I can't see the BBC doing any dual-illumination with DAB+ until they have done any future review of radio services and potential cuts to services.

Don't hold your breath.

Why would any station dual illuminate? What value to them is there in broadcasting the same thing twice? Given the choice of splitting existing capacity, why wouldn't anyone launch a new, additional station?

That is why I suggested the BBC should do some pop-ups in DAB+ to generate some interest and get people to check whether they can receive DAB+.

the BBC is also the best equipped to publicise DAB+, in my opinion, with 5 national radio stations.

With DAB+ appearing on the SDL mux I'd imagine most people are aware of the technology. If they're not, they should be.

I notice Currys now have quite a lot of DAB radios with DAB+, but Tescos and Argos still have a lot of DAB only models on sale.

Well they won't be aware of the technology though will they?

They'll select a station and think "oh that doesn't work" if their radio isn't compatible and won't give it much of a second thought. Or they'll select the station and it'll come on, again a second thought will not be given.

Why would they want to do that? They have sufficient space on their Mux for their needs, they are not going to launch any more stations, and moving to DAB+ would remove service from licence fee payers leading to much bad press from the Daily Mail. Why open themselves up to that?

The government when announcing the current plan for the major increase coverage, wanted commercial radio to take over the push for digital radio (it was very critical at the lack of promotion by them) and the launch of DAB+, so D2 was launched a we have the 3 national DAB+ stations. I think this was due to the feeling that most of the promotion of digital radio had been done by the BBC and with a limited budget due to cut backs you can understand why. Therefore I don't see the BBC getting involved until next year.

Lots of people hoped that the beeb might launch one of its pop stations (ie eurovision) in DAB+, but no station appeared this year appeared at all.

Under that basis, the BBC will NEVER transition to DAB+ because someone, somewhere will always have a working DAB radio and we can't deny that single person service!

If we treated TV like that, we'd still be watching BBC One via 405 line black and white TV!

Your probably right as why change when it offers no real benefits. It's not like the BBC will save from not broadcasting using their space.

Maybe if they could see some of their Multiplex space out to rivals then making better use of the space could be an option.

Otherwise think logically. It's better using what you have paid for to reach the widest possible audience and DAB does that better than DAB+

IF their multiplex wasn't full I'd put money on some of the nationals (Wales, Scotland, NI) being added as DAB+. As it stands, something existing would have to give. What would that be? The lesser-listened to DAB / non-FM only services or one of the big name simulcasts? It would be worse to 'take away' (migrate to DAB+) WS, Asian Network, 1 Xtra which are not readily available on FM. People with non DAB+ would lose something and apart from the Internet, have no other way of listening.

Personally I'd change Radio 1 to DAB+ as it's already available on FM and it's audience are very platform agnostic. I doubt many of Radio 1's listeners will be listening on and have a DAB radio incapable of decoding DAB+. Radio 2 could follow.

And yet we're not. Things will progress as and when they need to.

You need to understand that the age of the audiophile ended with the advent of MP3. Then it became a race for how many thousands of tracks you can fit on one device. Audio quality went out of the window and the public were fully participant in this.

The average person today is happy with grainy low-bitrate mono radio, as long as it's loud and plays the right kind of presenter playing the right kind of music.

Too much has been invested in DAB to just abandon it any time soon for DAB+, which itself would still require a hell of a lot of investment by all radio groups.

FM took forever to take over from AM because people were happy with what existing technology. AM is still around in the UK. DAB is going to be around for a very long time unless there's a compelling (profitable) reason to abandon it.

We've just seen Planet Rock and Absolute 80s accept a hit in listeners in order to make their stations more profitable. Do you really think stations are going to broadcast on DAB and DAB+ at the same time?

Like 405-line TV, any such change will happen when only a tint number of people have an excuse not to switch to DAB+. But by then, DAB+ will be absolute crap in the eyes of forum nerdlings, who'll be demanding the UK upgrades to the latest and greatest format that no one's mother's ever heard of before...

If people really don't care about sound quality, then this can easily be tested. Have radio stations downgrade to 32kbps mono LSF MP2. Think of the cost savings that could be made for broadcasters - as long as its loud enough, who cares! Those on the forums who dislike the audio quality can just be dismissed as neckbearded basement dwelling audiophiles (the DRDB dismissed those wanting DAB+'s introduction as audiophiles several years ago).

