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Op-ed: 32kbps will become the norm for DAB+


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Old 02-12-2016, 21:11
tghe-retford
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Interesting reading Jame's article where Jazz FM accept those with HiFis will use the internet (chromecast audio adaptors are now low cost) but DAB+ is more suitable for kitchens and on the move. Ken Rayner has gone to a lot of effort with digital processers on loudness and distortion to get the best of 32k although hopefully at some time will get to 48k.
Credit to Rayner where its due, Jazz FM has less noticeable audible compression artifacts for a low bitrate. I can still hear the tell-tale sound of too little bitrate at times on a portable speaker but its nowhere near wanting me to rip my headphones off.
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Old 02-12-2016, 21:34
Orangy
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What I found when using streaming on mobile that it works fine in urban areas and some rural areas, other places even setting the maximum buffer time, it'd still stop and you'd be waiting before you could get a usable 3G/4G signal to continue listening. DAB is the opposite, a struggle in the centre of towns away from masts (ie. Sound Digital) but just works elsewhere on a pocket DAB radio - as long as you get the right one.
Fair point. I've never bothered to get a pocket DAB radio as I think I'd be disappointed. Mobile on foot is probably more appropriate. But in the car, it's a totally different matter.
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Old 03-12-2016, 09:24
ozbrit
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I can afford to stream in my car. I have CarPlay with a 4G contract and a 16GB allowance. However, it's a pain in the arse to do this compared to DAB.

RadioPlayer app isn't too bad but they restrict the bitrate over mobile networks (even with the higher bitrate toggle on) and often it doesn't sound any better than DAB. Sometimes worse - e.g. Absolute.

TuneIn is just awful. Buggy, difficult to navigate, no favourites via CarPlay.

Orange Radio is lacking.

Not any other choice for CarPlay. Sure, I could have bought in to Android and Android Auto instead but the UX of that was even worse in my testing.
Tunein is old hat as far as Android radio apps go. It sounds like you need Xiia pro. You control the bit-rate of the station by adding the url yourself. The very comprehensive rado links at: http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/ cooperates with my Android TV boxes once I associate mp3, AAC+ and HLS file trypes with Xiia. Once the station and stream is set, so is the bit-rate of the stream for future listening.
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Old 03-12-2016, 12:54
Orangy
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Tunein is old hat as far as Android radio apps go. It sounds like you need Xiia pro. You control the bit-rate of the station by adding the url yourself. The very comprehensive rado links at: http://www.radiofeeds.co.uk/ cooperates with my Android TV boxes once I associate mp3, AAC+ and HLS file trypes with Xiia. Once the station and stream is set, so is the bit-rate of the stream for future listening.
Except that I have an iPhone. There are very few radio apps which are CarPlay approved; RadioPlayer, TuneIn & Orange Radio.

RadioPlayer is 80% of the way there for me (for U.K. Radio) but as previously mentioned: low bitrate on mobile data. Also lacks some stations. The main problem is as discussed - streaming cut outs and fiddly at times. Sorry but despite the woeful in some cases, bitrates, DAB just works and is easy while driving.
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Old 03-12-2016, 14:25
martinwatkins
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Oh yes it has, perhaps you're too young to have been around in the 70s and early 80s ?
Absolutely! As inkblot also said, FM radio sounded absolutely superb until the late seventies (ILR) and mid eighties (BBC) when station after station "gave in" and introduced Optimods or similar. Even Radio 1 sounded breathtakingly good when it borrowed the Radio 2 FM network; what a treat that was back in the day.....

I assume from the original comment that the person concerned might have been born in 1970 (I'm only guessing) so may well not have had decent access to FM until it was too late.

This is what so annoys us old fogies, IT REALLY WAS BETTER back then, and it's a tragedy that a medium capable of excellent quality (including DAB) has been wrecked by non engineers. But so many people now just assume that "radio has always sounded like this", and so - sadly - the battle is lost....

And doesn't it show!!

