Analogue hi-fi tuner --- useless?

[tony sayer]

In article , Brian Gaff scribeth thus

Not that I know of Brian, the signal is sometimes carried on low rate studio to transmitter links...

[tony sayer]

"The"" fm tuner site has to be American but then again FM was invented there;)...

[John Rumm]

My Rotel RCD965BX CD player was always rated as one of the top players of its time as well - so they certainly made some relatively decent kit.

[Adam Funk]

Well, I guess I asked for the responses of that type! I'm aware of the bubbling sound effects, but I was under the impression the analogue radio signals were going to be turned off in the near future. Do you guys think the complaints about DAB quality will affect that?

[tony sayer]

Theres no real official plan as yet to switch of FM completely. It seems that at some stage FM will be used for smaller local and community stations but by that time I suspect that 4G radio services may well become the digital radio bearer. DAB is an outmoded system by today's standards. Consider it a 286 in a dual core world;!...

[John Rumm]

I was under the impression they have backed away from that idea somewhat now...

Even with the fiddle factors in the counting, there has not been enough takeup of DAB.

[Dave Liquorice]

A few BBC Local/Regional stations have recently stopped transmitting on their AM frequencies as a "trial".

The great noise a while back was about the proposed removal of the BBC National stations from FM, ie BBC Radios 1 to 4. The released frequencies would then be made available for more community/local stations.

It does seem to have gone very quiet on this, which might mean they have dropped the idea or that they'll just sneak it in and say we told you X years ago and the (not widely publicised) consultations happenend between Y and Z.

The biggest thing wrong with the proposals was how they counted "digital listening" which had to be over x% to trigger the switch off. They included *all* digital forms so podcast downloads, listen again, streaming, radio via DSAT or DTTY and DAB. Most of which are not practical replacements for FM.

Then of course where is the money going to come from to run all these new stations? Radio struggles for money at the best of times, see the number of stations that have dropped the DAB platform in recent years or just been absorbed into groups running many stations where the only difference between them is the ads played out by the automation.

"Consumer choice" more stations available must be good. The fact that DAB coverage is pathetic, receivers are expensive and the sound quality dubious isn't relelvant. It does appear that real "consumer choice" isn't choosing DAB, except by default. We have a DAB radio but it's useless for DAB, there is no signal here. The only reason we have it is because of the other wanted features of the set. It's sale will have counted to the sales figures of DAB sets of course.

[Martin Brown]

Not if we can help it! There is a strong axis of informed opinion that is giving the charlatans that promote DAB a very hard time when they go on the likes of You and Yours and pretend it is all going to plan.

They will switch off analogue *TV* in favour of digital terrestrial TV. A change that I am supremely indifferent to as I take a satellite feed which has higher bitrate available audio anyway. I haven't watched analogue TV apart from at my parents as they liked the old teletext and are finding the new digital service hard to adapt to. They knew the magic numbers for news/weather pages on the old Ceefax system.

Yes. Until they get a certain level of acceptance they cannot switch off the analogue FM signals. No audophile or decent sound engineer wants it to happen until the replacement is as good or better than the existing FM broadcast quality. DAB at present bitrates falls well short.

[John Rumm]

They also neglected to count sales of conventional tuners wherever they could. So many mobile phones ship with a FM radio - apparently they don't count.

[ARW]

Mmmm.

Checks loft. Yep I still have mine.

[Owain]

Maybe not quite hi-fi but my 1970s stuff that I got from charity shops in the 1990s is still in daily use.

My Boots 10" portable telly is hopefully gonig to get repurposed into a CCTV monitor.

Owain

[RobertL]

equivalent to a good quality cassette deck, assuming you have a good signal.

That is true, but they don't use the higher rate (with full stereo) all the time. Some of the time even radio 3 drops down to an even lower bit rate and "joint stereo". Many UK channels are in mono and noe (apart from R3 sometimes) is in full stereo.

I agree that FM is better than DAB, but the best radio reception seems to be satellite.

Robert

[RobertL]

equivalent to a good quality cassette deck, assuming you have a good signal.

They used to promote DAB as "CD quality sound from your radio" until the advertising standards authority stopped them.

Robert

[Dave Plowman (News)]

advertising standards authority stopped them.

Given the way so many 'pop' CDs are mastered these days perhaps they should be allowed to use it again.

Perhaps I'm alone in finding that despite digital techniques offering the possibility of far better sound quality than analogue ever could, the reality is the way it is implemented in both recording and broadcast means the end results are often very inferior.

[tony sayer]

I borrowed the wife's motah to go to London on Saturday to collect some equipment and it was interesting to compare FM and DAB on the move and I must say that with Radio 3 there wasn't a great deal in it but most every other station for instance classic FM sounded much better on FM apart from a bit of multipath faffing around near the Blackwall tunnel..

I came back thru mid Essex and there it was dropping in an out a bit some of the time especially where it got a bit undulating ...

[JTM]

Mmmm. I have some sympathy with the opinion expressed by the writer /singer? /radio DJ, Bob Dylan, that vinyl discs gave a better (more atmospheric) result than the 'sterile' CD's

John

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well yes. except that 'sterile' is simply how its recorded. Not how its reproduced.

Vinyl being and electromechanical system was pretty much a sound that depended on the various resonances of all the mechanical and electrical bits it was made of.

A D platyer means that the best platers all sound identical. In fact they dont sound at all.

Something I encountered with top quality speakers as well. It's like listening THROUGH them instead of TO them.

At one time that was my aim. What the BS artists call 'transparency' ion that you only heard the music not the kit.

In principle, if one set of hifi kit is distinguishable from another at least one of them is relative pants.

I gave up the game of designing the electronics when I ended up with amps that were utterly indistinguishable one from another really. They were all way better than the electromechanics - the deck and speaker. CDs took the deck out as well. Great.

Speakers are still pants. All of them. At low power the Quad ESL is good but its got no bass. At high power I've used big JBL copy (good copy) horns and massive bass units to get a pretty damn good result, and some studio monitors ain't bad,..

Of course it was more fun in the end making guitar amps, where the furthest away from the original sound of a dead boring Gibson humbucker coupled to a brick like sold body is the aim of the game....:-)

Bob Should buy himself a Marshall. And stick his CDs into that.

Hi Fi it aint.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Most likely due to the mastering process applied to the CDs being different to that for vinyl. Although of course there are differences between vinyl and CD - but what he heard in the studio and presumably signed off *could* have been just transferred direct to CD with no messing around - but sadly this isn't how things are done these days.

[Andy Champ]

That merely says that he's used to the distortion from the vinyl, and likes it. trouble is it leaves the producer trying to guess what the buyer's system will be like (probably awful) whereas CD he only really has the speakers to worry about.

Andy

[Huge]

advertising standards authority stopped them.

Never mind the quality ...

... or the bandwidth.