As for the claims of DAB++ as a way to dismiss any introduction or expansion of DAB+, this whiffs of scaremongering without evidence. DAB+ was easier to implement in Europe and Australia because DAB wasn't in widespread use which makes an upgrade to the Eureka-147 technology easier unless you're a country who has invested massively in the old standard (UK!). DAB+ is used a lot more which will make any future radio technology (ie. DVB=T2A) harder to implement without a dramatic change (Ie. analogue to digital TV broadcasting). It's a bit like saying don't bother launching HD channels because 4K is coming and 625-line is satisfactory or don't launch 4K channels because 8K is coming and HD is satisfactory!

I'll make this point again as I've said it before in threads and I think it's worth mentioning.

It WILL become important because the type of device that people listen to DAB on is changing rapidly. DAB is standard now in new cars, some cars will even switch to the DAB version of a station by default if there is one even if you're tuned to FM.

You absolutely can notice the difference between bitrate in a car environment. The better the speakers, the more you notice it too. Someone mentioned turning the music loud, yep fair point on a kitchen radio. You can turn up 80kbps mono Kiss loud on a kitchen radio with one speaker and it'll sound fine. Try turning up Kiss in a car, it sounds bloody awful.

It's bad enough that I pretty much can't listen to it in the car, or if I do it has to be quiet. The bass sounds horrible. Capital Xtra is no problem so I listen to that instead. Even though I like Kiss. As more people get DAB in cars the mono stations may notice their audience share falling but might not know why, that will be the reason.

32kbps for music is a non starter in a car environment. Forget it. Sounds FAR to metallic.

If people don't care about sound quality then why are more and more stations streaming at 320 kb/s online? After all, think how much bandwidth and money they could save by providing 48 kb/s streams...

Changed my mind.

Some people will still be in the dark as they live in a nether region that SDL is yet to touch.

You'd think that with all the spare space swashing around on all of the local muxes, Arqiva and co could launch a DAB+ service with a recorded loop or something, just to let people test the compatibility of their radios - especially in the non SDL areas

It might not be perfect, but it's still a darn sight better than trying to listen to the distant FM transmitters (i.e. BBC Nationals, Classic FM, Gem 106) round here, and on my Pure Highway 260dbi it sounds better than most of the mono stations which all sound rather odd (because of the mono nature of them). That being said the audio from my phones Bluetooth is noticeably sharper to my ears, but when you've got tyre noise, wind noise, and the noise from the fans going you can't tell that easily.

Oh, and it's a darn sight better than Rock FM 2 on MW which my mum insists on listening to in her car in spite of the constant electrical interference!


They'll care to a certain extent (and 32kbps is probably below that) but once it's "good enough" most people couldn't care. The 320kbps internet streams (which are often adaptive too) mean those who actually care about the quality can get it.

We would have had DAB+ long ago if the IBA was still regulating commercial radio as it believed in high standards and indeed required all its stations to broadcast in FM stereo from the start: Ofcom, on the other hand, believes in leaving that to the broadcasters thinking competition would voluntarily keep standards high and failing to understand that where a small number of large companies dominate a market standards inevitably fall and, thanks to Ofcom, that's just what's happened.

*too metallic. Wow, how did I let that one slip through?


Well, it depends on how quiet your car is.

I'm not even comparing to AM or FM. I don't go near either nowadays. I'm comparing the mono stations to other DAB stations.

Jack and Jack 2 Surrey have been given authorisation to migrate from DAB to DAB+.

http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/binari...Surrey-MVR.pdf

Great ! So some of the big boys are starting to wake up.

It's also good news to see that Jack will be using 40kbit/s so it might sound respectable.

It's a bit of a shame that Jack2 will only be bargain basement 32kbit/s, presumably because its music isn't so critical, but at least they will both be stereo.

The mux covers almost half the M25 and parts of the M3, M4 and M40 so it probably makes good economic sense as well. Surrey is a rich area so there will be many new cars with DAB+.

I wonder if anyone else would consider it.

e.g. here in Cornwall, UKRD runs a couple of stations just to fill space on the multiplex along with their actual ILR station, Pirate FM, including a Cornish version of the infamous "Birdsong". Since they're not vitally important you'd think they'd use that as a testbed for DAB+, since there is no D2 coverage at present

[quote=kev;83521528]Jack and Jack 2 Surrey have been given authorisation to migrate from DAB to DAB+.

No surprise to see that it's Matt's organisation that's leading the way.

[quote=Lengon;83522153]
Yes but aren't MuxCo the ones that are pushing the awful 32kbps DAB+? Or are the station owners actually requesting that?

Don't know. Although I'd prefer a higher bit rate I think that when the music isn't too complex Jazz FM at 32kbps DAB+ sounds pretty good.