DAB is useless because : FM audio quality is enough (actually the bottleneck is the digital compression used in radio studios) ; the FM spectrum isn't saturated ; FM receivers are simple and cheap, it would be absurd to force people to buy new receivers and trash their fully functional radios. An important part of FM listening is in cars, and a lot of cars have custom proprietary radio trays or proprietery interfaces for hand commands buttons. Signal degradation is progressive in FM, but very irritating in DAB.
I really disagree there. The difference in quality between FM and DAB (not even DAB+) is very significant, and I’m not even an audiophile.
The problem is that 1) you don’t know it until you actually make the switch, and it’s not like you can borrow a car stereo system for a week to try it out, and 2) that’s pretty much the only advantage of DAB, from consumers’ perspective, so the price/value proposition is not good enough to make it a no-brainer purchase.
> you don’t know it until you actually make the switch
A perhaps philosophical question: if you have to train yourself to be able to perceive the higher-quality audio, do you end up enjoying the audio more, or are you just training yourself to dislike the lower-quality audio?
The difference is only significant if the radio station uses a sufficient bitrate. There are some with atrocious quality in DAB because of their low bitrate.
With good signal strength, DAB wins over FM easily, but it degrades horrifically badly with weaker signal strength, generally I tend to find this isn't that much of an issue with BBC stations, but worse with the commercial stations, and especially worse in a moving vehicle.
(Not that the UK commercial radio space is exactly in a good place anyway after the global/bauer radio-pocalypse).
CDs are useless because: Cassette tapes are good enough and they can be recorded. A lot of cars have cassette players, not CD players and they never skip.
You're being downvoted, but I think the comparison is worth considering.
For the average car sound-system, I doubt the quality improvement from the cassette->CD upgrade is going to be all that appreciable. The upgrade to CD only makes sense for a decent sound-system, or if cassettes are no longer available.
This seems comparable to the FM->DAB (or DAB+) upgrade. I don't know about the usage patterns here, but I suspect radio is more often used in vehicles than at home with nice speakers, or with headphones. Perhaps it's different from CD/cassette in that regard, or perhaps not.
I've not seen a cassette player in a car for quite a long time, not even the other half's 15+ year old Daihatsu.
CDs are also just as recordable as cassettes.
I suspect that CD players are probably beginning to disappear from cars, in favour of SD cards, USB & Bluetooth - a lot of the youth seem to be moving towards mobile phone-centric audio entertainment in cars as well as everywhere else.
So quantity over quality. The UK used to have 4-5 analogue TV stations (the fifth wasn't available everywhere), now it has digital with something like 100+ channels all constantly broadcasting low quality, repetitive rubbish. We got rid of the analogue stations to make way for "+1" channels where they broadcast the same thing 1 hour later. It's a complete waste of the spectrum.
Who cares about a 20 MHz chunk of spectrum near 100 MHz? It's too narrow to be of much use to anyone but FM broadcasters, and the required RF hardware and antennas are too big for most two-way consumer applications. And there's certainly no shortage of VHF spectrum in general, now that most users have gone to 700 MHz+.
Ultimately, cognitive radio is the correct answer to all questions about how to get the most utility out of the existing spectrum. The only question is whether we'll get cognitive radio or unlimited fusion power first. :(
In my limited experience, driving across the UK on FM is a pain due to regional differences. A couple of hours driving and I'll need to retune a few times, and my saved stations won't be applicable. DAB solves that minor issue at least.
I don't know the details of the spectrum usage, but there are more niche nationwide stations on DAB (Planet Rock is hardly niche anymore tbh, and is great). So maybe it's more accurate to say the FM spectrum isn't cluttered for barrier to entry reasons.
Enter Germany, where it was decided DAB is not a federal matter and basically you have 16 small states with entirely different stations available on DAB. The one real advantage DAB could have had, and they threw it away just to auction off the same frequency band a couple more times.
On the car side - Most new cars I've been in for the last 3-4 years, maybe more, tend to come with DAB radio built in. Sometimes it's an optional extra, but standard in an increasingly large proportion of new cars.
(Apparently 95% of new UK cars, and 64% of new commercial vehicles in Q4 2019, vs 4% in Q4 2010, 64% Q4 2015).
