You can Tuner Piano, but you can't Tuner Fish

[The Grand Wazoo]

As far as I can see, the problem with DAB is the same as that of TV, schools, hospitals etc, etc which Government (& not just the present one) fail to see.

They mistake choice for quality.

I'd be happy with just 1 channel if it transmitted only high quality programming. Instead what high quality there is becomes so diluted by the crap that you give up & settle for the lowest common denominator.

[The Grand Wazoo]

Haha. You were typing..............

Gotcha! I know what you mean... it boils down to quantity versus quality............... Same old same old...

While I was typing.............

As far as I can see, the problem with DAB is the same as that of TV, schools, hospitals etc, etc which Government (& not just the present one) fail to see.

They mistake choice for quality.

[DSJR]

DAB at 256 was ok, but at 192 it's very dependant on distortion in the source material and the compression that the Beeb and others take for granted these days..

FM has a nice cosy 2nd harmonic distortion I read somewhere (HiFi Snooze?), which gives a nice rosy bloom to the sound; something that many older analogue tuners make worse for whatever reason.

By the way, Freeview TV is worse in resolution than the old analogue PAL system - too many stations using up bandwidth on too few transmitter frequencies. Just look at badly lit and over-saturated TV shows (Egg-heads used to be awful for this) and the various "shades" of black and white crush out to an alarming degree. LCD TV's with their "pixillation" problems and over-brightness make this worse IMO. HDTV may be a different thing entirely though and a genuine advance.

[Spectral Morn]

DAB at 256 was ok, but at 192 it's very dependant on distortion in the source material and the compression that the Beeb and others take for granted these days..

FM has a nice cosy 2nd harmonic distortion I read somewhere (HiFi Snooze?), which gives a nice rosy bloom to the sound; something that many older analogue tuners make worse for whatever reason.

By the way, Freeview TV is worse in resolution than the old analogue PAL system - too many stations using up bandwidth on too few transmitter frequencies. Just look at badly lit and over-saturated TV shows (Egg-heads used to be awful for this) and the various "shades" of black and white crush out to an alarming degree. LCD TV's with their "pixillation" problems and over-brightness make this worse IMO. HDTV may be a different thing entirely though and a genuine advance.

Hi Dave


You are 100% right about the problems with digital TV...which are much worse on Free view than Sky. However Sky channels (not the main stream ones) suffer from this too. I was thinking about HD TV and the extra facilities that say the red button option gives...being able to watch a concert or sport etc.

Yes I agree LCD TV makes digital issues worse, Plasma isn't as bad (if its a good one). My last CRT TV a Sony was poor on analogue pictures but very good at digital. My current 36inch Panasonic (also CRT) is good at Digital but stunning on analogue pictures...go figure. All these picture quality issues have made me hold back on going flat panel. The plan is to wait till the HD content is about 60% and then I will switch..assuming I can find a flat panel TV which meets my high picture quality standards. I have yet to see one I could live with..so far.

However at the end of the day audio is more important to me than TV.


Regards D S D L---Neil

[DSJR]

I agree.

Isn't there a huge issue with LCD TV's consuming as much energy as an old valve TV from the early seventies? I understand that there is a new TV screen type coming (LED?) and this should be better IIRC.

Our main TV is a now elderly Panasonic PL1 28" widescreen which does us ok with the contrast reduced substantially. 100Hz was the buzzword at the time, but caused problems with fast moving images, especially with a more stationary background. Smaller than 32" doesn't need 100Hz and I loved the B&O idea nicked from Pro monitors where the lateral scan was varied in speed to give sharper vertical lines. Text was superb on their early Avant and Beovision 1 sets.

[Ali Tait]

Interesting how we all prefer the sound of FM,yet it's a 14-bit system..

[Beechwoods]

The lossy-compression is lot less on FM broadcasts though. Bitrate versus word-length...

Here's a great article about the difference between DAB and FM. It explains how the Beeb distribute the FM signal to it's transmitters:

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ar...nd-quality.php

The BBC uses NICAM to distribute the audio signals of its stations to the FM transmitter sites, and NICAM uses a bit rate of 728 kbps where 14-bit linear PCM samples are 'companded' down to 10-bit where large amplitude input samples only have 10-bit resolution but small amplitude input samples have the full 14-bit resolution -- the human hearing system is less sensitive to relative errors when the amplitude is high than it is to errors when the signal is small, and the SNR of high amplitude samples is also higher than for small amplitude samples, hence why NICAM uses a lower resolution for large amplitude samples and higher resolution for small samples.

Basically, in a perfectly fair comparison where the same signal is being transmitted via 128 kbps MP2 on DAB and via FM with NICAM distribution to the transmitter sites, and where there was good reception quality on both DAB and FM, then if 128 kbps DAB ever sounded better than FM then I'm afraid that bears no longer shit in woods.

That last line is killer

[Spectral Morn]

I agree.

Isn't there a huge issue with LCD TV's consuming as much energy as an old valve TV from the early seventies? I understand that there is a new TV screen type coming (LED?) and this should be better IIRC.

Our main TV is a now elderly Panasonic PL1 28" widescreen which does us ok with the contrast reduced substantially. 100Hz was the buzzword at the time, but caused problems with fast moving images, especially with a more stationary background. Smaller than 32" doesn't need 100Hz and I loved the B&O idea nicked from Pro monitors where the lateral scan was varied in speed to give sharper vertical lines. Text was superb on their early Avant and Beovision 1 sets.

Yes Dave

All those green people who dumped their CRT TV have done the world no favours at all. Plasma sucks more power too than a CRT TV. WE who still do CRT are greener than those that don't. It allows me to run valve amps with out guilt

B&O sure have some sexy CRT tv's back a few years ago (about 5 years ago).


Regards D S D L---Neil

[The Grand Wazoo]

There's an Accuphase T100 on Ebay at the moment.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...E:B:EF:GB:1123

It looks like a good example, recent service. Nothing to do with me!

Just like my T101, but with AM too.

[foxysounds]

I know I'm going to attract a lot of attention for saying this but I feel I have to stick up for DAB. I haven't read anything about the technology involved I just know that in my house I get a better listening experience from DAB than from FM (both through a loop aerial on the roof of my house).

I can never get rid of the hiss and other noise on FM. Now, admittedly my FM tuner is not an expensive one - but then nor is my DAB tuner and I very rarely hear any off-putting interference on DAB (unlike FM).

I mainly listen to speech radio (Radio 4, Radio 5 live) and I guess the difference in theoretical quality is not so great for speech. The other channel I listen to a lot is Planet Rock and of course, that is only on DAB so a direct comparison is not possible.

YMMV.

Simon.