DAB radio

[Bletchleyite]

There's plenty of things that have changed in the past that have helped us progress, yet have made people miss out unless they took mitigation action.

For example the turning off of analogue TV. Either get a digital box, digital TV or miss out. The same will happen with FM radio.

I'm not convinced. DAB provides few advantages over FM and quite a number of disadvantages, and almost nobody has a set. I reckon FM will be around a long time yet, and when it eventually does go it'll be replaced by people streaming (which is how I mostly listen to radio now) rather than a broadcast technology.

 

[eMeS]

I'm not convinced. DAB provides few advantages over FM and quite a number of disadvantages, and almost nobody has a set. I reckon FM will be around a long time yet, and when it eventually does go it'll be replaced by people streaming (which is how I mostly listen to radio now) rather than a broadcast technology.

I think it depends on how one is listening to the service, FM or DAB. At home in MK I have an external aerial pointing towards the local aerial tower at Bow Brickhill - and that's good enough for me to enjoy low noise stereo FM music broadcasts. (My experience of the original MK TV & radio cable feed is that it was never of a low noise quality, and complaints were simply ignored.)

In the car and in the South East area, my car's radio provides decent quality on the main BBC & Classic FM channels. It's very different when I visit my daughter in West Wales. The FM reception along the narrow valleys of the A40, A482 road from Llandovery, & then Llanwrda to Lampeter is dire - even for Radio4, and there I rely on MW reception for Radio5 Live.

 

[thejuggler]

We live in an area on the cusp of three DAB transmission signals and the car radio constantly drops and updates the location. It is a system which just doesn't work well.

FM. Set and leave.

 

[Andrew S]

I know a fair few people with DAB radio receivers. There are plenty of stations on DAB which are not on FM. True, streaming online may be the long term way for most though.

I have a DAB radio in my bedroom which gets perfect reception, yet on FM it is crackly and ridden with interference. I also like the fact that you can find a station by name, not having to turn dials or remember XXX.X frequency numbers.

Similarly in my shop, DAB is great, FM is awful.

 

[PeterC]

I think it depends on how one is listening to the service, FM or DAB. At home in MK I have an external aerial pointing towards the local aerial tower at Bow Brickhill - and that's good enough for me to enjoy low noise stereo FM music broadcasts. (My experience of the original MK TV & radio cable feed is that it was never of a low noise quality, and complaints were simply ignored.)

In the car and in the South East area, my car's radio provides decent quality on the main BBC & Classic FM channels. It's very different when I visit my daughter in West Wales. The FM reception along the narrow valleys of the A40, A482 road from Llandovery, & then Llanwrda to Lampeter is dire - even for Radio4, and there I rely on MW reception for Radio5 Live.

That reminds me of a camp site in Wales once where we could only receive RTE (Raidió Teilifís Éireann)

DAB used to be a problem in the car with dead spots even along the M25 but I haven't noticed any issues for a while now. The car radio seems fine at coping with changes of transmitter for both DAB and FM. Better than the old days where you could only listen to long wave without constant retuning on a long journey.

Where I am in Bucks the DAB signal is patchy within the house, a free standing radio will pick it up if placed on the window sill but not on the opposite side of the room.

 

[pdeaves]

For me, the difference between FM and DAB is in low signal areas. On FM, you can still hear a broadcast, albeit with background hiss. For DAB it sounds like boiling mud and is indecipherable.

 

[dgl]

DAB can work well but as with all systems it's designed to be operated as cheaply as possible in terms of spectrum usage, so as many stations as possible are crammed in as possible on the commercial multiplexes, this means that some radio stations have bitrates that wouldn't have been acceptable even when MP3 players had 128Mb or less of memory, for example a lot of stations that use DAB+ have stereo streams at 40Kbps!, even with more modern encoders (DAB+ uses HE-AAC compression compared to standard DAB that uses MPEG2 compression). It i's regarded that for a quality stereo stream using MPEG2 compression 256Kbps is required, which nothing in the UK actually uses, the highest bitrate station being R3 which can be up to 192Kbps.
Of course this means that the quality is no better than (and in most cases worse) than FM, though it does have the advantage that digital compression can sometimes sound better than the analogue companding that is used on FM sounding clearer in a lot of cases. Also at the edge of coverage FM sometimes can fail more graciously than the digital mud and no audio at all of DAB.

