Digital Radio Shutdown

[Labarum]

The arguments continue:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/t...listeners.html

My view is that we should leave the FM, MW and LW transmissions alone for the next 20 or 30 years.

I am not one of those wedded to my FM tuner because I believe it's "analogue" sound is better than any digital transmission. My Squeezebox Classic playing into a cheap Beresford DAC beats my Quad Tuner; and I know the feeds to the FM transmitters are digital, and have been for years.

No, I support the continuance of FM and AM analogue radio because it will work in areas and circumstances where DAB will not. In a car FM reception will degrade and remain intelligible - I may not want to listen to music through the noise, but I may be able to hear the news. That could be important.

We have all these perfectly useable radios, some capable of very high quality reception. Why scrap them?

And an argument I have not heard elsewhere - national security. If all the modern technology gets knocked out by a massive electromagnetic pulse (natural or man made) it might be rather useful to have an old wireless that still works - maybe one full of thermionic valves! The BBC Radio 4 Long Wave transmitter will cover most of the UK and half of Europe, but you have to have enough wireless sets in every community for that transmission to be heard. I have a valve wireless set in the attic!

Leave analogue radio alone!

[Ali Tait]

I'll second that Brian.

[synsei]

+1

[Arkless Electronics]

+2 If it ain't broken.....

[NRG]

+2

We adopted DAB far too early in the UK the better quality and more robust DAB+ that the rest of Europe has/is adopting is the way to go if we do have to go down this route...

[kenworthy100]

+3, would render my lovely Quad FM4 redundant, no way, further how many cars comes equipped with dab, in my 2 year old vehicle the radio is an integral part of the dash, so no fm no radio...

[Martyn Miles]

When did any Government do anything sensible ? Cameron says, " Mission accomplished " in Afghanistan. Everyone know over 400 soldiers have died, and for what ? The Russians couldn't sort the Afghans out. What chance does a third rate country have ?

[NRG]

http://radiotoday.co.uk/2013/09/repo...in-buying-dab/

and...

http://radiotoday.co.uk/2013/12/no-s...b-vaizey-says/

[Audioman]

DAB is a waste of space for most people. I have Dab in the car an it sounds inferior to FM even under those conditions as the modern car FM tuners are brilliant at locking in to the nearest available transmitter. Only gets used for radio 5 live or 6 occasionally. For R2 Fm sound much better. DAB takes a lot longer to lock onto a signal (if it can find one) than FM. So useless and a load of tax/licence payers money down the shoot as usual. If I want digital radio at home there is the internet or freeview radio which I imagine are the choice of most as you don't have to buy another radio.

paul.

[technobear]

I just posted this over at Radio Today

"As usual the "research" is skewed to peddle the digital agenda. It fails to mention all the households that have tried DAB, found it seriously wanting and sold the sets on. There is always a constant and wide selection of DAB radios available on a certain popular auction site.

Then there are all the households who own a DAB radio which is no longer used for DAB but instead plays FM because the sound quality is so much more agreeable.

The BBC and others seem to think that just because the vast majority of listeners are not audiophiles, they won't notice the poor sound quality. These listeners might not be able to describe the poor quality or even be consciously aware of it but it will be doing their heads in just the same and they will pretty soon turn it off - or tune to FM instead - without necessarily realising why the sound was so annoying.

Then we have the reception issue. Even in so-called good reception areas, DAB reception is patchy and easily interfered with by trees and buildings. In a car it's hopeless.

Then there is the power consumption issue. DAB eats batteries and will increase your electric bill. What is the point of replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFLs or LEDs and then replacing our nice low-power FM radio with power hungry DAB ones. It ought to be banned under EU law.

DAB stands for the Death of Audio Broadcasting because when FM is turned off, most listeners will abandon radio."

I think the Government should abandon DAB and start again.