(As an aside, I was recently entrusted (for the purposes of copying to CD) with a number of reel to reel tapes of organ music recorded off Radio 3 in the 1970s and 1980s by the organist giving the recitals, and there's also (for reasons unknown either to him or to me) about half an hour of a Radio 2 Wogan show from 1980. You should see the PPM meters bouncing around on the music, it sounds airy and clean and joyous. Not the awful cloying ear-bleed sound that BBC FM (and indeed DAB, apart from Radio 3 digital) gives us nowadays, with the PPMs barely moving from 6, with an occasional drop to 5 if one's lucky)
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Old 03-12-2016, 19:03
scooby1970
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Oh yes it has, perhaps you're too young to have been around in the 70s and early 80s ?
Lol, not too young at all. In this area we had hardly any FM broadcasts back then, and what we had was of no interest as the commercial stations were on AM. But thank you, feeling a lot younger now

Mark
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Old 03-12-2016, 19:29
ianradioian
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I listen to jazzfm and its on the dab+ so I bought a 40 quid radio to listwn to it in. Previously I bluetoothed it from tunein on my phone to a bluetooth adapter plugged into the Aux. on my hifi. Quality is good!
The dab+ quality is good too- even on this 40 quid radio, noticeably better than normal dab. Good enough for me, anyway.

With Union Jack radio, thats a choice of 2 stations I like on dab/dab+ so my little radio gets a lot more use lately as before I just had smooth AM on in the car, or a tunein American big band station on my phone.
Bbc national and local do nothing for me, nor capital radio etc. Theres no point in having a dab radio if you listen to these stations as they are on fm anyway.
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Old 03-12-2016, 20:19
Icaraa
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As I've said before, this is yet another example of the UK radio industry shooting itself in the foot. The public deserve to be able to buy their ALDI Special Buy radio alarm or Roberts digital radio or radio in their Ford Focus, and for it to be able to receive digital radio stations - end of story. No having to understand that there are two types of digital transmission, or that different radios may or may not decode those stations, or that the reason some digital stations are missing is because they have a DAB radio not a DAB+ one.

DAB+ decoding has been available on Frontier Silicon hardware since 2010 in Australia, when the same hardware in the UK won't decode it thanks to lack of firmware availability or lack of correct licensing by at least one major radio assembler.

The public have enough harassment in their lives thanks to "politicians" etc without the radio industry expecting them to understand yet another complicated sob story. I feel sorry for mattd that he is there providing any and every alternative to programme providers, who are so wound up in decisions only of any relevance to themselves, and of no technical interest to the public outside the industry itself or forums like this.

All of this mess is entirely of the radio industry's own making - and it is now up to them to sort it out in a clear, straightforward and understandable way - but they need to sort it out once and for all and let things move forward unhindered. Perhaps this is expecting a miracle ?

For the couple of people who are with EE, last time that I renewed my wireless broadband contract with them a few months back, I had a pleasant surprise. EE have a scheme that loyal customers buying their plans for the full contract term, get extra data allowance as a reward. I was on 15 gigabytes a month for £20 for a 2-year contract, and for renewing the contract was upped to 32 gigabytes at no extra cost ! I try very hard to use that amount, which is not easy when I have absolutely NO desire to watch live TV on the internet - it means a lot of audio streaming, which I have to say is very reliable. So stick with your contracts to the end, and see what extra data that EE offer you to renew...
30Gb is the sweet spot for me. I genuinely think most people will struggle to hit that.

I'll try and get more data when I renew, I've got 16Gb now.
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Old 04-12-2016, 10:23
Mark C
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I listen to jazzfm and its on the dab+ so I bought a 40 quid radio to listwn to it in. Previously I bluetoothed it from tunein on my phone to a bluetooth adapter plugged into the Aux. on my hifi. Quality is good!
I must admit, having been dismayed at the audio quality of Jazz FM's DAB+ test transmissions in February, it's slowly taken over from Radio 2 as my default 'background wallpaper' music station in the car, and the quality in there is perfectly acceptable. It is better than it was when they started 10 months ago.

Interesting article
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Old 05-12-2016, 00:35
Fred Rickwood
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Will they? I can see a situation where whilst one licence fee payer is listening to a DAB only set, the BBC won't transition to DAB+. I'd not be surprised if in a decade, the BBC National DAB multiplex is still exclusively DAB with not a single DAB+ service, even pop-up one, in sight. I hope I am proven wrong, as I hope my opinion regarding this thread is also proven wrong in the future.

As with the commercial sector, the BBC has to be mindful of those who can't get DAB+ services, but for different reasons.
In a decade there'll be not that many DAB sets left, surely.

Most sets for sale in Currys are DAB+ now.