One issue I have with DAB and the like is their short-livedness. FM and AM radio was figured out almost 100 years ago, while for DAB there are already discussions of replacing it with 5G. So buying a DAB receiver is much more likely to turn out to be an investment for something that you will have to re-buy every 5 years as the technology is progressing.
-Indeed. Norway adopted DAB early - test broadcasts started sometime in the late nineties - but a couple of years ago when the majority of the FM broadcast towers were switched off, the DAB encoding scheme also changed from DAB to DAB+, rendering most receivers sold as future-proof radios useless.
I'd bought a number of DAB radios, only to be told I had to buy them once again - but this time, they'd got it right, no worries!
(That being said, I believe transitioning to DAB+ made sense - sound quality is significantly better - however, from a consumer perspective, it is terrible. First have your FM radios obsoleted, then the first-generation DAB radios - and the only thing in it for you as a consumer is to keep the same service you've had all along...
(The main benefit of DAB being that it is significantly cheaper to run the broadcast network, compared to FM.)
The UK also adopted DAB early and is now stuck with low-bitrate sound quality. When DAB was first promoted in the UK to encourage sales of DAB radios, one of the claims made was that it would provide "CD quality sound". It soon become obvious that the low-bitrates (in order to cram more stations in the radio spectrum) meant the sound quality was anything but CD quality. The sound quality claims were eventually dropped and became "crystal clear sound" or better reception.
This table shows the list of bitrates of radio stations in the UK. BBC Radio 3 (classical music) has the highest bitrate at 192kb for DAB. You get far better bitrates streaming via the web:
That's right. DAB is digital over AM, but there's another much more exciting technology called DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) that uses the SW bands to deliver 72kbps (currently HE-AAC but xHE-AAC in the future) over the Shortwave Bands. This has the potential to make use of very efficient transmitters with very long range. The encoding and bitrates are comparable to DAB+.
So another switchover like DAB to DAB+ where everyone throws away their new radios yet again? That point alone kills every consumer appeal it might have ever had...
Keeping AM broadcast radio around is useful for emergencies. The range is long and the receivers are simple and widely available. One transmitter can reach all of the UK. Besides, the 1MHz "medium wave" band is not very useful for anything else.
I remember many decades ago, the first time I made a working one, was an absolutely magical experience --- and no doubt countless others have also been amazed and inspired by such a surprisingly simple device.
This assumes everyone has an AM radio. I don't have one in this household at all. I have no reason whatsoever to own one. It's not much use having an emergency transmitter when no-one has a receiver and even then, it's not running all the time. AM is probably worse as you need squelch or to keep transmitting a carrier to keep it quiet.
On the other hand most people have the facility to receive an SMS and most of them have their phone on. The only issue is lack of power to charge a phone. Worse than keeping an AM radio running but in the past people turned on their AM radio at certain pre-organised times of day anyway so there is not really order of magnitude difference between a phone and an AM radio.
Disasters (natural or otherwise) are usually fairly localised. Cell towers have a reach of a couple km at best and can be easily overwhelmed, whereas AM radio can reach upwards of 100km at night from a single transmitter and doesn't care at all how many people are listening.
As you already mentioned, power is another issue, as a modern smartphone won't last past a few weeks, even when turning on for only 5 minutes once a day, whereas I've seen AM radios that can run continuously for at least that long.
Finally, my main concern: cell phones are complicated. An EMP (or flood) could fry all your electronics and you're basically screwed, but finding someone who can build a passable AM receiver (or even transmitter) out of various electronic junk isn't all that difficult.
I suspect that there are more AM radio receivers in the UK than there are DAB receivers. A couple of months ago, BBC Radio Devon was airing announcements asking for donations from people so that they could buy the poor and elderly new DAB radios because they only had AM radios. It seems to me that if a station to make it a big charity drive, there must be a reason.
In a disaster, local cell towers may not be operational. An AM transmitter located somewhere that is far enough away as to not be suffering from the same local issues could still be operational.
Just a guess: if you had any idea how much technological infrastructure has to be intact and working perfectly in order for you to receive an SMS or otherwise use your phone, your opinion would be somewhat different.
A radio requires only two things to be working: the receiver and the transmitter. That's not usually a big deal, but when it is, it is.
