Digital Radio Shutdown

[Labarum]

The arguments continue:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10519410/Digital-radio-switchover-Listen-to-the-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 :thumbsup:

[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/report-not-much-interest-in-buying-dab/

and...

http://radiotoday.co.uk/2013/12/no-switchover-date-for-dab-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.

[AlexM]

Chris,

I agree with all of what you wrote. DAB is being pushed as a platform that allows expansion of the range of content that can be provided by broadcasters, and this is true. There are some good DAB-only channels, but many good local stations currently broadcasting on FM can't afford space on a DAB MUX, and therefore will either close or go to Internet only broadcasting.

DAB itself is a technological blind alley, and the decision to make DAB the UK standard (rather than the vastly superior DAB+) means that take up will always be limited. The BBC in it's infinite wisdom has collectively decided to argue that black is white and that DAB is either comparable in quality to FM for portable or car radios or that it doesn't really matter as Joe Public doesn't care about audio quality. This is probably the first time in history that a broadcast platform has been replaced by one which is palpably inferior technically (maybe arguable whether DVB is better than Analogue for PQ, but it is at least watchable). The real reason is that neither Government or the BBC is prepared to acknowledge that they backed the wrong horse and ensure the success of the Market by subsidising a migration (if necessary) to DAB+ that would improve it's viability.

Personally, I think that the days are numbered for all forms of TV and radio broadcasting - narrowcasting is the future.

Alex

[Labarum]

Isn't it the truth that HM Government wants to clear Band II of all FM Radio transmissions so it can sell the frequencies?

Beyond my technical knowledge, but isn't Band II reception easier on portable and car radios rather than the higher frequencies used for the present DAB?

Would DAB+ with its better digital coding on Band II be a much better technical solution - except there ain't that much space on Band II.

[technobear]

Personally, I think that the days are numbered for all forms of TV and radio broadcasting - narrowcasting is the future.


You make a good point there Alex. I've already given up on TV. My house is now blissfully TV free once again. After 16 weeks from June through September without a single program I wanted to watch, I decided enough is enough.

I rarely listen to the radio either. I would like to listen more but I find the advertising obtrusive and annoying on commercial stations and the endless DJ prattle annoying on BBC stations. I fondly remember the days of Tommy Vance and Alan "Fluff" Freeman. The Friday and Saturday Rock Shows were mandatory listening for me. When they stopped so did my radio listening.

I've tried DAB but it sounds pants. The advertising is still annoying. Planet Rock just plays the same 100 tracks over and over or so it seems. Pointless.

I sometimes turn on Glastonbury FM. That can be OK but usually end up turning it off when the ads come on and then forget to turn it back on again.

I find it more fulfilling to search for music samples online. No annoying DJ prattle. No advertising. In the car I use a FLAC player stuck to the in-car unit with blu-tak and fed through a cassette adaptor. Sounds far better than DAB ever will.

[technobear]

Isn't it the truth that HM Government wants to clear Band II of all FM Radio transmissions so it can sell the frequencies?



Yes - but it turns out that nobody wants those frequencies :doh:

[Labarum]

Yes - but it turns out that nobody wants those frequencies :doh:

What a pity. Best to leave FM Radio alone then!

[Alan Sircom]

The BBC's remit as a public funded, public service broadcaster is to provide a diverse radio service to the widest possible community. Following the 2007 Royal Charter, the BBC has a greater mandate to be considerably more diverse than is possible from just four national and one local radio service in any given area. The 2007 Charter is written in the finest New Labour Spin, and binds the service to empty phrases that could have come from 'The Thick of It', like 'sustaining citizenship' and 'stimulating creativity and cultural excellence'.

The result is DAB is pushed and FM sidelined, because the BBC must spend money it doesn't have on stations it doesn't need to listeners that don't exist.

Progress is a good thing, and there is a lot to say in favour of replacing an analogue radio service with a digital one (especially today - advertising-funded stations struggle to survive on the revenue generated from one station today, but the ad-revenue equivalent of spread-betting can help both advertiser and broadcaster keep getting the message across). But we were the testbed for digital radio and what came later (DAB+) is a better all round option - not just in sound quality terms, but in the richness of metadata and the ability to provide robust service into cars – that we seem to be skating over. We are being sold short.