I cannot see the BBC holding out against DAB forever. I'd imagine they'll run some experimental tests at least to gauge the response.
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Old 05-12-2016, 00:43
Fred Rickwood
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But so many people now just assume that "radio has always sounded like this", and so - sadly - the battle is lost....
Most people haven't a clue what bitrates are and how it impacts on sound quality.

80 kbps sounds awful on a car stereo, it really does. I still prefer 32 kbps stereo DAB+, or even Union Jack's 24 kbps than 80 kbps mono.

Why have stereo when most of the stations on DAB are in mono ?????

DAB+ can't come soon enough, and I would imagine most stations will be at 48kbps. Absolute Radio for example.

Classic FM will surely go for 96 kbps stereo ?

Still, if people can't tell the difference between stereo and mono..........
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Old 05-12-2016, 08:11
tghe-retford
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In a decade there'll be not that many DAB sets left, surely.

Most sets for sale in Currys are DAB+ now.

I cannot see the BBC holding out against DAB forever. I'd imagine they'll run some experimental tests at least to gauge the response.
A fair number of the DAB sets on sale at the cheaper end of the scale (ie. the ones most people will buy) are still DAB only and won't work with DAB+. This doesn't look to be changing any time soon.
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Old 05-12-2016, 09:25
Tee Hee
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A fair number of the DAB sets on sale at the cheaper end of the scale (ie. the ones most people will buy) are still DAB only and won't work with DAB+. This doesn't look to be changing any time soon.
I do worry about people talking down the future of digital radio. Especially, when the 'future' they are talking about is already here.

'A fair number...'. No one know that number. I could just as equally say 'A fair number of the DAB sets on sale at the cheaper end of the scale are DAB+' without fear of contradiction.

And whatever that DAB-only number is, one thing is certain - it is declining all the time.

The fact is that most of the radios on the shelves at the moment contain the Chorus or Kino chipset from Frontier Silicon. These are both capable of decoding AAC for (DAB+). As we have learned from other post on other threads, whether receivers are explicitly labelled 'DAB+' or have the tick mark is no indicator that they are not capable of receiving and decoding DAB+.

So let's make our first New Year resolution here and now - to be less negative about DAB+.
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Old 05-12-2016, 09:44
martinwatkins
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Most people haven't a clue what bitrates are and how it impacts on sound quality.

80 kbps sounds awful on a car stereo, it really does. .......
But it wasn't bit rates that wrecked the former quality of FM was it - it was Optimod and its successors.

One can't really delve into why DAB sounds bad without looking both at bit rates AND at dynamics processing. The latter cause just as many of the problems as the former. Back the processing right off and there'd be an instant improvement.

Apart from remaining in mono of course!
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Old 05-12-2016, 11:00
Gerry1
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'A fair number...'. No one knows that number. I could just as equally say 'A fair number of the DAB sets on sale at the cheaper end of the scale are DAB+' without fear of contradiction.

And whatever that DAB-only number is, one thing is certain - it is declining all the time.
The number of DAB-only radios is quite significant. Browse through Tesco, Sainsbury's, John Lewis, Curry's etc and you'll find lots of them will never receive DAB+, especially their 'own label' products. No major retailers seem to claim 'All the digital radios we sell have DAB+' or even display any Digital Tick promotional material.

So the absolute number of DAB-only portable and personal radios is certainly increasing, even if the percentage may be falling slowly.
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Old 05-12-2016, 15:23
russellelly
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In a decade there'll be not that many DAB sets left, surely.
I'd argue that a lot of people replace their radios quite infrequently. My 13-year-old Evoke 1 is still going strong, as are a few other radios that are getting on for a decade.
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Old 05-12-2016, 19:50
Bangers
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The number of DAB-only radios is quite significant. Browse through Tesco, Sainsbury's, John Lewis, Curry's etc and you'll find lots of them will never receive DAB+, especially their 'own label' products. No major retailers seem to claim 'All the digital radios we sell have DAB+' or even display any Digital Tick promotional material.
All of Sainsbury's current own brand DAB sets appear to support DAB+.

Some Currys own brand Logik/JVC radios explicitly say they support DAB+. I'd reckon the others may well do too, although trying one is the only way to know for sure.

5 out of 7 John Lewis own brand radios support DAB+.