I received a hand cranked emergency flashlight for free somewhere a few years ago. Turns out it also happens to have a simple AM radio built in. It's probably the only working one inside my house, but in a pinch it'll do.
Preparing AM/FM radio as well as food and water for disaster is commonly recommended here in Japan. Smartphones are more useful but cellular tower could be down due to power or connectivity issue. (occurred on 2019 typhoon event in Chiba and NOW occurring in Kumamoto)
AM radio being useful in emergencies assumes AM stations are run by people, as opposed to automated, such that you can reliably break into programming with information about local emergencies. This has already been a problem:
> Because it was the middle of the night, there were few people at local radio stations, all operated by Clear Channel with mostly automated programming. No formal emergency warnings were issued for several hours while Minot officials located station managers at home. North Dakota's public radio network, Prairie Public Broadcasting, was notified and did broadcast warnings to citizens.
> The incident has been cited as an example of the physical dangers of media consolidation and the cost-cutting practice of not keeping overnight staff at stations. Even without activation of the Emergency Alert System, a live announcer would still have been able to warn citizens of the emergency via the traditional means of the broadcast signal and an on-air microphone. As local stations were running in automated mode, there was nobody on-site to interrupt programming and issue warnings concerning the disaster.
EAS not cutting in was a problem. Emergency systems need to be redundant for that very reason. Thinking analog radio necessarily means that redundancy is in place is wrong. Our thinking about this must be more careful than that.
you just gave the reason. the long reach. one transmitter can reach all of uk. wouldn't it be great if you could transmit a digital signal on that frequency? not all communication is bandwidth intensive cat videos. and as far as am radios being simple, who has one vs people with a phone? you want am voice? transmit a hundred of them on the reclaimed bandwidth, with the same reach, and higher quality.
There just isn't so much bandwidth in AM bands to practically transmit hundred digital stations in same band as one analog. If you want to keep the same reach as analog, you need so much error correction overhead that you may as well stay with analog. Or you can add more digital transmitters but they still need more power than higher frequencies and there are multipath problems with long-range transmissions mentioned in the article.
IMO practical thing would be to add text service to analog AM broadcasts(like teletext) but with ubiquitous internet coverage, that ship has sailed.
As it is the UK we are talking about, long-wave BBC broadcasts do apparently rather play an important role in our nuclear deterrent (i.e. using BBC Radio 4 an an indicator of whether London still exists):
That's a relief considering how bad DAB is. Most stations in the UK are stuck on DAB rather than DAB+, which means poor MP2 codec quality. Then they've gone for more identikit stations rather than higher bitrates. There's very little above 128 kbps and I believe they use mono for some. Then you have the problems with signal dropout, where the sound doesn't degrade gracefully in poor signal areas. Poor battery life is also an issue. If it wasn't the sunk costs of people buying these receivers and the loss of face after all the years of propaganda by the authorities pushing the standard, it would have been dropped.
It should be a warning to the world how Germany botched DAB:
They introduced DAB among the broadcasters as a cost saving measure. DAB needs smaller transmission power due to the digital transmission and error correction, so they could get away with far smaller transmitter power (factor 10) than for the same area coverage in FM. But they misestimated the power reduction, reduced too much and now area coverage is far worse than FM even in areas that should nominally be covered.
Also, they first introduced DAB. Some people bought new equipment. Then, a few years later, they introduced DAB+ in a complete switchover, no more DAB stations. Thus everyone had to throw away their new expensive radios.
Therefore no-one trusts the coverage and longevity of digital radio, so no-one buys it anymore.
Oh, and even nominal coverage isn't anywhere near where FM is after two decades.
It seems hard to imagine that DAB-based radio services won't themselves be completely obsolete in another decade, given the ever-growing pervasiveness of Internet access through cell and satellite. I wouldn't be surprised if DAB was the first to shut down, with a reduced analog service remaining as a backstop for the few that need a broadcast solution and for national emergency scenarios.
I recently went back to using a DAB radio in our kitchen rather than using my phone, largely because at 6:30am when I get up I want to just hit a single button for Radio 4 to come on!
I’ve got four DAB radios around my house. What do you use instead? Always your phone? I find the one-touch interface to turn the radio on or off as I go past valuable. I guess I wouldn’t mind if they were really using the internet though.