As for coverage that is being expanded all the time with small infill stations popping up everywhere, this is easier with DAB in some respects as you can use single frequency networks, meaning that all transmitters covering a certain area can use the same frequency block (channel) using timing from GPS, allowing for a lot more infill transmitters that what would be possible with FM/analogue.
Whether loads of low powered transmitters are more efficient than a smaller number of high powered stations is debateable (esp. given the frequencies used by FM (Band II) travel better).

DAB can be good but it's a system designed to save money and as such will always be cobbled.

 

[gswindale]

Have to say that I prefer DAB radio in the car over FM due to the increased variety of stations available, however on my "normal" journey to work, there is a blackspot for a number of stations due to the road being quite close to the local transmitter (and this location used to normally coincide with a nice big traffic jam).

Another bonus seems to be that on certain stations, I only get the one set of adverts. On FM, even locally, the ads can start with one advert, jump to the second half of another, have the start of the 2nd and finish with the end of the 1st due to the car automatically picking up the strongest signal (again this can happen in a stop-start traffic jam)

 

[MotCO]

My problem is with stations not available on FM - notable Talksport and Radio 5. If I want to listen to a football match, on AM it is always hissy or fades in and out. Also DAB gives you the option to listen to cricket commentaries all day and alternative football matches, or indeed to listen to stations such as LBC across the country.

 

[scotrail158713]

My problem is with stations not available on FM - notable Talksport and Radio 5. If I want to listen to a football match, on AM it is always hissy or fades in and out. Also DAB gives you the option to listen to cricket commentaries all day and alternative football matches, or indeed to listen to stations such as LBC across the country.

This is it for me as well. I always found football commentaries sounded as if they were coming from a garden shed with AM, however since listening on DAB it is much better.

 

[bspahh]

I had a DAB radio for a while. I found it annoyingly slow to scan between different stations. Radio 7/4 Extra would broadcast stuff that I was interested in, but rarely at the right time.

I much prefer to download podcasts, and record BBC radio programmes with get_iplayer from https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer/wiki/windows Then I can pick the programmes I want to listen to, listen to multi-part stories and documentaries in the correct order, and if I need to do something else, I can pause it and restart at the correct position. If I miss something I can repeat it, or skip forward through boring stuff.

For a lot of live broadcasts, I can stream to my phone. I'm happy to go without the events which are only broadcast on a DAB radio, that aren't streamed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

For a lot of live broadcasts, I can stream to my phone. I'm happy to go without the events which are only broadcast on a DAB radio, that aren't streamed.

I quite like BBC Three Counties Radio and have been streaming it in the car when going outside the broadcast area. Quite good for a long journey when you don't want to retune frequently but don't want to listen to Radio 2.

I don't ever listen to R4 live, always choosing programmes by podcast, the same way I watch television by choosing programmes from the player. Other than rolling news when something big has happened, I do not watch broadcast television at all, it seems rather an archaic concept. Radio is a bit different because other than R4 it's more of a rolling thing to have on in the background rather than specific programmes of choice.

 

[najaB]

I reckon FM will be around a long time yet, and when it eventually does go it'll be replaced by people streaming (which is how I mostly listen to radio now) rather than a broadcast technology.

I agree it will be a while before FM switch-off but I doubt that broadcast will go away. It's simply too cheap a way to reach a potentially massive audience as compared to streaming. Unless you know a stream exists it's virtually impossible to accidentally come across it, as compared to broadcast (be it FM or DAB) where you can find channels by "turning the knob".

 

[PeterC]

I quite like BBC Three Counties Radio and have been streaming it in the car when going outside the broadcast area. Quite good for a long journey when you don't want to retune frequently but don't want to listen to Radio 2.

I don't ever listen to R4 live, always choosing programmes by podcast, the same way I watch television by choosing programmes from the player. Other than rolling news when something big has happened, I do not watch broadcast television at all, it seems rather an archaic concept. Radio is a bit different because other than R4 it's more of a rolling thing to have on in the background rather than specific programmes of choice.

I find radio reception far more reliable than a mobile signal plus streaming will eat into my data allowance while radio is free to air.

Since buying a car with bluetooth I no longer use the radio for music when travelling as I have so much loaded onto the phone.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Much prefer the audio clarity of DAB broadcasts for news and sports channels such as BBC Radio 5 Live rather than their old school AM equivalent(s), but there are still numerous locations when travelling in the Pennines where DAB broadcasts suddenly drop out.

 

[telstarbox]

Our 2013 car's radio doesn't have DAB (which I think is often the case) but does have Bluetooth. 4G signal is now so widespread that it's easy to stream BBC digital stations from a phone via the Bluetooth, so it's not an issue.