So the picture for DAB+ support at the lower price points isn't too bad either. Except for Tesco. Their support for DAB+ with their own brand radios is terrible.
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:05
mfr
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The number of DAB-only radios is quite significant. Browse through Tesco, Sainsbury's, John Lewis, Curry's etc and you'll find lots of them will never receive DAB+, especially their 'own label' products. No major retailers seem to claim 'All the digital radios we sell have DAB+' or even display any Digital Tick promotional material.

So the absolute number of DAB-only portable and personal radios is certainly increasing, even if the percentage may be falling slowly.
It's a good reason for announcing an early transition, and running an advertising campaign to kill off the incompatible devices.
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:07
clewsy
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Yes but DAB take up is slow now. It's hardly a big issue for most people, until it becomes one can't see DAB or DAB+ going wild.
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:19
mfr
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Yes but DAB take up is slow now. It's hardly a big issue for most people, until it becomes one can't see DAB or DAB+ going wild.
DAB growth is steady.

The switch is to digital more generally. If I wanted to get Radio 1 in stereo my only option used to be to listen on FM. Now, if I want to listen to Absolute Radio I can listen on DAB, the web, my mobile, satellite or Freeview.

I listen on my mobile in the car because a) it works and b) I don't want to pay for DAB conversion because of a). If DAB came as standard in my car I'd listen to that a lot more (although my mobile has the advantage of more stations).
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:37
Icaraa
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But it wasn't bit rates that wrecked the former quality of FM was it - it was Optimod and its successors.

One can't really delve into why DAB sounds bad without looking both at bit rates AND at dynamics processing. The latter cause just as many of the problems as the former. Back the processing right off and there'd be an instant improvement.

Apart from remaining in mono of course!
The Bauer stations sound awful. I know I keep saying this but it depends on how good your speakers are. Kiss and Kisstory sound atrocious in my car, because it has many speakers including subwoofers. The processing on those stations is boosting the bass. You can't do that and then drop the bitrate to 80kbps mono. It's just not going to work properly as you then turn the bass into a muddy, unlistenable mess.

You wouldn't notice this on a kitchen radio though. It sounds fine.

Ditch the processing on those stations for the DAB feed and I guarantee they'd sound better.
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:40
Gerry1
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All of Sainsbury's current own brand DAB sets appear to support DAB+.
Sainsbury's Ne-6208 radio claims that you can "Enjoy all your favourite digital and FM music stations in high sound quality." But that's complete misrepresentation because it doesn't support DAB+.

Try complaining to 0800 328 1700 and they will tell you that it's only a light hearted description that's not directed to you as an individual. No wonder their website says "never rely solely on the information presented here" !
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Old 05-12-2016, 20:47
martinwatkins
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[quote=Icaraa;84804003 Ditch the processing on those stations for the DAB feed and I guarantee they'd sound better.[/QUOTE]

Well done, at least there are a few of us who understand this!
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Old 05-12-2016, 22:09
tghe-retford
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I do worry about people talking down the future of digital radio. Especially, when the 'future' they are talking about is already here.

'A fair number...'. No one know that number. I could just as equally say 'A fair number of the DAB sets on sale at the cheaper end of the scale are DAB+' without fear of contradiction.

And whatever that DAB-only number is, one thing is certain - it is declining all the time.

The fact is that most of the radios on the shelves at the moment contain the Chorus or Kino chipset from Frontier Silicon. These are both capable of decoding AAC for (DAB+). As we have learned from other post on other threads, whether receivers are explicitly labelled 'DAB+' or have the tick mark is no indicator that they are not capable of receiving and decoding DAB+.

So let's make our first New Year resolution here and now - to be less negative about DAB+.
Despite the fact that the most prominent and trustworthy source of DAB multiplex information, Wohnort, says exactly what I just said and advises buyer beware and for people to do their research before purchasing a digital radio. The problem is, most people ain't gonna be thinking about DAB+ when purchasing a digital radio, they want a digital radio that works at a cheap price.

That's not talking down DAB+, that's just realistic and is imperative that something is falling down somewhere. I'd love for bitrate increases, DAB+ transition and a balance between choice, audio quality and cost but realistically, that is a pipe dream and the point of this thread.
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Old 05-12-2016, 22:39
Icaraa
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Well done, at least there are a few of us who understand this!
Yes, and I suppose my wider point was that they need to tailor their processing for each form of broadcasting. If you're going to broadcast at 80kbps MP2 mono then you can't use the same type of processing as on FM.
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