The advantage of broadcast solutions is that there are no personalized ads and no tracking, unless of course your end device has those things, you use DRM, etc.
My question is what is the spectrum that is freed up by this going to be used for? And will it make money?
It is an awful lot of spectrum - and laws of supply and demand will start to kick in.
Adding in a new range for WiFi is nice but that will take international agreement and frankly no one has charged me for wi-fi spectrum yet and it's it likely to succeed if they try. Scientific applications like back hauling hardly seem profitable.
Maybe adding in a new cellphone range will work - but AM and FM take up what 100khz to 1Ghz range? what's going in there ? I am fascinated. Is it really all aiming at 6G?
Don't think there is much usage for it for consumers. They are low frequency bands that can't carry much data, it's enough for a few songs but not for computer usage.
For reference, FM radio is roughly 80 to 100 MHz.
Wifi is roughly 2400 to 2500 MHz and 5200 to 5800 MHz. One channel requires 25 MHz. Killing ALL radios would barely free enough room for one wifi.
Low frequency spectrum will never go to wifi. Big telcos will see to that, they want it for themselves and also don't want competition by the general populace. So wifi gets progressively shorter-range high frequencies, while the old broadcasting bands are given to telcos
All national radio stations have exclusively used DAB since late 2017, and while there remains a few holdout local radio stations on FM, I would consider the transition finished.
Readit News
I really disagree there. The difference in quality between FM and DAB (not even DAB+) is very significant, and I’m not even an audiophile.
The problem is that 1) you don’t know it until you actually make the switch, and it’s not like you can borrow a car stereo system for a week to try it out, and 2) that’s pretty much the only advantage of DAB, from consumers’ perspective, so the price/value proposition is not good enough to make it a no-brainer purchase.
A perhaps philosophical question: if you have to train yourself to be able to perceive the higher-quality audio, do you end up enjoying the audio more, or are you just training yourself to dislike the lower-quality audio?
(Not that the UK commercial radio space is exactly in a good place anyway after the global/bauer radio-pocalypse).
It might be appreciable at home, does it still apply in a moving vehicle? I personally can't tell the difference.
I have dab/FM in the car now, and It’s noticeably better than FM. I use dab almost exclusively, but there are remote areas where only fm reaches.
For the average car sound-system, I doubt the quality improvement from the cassette->CD upgrade is going to be all that appreciable. The upgrade to CD only makes sense for a decent sound-system, or if cassettes are no longer available.
This seems comparable to the FM->DAB (or DAB+) upgrade. I don't know about the usage patterns here, but I suspect radio is more often used in vehicles than at home with nice speakers, or with headphones. Perhaps it's different from CD/cassette in that regard, or perhaps not.
CDs are also just as recordable as cassettes.
I suspect that CD players are probably beginning to disappear from cars, in favour of SD cards, USB & Bluetooth - a lot of the youth seem to be moving towards mobile phone-centric audio entertainment in cars as well as everywhere else.
Ultimately, cognitive radio is the correct answer to all questions about how to get the most utility out of the existing spectrum. The only question is whether we'll get cognitive radio or unlimited fusion power first. :(
I don't know the details of the spectrum usage, but there are more niche nationwide stations on DAB (Planet Rock is hardly niche anymore tbh, and is great). So maybe it's more accurate to say the FM spectrum isn't cluttered for barrier to entry reasons.
Enter Germany, where it was decided DAB is not a federal matter and basically you have 16 small states with entirely different stations available on DAB. The one real advantage DAB could have had, and they threw it away just to auction off the same frequency band a couple more times.
Agreed on the degradation though.
I'd bought a number of DAB radios, only to be told I had to buy them once again - but this time, they'd got it right, no worries!
(That being said, I believe transitioning to DAB+ made sense - sound quality is significantly better - however, from a consumer perspective, it is terrible. First have your FM radios obsoleted, then the first-generation DAB radios - and the only thing in it for you as a consumer is to keep the same service you've had all along...
(The main benefit of DAB being that it is significantly cheaper to run the broadcast network, compared to FM.)