 

[superjohn]

In Suffolk I find the BBC national stations always get a signal while the BBC local station and commercial nationals tend to drop out from time to time. The BBC nationals also come in at a lower volume than the others. This can be a pain if I have turned it up to listen to speech on R4 Extra and then switch to a commercial music station which blasts out at a much louder level!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I agree it will be a while before FM switch-off but I doubt that broadcast will go away. It's simply too cheap a way to reach a potentially massive audience as compared to streaming. Unless you know a stream exists it's virtually impossible to accidentally come across it, as compared to broadcast (be it FM or DAB) where you can find channels by "turning the knob".

Is it cheap, though? It requires a stack of dedicated infrastructure.

And if you do want to hear random radio stations, I'm sure TuneIn and similar apps have a "give me a random station" button!

 

[kermit]

 

[Dr Hoo]

In the Peak District DAB is effectively useless in the car as it is always dropping out.

Within the house it is just as bad in terms of the 'only working on top of the wardrobe in a particular room' kinda thing.

 

[najaB]

Is it cheap, though? It requires a stack of dedicated infrastructure.

As long as TV is being broadcast then adding radio is basically free.

 

[Bletchleyite]

As long as TV is being broadcast then adding radio is basically free.

I can't, to be honest, see broadcast TV lasting that much longer. 20 years at most maybe? Increasing numbers of people are consuming, as I do, via the "players".

 

[pdq]

I don't think I have used FM to any extent for about 10 years, maybe more. I've been using DAB exclusively for hifi listening since about 2002 when my quite expensive Pure DAB tuner (about £300 back then) replaced my Denon FM tuner. That packed up last year so now have a Marantz all in one which has FM, DAB and Internet radio built in. I only use DAB as we are in a strong signal area.

Last 3 cars have all had DAB radios that seamlessly shift to FM when required, and cleverly timelag the FM so you don't hear the change.

I tend to use my phone as the source quite a bit, using Chromecast Audio where possible. Catchup and rewind live are really useful features.

 

[Hadders]

I'm not a fan of the time lag on DAB.

On FM it's always nice to have the BBC pips and clock in sync, you can't have this with DAB.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm not a fan of the time lag on DAB.

On FM it's always nice to have the BBC pips and clock in sync, you can't have this with DAB.

I suspect about 0.000000001% of people notice this!

 

[najaB]

I'm not a fan of the time lag on DAB.

It'll be the same for any digital source - e.g. streaming.

 

[Bevan Price]

DAB reception here (St. Helens) is a bit patchy - I can usually only get a good signal if the receiver is fairly close to an external window. The advantage of DAB is a wider choice of radio stations, including Planet Rock - my preferred choice if I want to listen to music. FM reception is a bit better - but for BBC R4, the best signal still comes from the old-fashioned AM Long Wave transmitter (day or night). AM Medium Wave signals are generally good at daytimes, but can be poor at night due to bad interference from "non-local" transmitters.

 

[nlogax]

I'm not a fan of the time lag on DAB.

On FM it's always nice to have the BBC pips and clock in sync, you can't have this with DAB.

It's the same with other digital broadcast mediums. I recall watching the 2010 World Cup on my (then) shiny new HD telly, and hearing the roar of cheers from neighbouring houses and streets as England scored against Slovenia. Some seconds later I saw the ball hit the back of the net on my tv. This was two years before the DTV switch in my part of the country.

For all its faults I've grown to really like DAB. In-car DAB is especially welcome!

 

[Barn]

I tend to use DAB almost exclusively (not least because it's the default for my car when you switch the radio on). However, on the occasions when I switch a music station over to its FM version I'm often struck by how much better FM sounds. It has a much more open and expressive sound, with low-bitrate DAB sounding muddy. It's also often in mono with significant dynamic range control. It serves a purpose, is fine for talk radio, and allows far more stations to broadcast. But a good FM signal can rival CD quality, and DAB is nowhere near.

 

[Trackman]

I tend to use DAB almost exclusively (not least because it's the default for my car when you switch the radio on). However, on the occasions when I switch a music station over to its FM version I'm often struck by how much better FM sounds. It has a much more open and expressive sound, with low-bitrate DAB sounding muddy. It's also often in mono with significant dynamic range control. It serves a purpose, is fine for talk radio, and allows far more stations to broadcast. But a good FM signal can rival CD quality, and DAB is nowhere near.

I totally agree.
The mono broadcasts (like Absolute radio) get me down.