I can't speak for others, but maybe I'm not an average 'punter' ;-)
For casual listening fine. I only bought DAB to get stations that are not on FM, however.
My car doesn't have a DAB radio :-(
I can't 100% accept this type of argument about consumer choice. IMHO the companies/government/whoever dictate what is available and people take the least bad option. I'm sure if you asked a random sample of people you would get "quality over quantity".
M
You might well. However, reality tends to be different. The largest audiences go to the rubbish progs like Big Brother etc (that I have no interest in watching) - and by nature will have poor technical standards - while drama which costs big bucks to make and frequently gets the best of everything is watched by fewer.
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
Thats a silly way of putting that. It was new and costs of receivers like all modern tech we're high..
What a retrograde step. This is the same as saying that we should go back to 386 processors because they are cheaper or would have cost less than a 486!..
Another odd notion.. DAB is supposed to replace FM so we're replacing something that does work well very well, with an inferior system!..
I don't have any problem with Pop stations apart from to over compressed sound but thats not the fault of the FM system but on DAB with the screwed codec and bit rates that is a problem!..
The problem is that DAB, as it has been implemented, was a large mistake using a codec that is totally wrong for its intended use. MP2 is fine at high i.e. over 256 K rates but nowhere near as good as AAC + at low rates. Other countries have seen that and are to introduce AAC services with the UK being left out and behind!.
And you Dave as a sound "professional" should realise that!...
I don't know where you have this notion that FM works very well. For a start, stereo is a cludge. It's a poor system for anything other than a fixed installation. It may have been state of the art when introduced 50 odd years ago, but things have moved on a bit since then.
BTW, DAB is 'supposed' to replace FM in the same way as FM was 'supposed' to replace AM.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I first heard DAB demonstrated some 20 years ago. And AAC is perfectly capable of producing poor sound at low enough data rates. There's no guarantee that changing to it won't result in the same situation you're complaining about now - after all other countries use a high enough rate with MP2 on DAB today.
It's 'sound professionals' that produce the over compressed CDs and radio we are forced to listen to near universally these days too.
I disagree. FM stereo is very good and it is certainly better than the mono that most DAB stations use or the 'joint stereo' that the classical music stations use.
The FM stereo system was, as you allude to, added to the original mono FM design, but it does work properly. You use more bandwidth and you get two separate stereo channels. On DAB if you get stereo at all it is "joint stereo" which does not give two stereo channels. The result is that the stereo image is unclear and instruments seem to wander about.
I do agree that FM is better suited to a fixed installation because of its need for a good aerial.
With DAB we have got a large quantity of channels but the sound quality is poor. it is a step back from the 1950s.
Robert
I'm listening to the PM prog on R4 DAB at the moment via a decent amp and speakers and the quality ain't poor. It sounds exactly the same as FM. LW sounds poor. Are you asking for that to be abolished or upgraded in some way? AM is capable of decent enough results too.
BTW I doubt you actually remember FM from the '50s. With the exception of Wrotham (London), the quality of the landlines feeding the transmitters was dreadful. By the time you got a couple of hundred miles of them the actual bandwidth transmitted on FM was no greater than MW - on a decent receiver.
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
Well your clearly losing the plot or been brainwashed by the DRDB Dave. FM in an awful lot of locations works fine. Just because you live in a multipath ridden bit of London doesn't mean that everyone else does. There are a lot of areas where DAB is poor and infested with bubbling mud.
FM is a fine system if only they could have come up with something BETTER to replace it with!..
Things have moved on like TV radio is now going down the digital tubes when it all could have been so very much better!..
Well as DABble is marginally better than AM perhaps its that it might replace!..
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
There you are then, time to get the hearing aid batteries replaced!...
Well silly.. That as you well know was because proper digital distribution wasn't developed until PCM came along. What an idiotic statement that is!. Its like saying the picture on the TV wasn't any good until colour came along!..
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
You've lost it now!. What a silly statement of course AAC is capable of producing poor results at low rates. Compare 128 AAC with 128 MP and hear the difference . Now compare 64 K MP2 with 64 K AAC and again a very noticeable difference!..
Then why are the adopting AAC+ then?..
Its the management that does that no engineer worth his salt would do that but then again in the UK an engineer doesn't mean much..
Which countries with an existing DAB service are committed to adopting AAC+?
You and others keep saying this sort of thing, but when I try and get friends who claim to have decent hearing to tell the difference here reliably, they fail.
Which station(s) would you say demonstrates this difference most?
Not so. It was a reply to the quality of DAB being like a step back to the '50s.
IIRC mono FM (i.e. L+R) is transmitted using FM and the stereo part (L-R) is actually transmitted using AM, which is poorer quality.
M
FM receivers rely on a frequency _discriminator_ to detect modulation and are essentially indifferent to the amplitude of the transmitted signal. How does your hypothesised receiver detect this 'AM' signal?
You are right, I should have said "a step back from the 1970s. Although I did listen to FM in the 1960s it's really the era of FM stereo that I compare DAB with unfavourably.
My regret is that they went for "lots of stations" instead of improved sound quality.
Robert
Mine too - I don't see the need for all those pop stations transmitting seemingly identical material. And despite my age I do try and keep up with the latest trends.
However, the fact remains that DAB take up - when the data rates were decent - was very poor and didn't really take off until that choice was there. Chicken or egg, I don't know.
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
Radios 1, 2, 4 and most all commercial ones...
In article , Dave Plowman (News) writes
Yes DAB as UK implemented is a step back in broadcasting evolution...
In article , Robert Laws writes
Exactly. Why should and are we doing this?. Theres a lot of bandwidth available especially on satellite that could be used instead of all the absolute crap thats there!..
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