digital TV but that has happened.

Regardless of what anyone says, there is only one driver in this and it is not quality.

Money.

And money talks unfortunately

plowmar

It may talk but it's the language that I don't like.

dilemna

Switching off analogue radio is bl00dy madness. It's all because the BBC invested millions and squillions in DAB basing all it's output on the techonology which I believe is soon to be superceded.

I'm still on MW and LW. FM what's that :? ?

As for the environmental impact of ditching millions and billions of perfectly serviceable working car radios and portable radios to replace them with DAB variants, it's absolute total f*cking madness. How about all the old and vulnerable folk who are still struggling to get to grips with digital TV switchover?

If you don't have access to the internet and are excluded from watching TV or listening to the radio because of the switch to a digital signal, then basically you are a non person. One cannot effectively take part in society. You're buggered.

daviesee

dilemna wrote:

Switching off analogue radio is bl00dy madness. .

Since when did Government plans and common sense go together? :evil:

bletherskite

Money is at the base of it all, inevitably.

DAB was originally developed to give European micro-electronics manufacturers a lead over the Japanese and Southeast Asian manufacturers. Unfortunately the system was developed to serve large public service broadcasters like the BBCinstead of a diverse commercial market with lots of stations. It didn't help that the work was done by technicians and bureacrats -the broadcasters only really got involved about 3/4 along the way. This means that DAB/DAB= was designed for a different kind of radio industry from the one we have today.

Part of the reason the BBC have invested so heavilly in DAB is that the diffusion of new broadcasting technology is part of their royal charter - so they didn't really have a choice in the matter. Most public service broadcasters in Europe such as RTE share this condition in their constitution...

So we have a system developed using obsolete technology that gives varying audio quality and that is not compatible with new developments. Bad reception comes from the fact that the transmitters have not been turned up to full power yet as they are expensive to run. This means crap reception at home and on the move. Ironic given the original vision of high quality, interference free reception for digital radio.

The real problem is that there is no coherent stategy for DAB radio - the EU stepped back and decided the market would decide what format succeeded - that's why some countries use DAB, others use DAB+ and some like Finland have given up entirely and switched their DAB networks off.

This also means that there are other systems (DRM, DRM+, HD Radio) being used in addition to radio through your digital telly. Needless to say, these are incompatible with DAB.

If you want to receive any of these formats, you need to buy a new radio and of course that's the whole point. As with digital TV, the listener/viewer is at the bottom of the pile and all the manufacturers and governments are interested in is the money from radio sales and radiospectrum selloff.

I could go on at length...(Uni dissertation was about digital radio)..but type digital radio into google and you'll get some idea of the invective deployed on the subject....

MattC59

All the radios in my house are DAB.......... no problems at all, excellent quality on all of them.

nwallace

Arthur Scrimshaw wrote:

were broadcasting at 192kbs, then the BBC started adding stations and so the cake got sliced thinner and thinner so now only Radio three regularly transmits at this level, most are a 128kbs (which on blind listening test has come out as noticeably worse quality than FM),

128k is still better than what many digital music downloads are encoded at!

Amazon MP3 downloads can be anywhere between 88kbps and 256kbps based on a mates downloads. He got them free but really wasn't happy. But then he usually uses FLAC.

Can't remember what iTunes is but it isn't always great either.

If the music industry can sell music at sub-cd quality at higher cost than CD's then is it no surprise that 128kbps is "acceptable" on Radio 1?

The obvious reason Radio 3 regularly use 192kbps is the same reason Classical music publishers were big early adopters of CD. Basically Sound quality matters.

But when you have speech such as Radio 4 often has Mon 80kbpos is more than adequate. (that's what I'm listening to right now)

Tailoring the bit rate to what is being transmitted and the audience is way more efficient.

daviesee wrote:

nwallace wrote:

But for the government to suddenly decide that all DAB transmission should be switched off in favour of DAB + just won't happen.

Not quite suddenly.

This has been on the cards since 2002 and the ball got rolling in 2008.
The original switch over date was for 2012 but this has been rolled back to 2015.
People weren't sure about the complete switch over to digital TV but that has happened.

Regardless of what anyone says, there is only one driver in this and it is not quality.

Money.

And money talks unfortunately

For DAB to DAB+ or FM/AM to DAB?

arthur_scrimshaw

'128k is still better than what many digital music downloads are encoded at!'

I know, and I think mp3s sounds S*it as well, I can put up with it on portables but put it through my home system and it's pants. But then I'm an analogue junkie and still play vinyl although I mostly use CDs. I don't see much light at the end of the tunnel regarding quality, it's 'choice' that seems to matter these days. Even though all the choices seem to be c*ap.

Cleat Eastwood

There were complaints about DAB quality on the radio uphere,fellafrom the beeb said that untilthe country is digital DAB will be on reduced power, as fullpower would frazzle the aerials, a consequence of this is that low cloud or bad weather can affect transmissions. FM didnt have this problem. Problem seems to be though that even in areas where switch over has been made the reception i patchy....bring back the zoetrope I say.

daviesee

nwallace wrote:

For DAB to DAB+ or FM/AM to DAB?

FM/AM to DAB is what I was referring to.

Legal downloads are usually down to the users preferences and settings.
My minimum downloads are at 256 and lossless from itunes.
Even high rates do not compare with a cd on my system.
I am less fussy with portables due to background noise and the high convenience factor.
I won't go into vinyl as all my records have scratches or hiss at a minimum but there is definitely a warmer sound.

We are constantly sold digital as high quality but the truth is there will be more stations clogging the bandwidth and it is quality that will suffer.
We are being sold quality we will not get and a massive choice of crap stations :evil:

nwallace

daviesee wrote:

I won't go into vinyl as all my records have scratches or hiss at a minimum but there is definitely a warmer sound.

I've got a couple of 12" that I've also got on CD and played through the same amplifier and speakers, I agree with you.

daviesee wrote:

We are constantly sold digital as high quality but the truth is there will be more stations clogging the bandwidth and it is quality that will suffer.
We are being sold quality we will not get and a massive choice of crap stations :evil:

I generally can't stand commercial radio, I once tried to listen to Absolute on DAB on the train, sound quality was fine, but after 20 minutes of adverts I gave up waiting for music.

The simplest answer to that would be to give the BBC the full bandwidth to fir 2/6, 3,4 and 5/5x into.

With clean line of sight to the local radio trasmitter the DAB is certainly a better quality signal. Whether that translates to better sound quality over FM stations when you have a good signal I don't know but the FM signal quality is dire given the conditions here.

Cleat Eastwood

daviesee wrote:

We are constantly sold digital as high quality but the truth is there will be more stations clogging the bandwidth and it is quality that will suffer.

Yeah thats the weirdness of it all. I've worked in radio and all audio was taken in at 44hz, stereo(thats cd quality), so the source material is high quality yet its broadcast at significantly lower bitrates, which as has been mentioned before is more annoying than interference on analogue broadcasts. DAB appears to be a big diddly iddly con.