This table shows the list of bitrates of radio stations in the UK. BBC Radio 3 (classical music) has the highest bitrate at 192kb for DAB. You get far better bitrates streaming via the web:
https://www.astra2sat.com/radio/uk-digital-radio-bitrates/
I purchased a number of AM radios, only to be told I had to buy them once again when FM came out—but this time, they'd got it right, no worries!
Welcome to technological development. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale
So another switchover like DAB to DAB+ where everyone throws away their new radios yet again? That point alone kills every consumer appeal it might have ever had...
Buying a basic DAB radio is $20 where I live. Not sure I'd call that an "investment".
I’d be pretty pissed if a purchase that costs 5-100k had a core component become “obsolete”.
I remember many decades ago, the first time I made a working one, was an absolutely magical experience --- and no doubt countless others have also been amazed and inspired by such a surprisingly simple device.
On the other hand most people have the facility to receive an SMS and most of them have their phone on. The only issue is lack of power to charge a phone. Worse than keeping an AM radio running but in the past people turned on their AM radio at certain pre-organised times of day anyway so there is not really order of magnitude difference between a phone and an AM radio.
As you already mentioned, power is another issue, as a modern smartphone won't last past a few weeks, even when turning on for only 5 minutes once a day, whereas I've seen AM radios that can run continuously for at least that long.
Finally, my main concern: cell phones are complicated. An EMP (or flood) could fry all your electronics and you're basically screwed, but finding someone who can build a passable AM receiver (or even transmitter) out of various electronic junk isn't all that difficult.
I suspect that there are more AM radio receivers in the UK than there are DAB receivers. A couple of months ago, BBC Radio Devon was airing announcements asking for donations from people so that they could buy the poor and elderly new DAB radios because they only had AM radios. It seems to me that if a station to make it a big charity drive, there must be a reason.
A radio requires only two things to be working: the receiver and the transmitter. That's not usually a big deal, but when it is, it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minot_train_derailment
> Because it was the middle of the night, there were few people at local radio stations, all operated by Clear Channel with mostly automated programming. No formal emergency warnings were issued for several hours while Minot officials located station managers at home. North Dakota's public radio network, Prairie Public Broadcasting, was notified and did broadcast warnings to citizens.
> The incident has been cited as an example of the physical dangers of media consolidation and the cost-cutting practice of not keeping overnight staff at stations. Even without activation of the Emergency Alert System, a live announcer would still have been able to warn citizens of the emergency via the traditional means of the broadcast signal and an on-air microphone. As local stations were running in automated mode, there was nobody on-site to interrupt programming and issue warnings concerning the disaster.
EAS not cutting in was a problem. Emergency systems need to be redundant for that very reason. Thinking analog radio necessarily means that redundancy is in place is wrong. Our thinking about this must be more careful than that.
IMO practical thing would be to add text service to analog AM broadcasts(like teletext) but with ubiquitous internet coverage, that ship has sailed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#Process
They introduced DAB among the broadcasters as a cost saving measure. DAB needs smaller transmission power due to the digital transmission and error correction, so they could get away with far smaller transmitter power (factor 10) than for the same area coverage in FM. But they misestimated the power reduction, reduced too much and now area coverage is far worse than FM even in areas that should nominally be covered.
Also, they first introduced DAB. Some people bought new equipment. Then, a few years later, they introduced DAB+ in a complete switchover, no more DAB stations. Thus everyone had to throw away their new expensive radios.
Therefore no-one trusts the coverage and longevity of digital radio, so no-one buys it anymore.
Oh, and even nominal coverage isn't anywhere near where FM is after two decades.
It is an awful lot of spectrum - and laws of supply and demand will start to kick in.
Adding in a new range for WiFi is nice but that will take international agreement and frankly no one has charged me for wi-fi spectrum yet and it's it likely to succeed if they try. Scientific applications like back hauling hardly seem profitable.
Maybe adding in a new cellphone range will work - but AM and FM take up what 100khz to 1Ghz range? what's going in there ? I am fascinated. Is it really all aiming at 6G?
For reference, FM radio is roughly 80 to 100 MHz.
Wifi is roughly 2400 to 2500 MHz and 5200 to 5800 MHz. One channel requires 25 MHz. Killing ALL radios would barely free enough room for one wifi.
Deleted Comment