Home cinema - You and Yours

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Christopher Hunter wrote:

In the Real World, DAB almost invariably sounds much better than FM.

OMG. Not sure whether I should laugh or cry a at this comment.

Richard E.

"neverwas" wrote in message
om...
The fact is that all politicians pay lip service to greenyism because
it's a fad at the moment. But they know which side their bread's
buttered when it comes to votes. The GBP will support greenyism as
long as it has no impact on their quality of life (which is only
right and proper). So the politicians play a strange game, in which
they spout on about the 'environment' but carefully avoid any real
action.

Ummm, aren't the massive subsidies for "green" energy generation real,
with an impact on electricity prices?

Yes they've done that, because its disguised. It isn't shown as a seperate
item on the leccy bill.

Bill

In article , Christopher Hunter
wrote:
In the Real World, DAB almost invariably sounds much better than FM.

I think what you mean is that in the Real World large numbers of people
can be persuaded to accept it, which in practical terms may be true.
That doesn't mean it's any good.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Bill Wright wrote:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...rs_14_08_2009/

I'm surprised that you hounds haven't leapt upon this and devoured it. Go to
the 47 minute point and marvel at the sheer bloody cheek of the bloke,
telling the most outrageous lies about DAB and FM. A total morass of
misinformation. What the chuff is a '£25 adaptor'?

Bill

Given that You and Yours is the most boring radio programme ever, it is
amazing that so many people want to post about it. Bet almost none has
ever heard it for real.

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:01:15 +0100, Richard Evans wrote:

Christopher Hunter wrote:

In the Real World, DAB almost invariably sounds much better than FM.

OMG. Not sure whether I should laugh or cry a at this comment.

Richard: an explanation for the hard of thinking. The majority of DAB
receivers are actually quite well made, and include sensibly sized
loudspeakers and reasonable quality amplifiers. The vast majority of FM
receivers (particularly the much-vaunted Â£3 pocket type) are junk.

Poor FM receivers (the vast majority of them) have little selectivity,
and are prone to suffering from adjacent channel interference. The
proliferation of FM stations over the years has not been reflected in the
increased quality of the receivers, so results are almost invariably
poor.

A neighbour recently complained of "background noises" on his Â£250
Pioneer tuner. A quick listen showed that he was suffering from the over-
modulated "ethnic" pirate that was 600 kHz away from the Radio 4 he was
trying to hear. I put this tuner on the bench, and had a look at its
selectivity. It was truly horrible. The IF filtering was done with just
one cheap ceramic filter, so the acceptance bandwidth was close to 500
kHz. Modification to the IF strip resolved the problem, but it's poorly
designed, over-priced rubbish like that which will kill Band II.

You also have to remember how the majority of listening is done. Most
stations are just used as background noise - the vast majority of
"listeners" don't actually listen. The radio is there while they're
doing something else - vacuum cleaning, washing-up, driving, or
whatever.

It's a vanishingly small minority who're actually in a position to assess
the relative quality of FM and DAB. In the vast majority of cases, the
"Pure" portable that people use sounds /much/ better than the cheap crap
FM receiver they used before, so the /perceived/ results are better from
DAB.

A properly modulated FM stereo signal is pretty good (though the stereo
separation is quite poor), and as long as there isn't too much brutal
"audio processing" it can sound quite pleasant. However, the current
crop of "broadcast engineers" are obsessed with "loudness" (in an effort
to get over the noise of whatever else the "listener" is doing) so that
the results from the over-processed mess on Band II is actually quite
unpleasant to hear.

Back in my days with a Big Broadcasting Concern, we used to have to apply
(in writing) to "click" on air, and advance warning was always sent to
the quality monitoring suite! Compare that to current broadcast
practice , and the degradation of broadcast quality is sad to see...

In article ,
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
DAB doesn't suffer from the over-modulated crap that plagues Band II
and the hordes of less-then-able "pirate" radio operators.

DAB suffers from MP2 audio artefacts, though, whcih FM doesn't suffer
from. If you can't hear the artefacts on DAB, your ears are non
funciona.

But you give the impression FM is always perfect - which it most
certainly isn't. Perhaps your 'golden ears' simply don't hear the problems
with that - or more likely your soapbox causes you to ignore them.

I'm quite happy to leave it to the individual to decide if the things they
listen to sound better *to them* on FM or DAB. But do realise if you did
the same you'd have to get a life.

--
*Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
gsp wrote:
Given that You and Yours is the most boring radio programme ever, it is
amazing that so many people want to post about it.

You probably would find most of R4 boring, then. So just stick to Radio
Jackie

Bet almost none has ever heard it for real.

That's probably true of the majority. Like R4 in general.

--
*Middle age is when it takes longer to rest than to get tired.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 18 Aug 2009 09:30:42 GMT
Christopher Hunter wrote:
Pioneer tuner. A quick listen showed that he was suffering from the over-
modulated "ethnic" pirate that was 600 kHz away from the Radio 4 he was
trying to hear. I put this tuner on the bench, and had a look at its
selectivity. It was truly horrible. The IF filtering was done with just
one cheap ceramic filter, so the acceptance bandwidth was close to 500
kHz. Modification to the IF strip resolved the problem, but it's poorly
designed, over-priced rubbish like that which will kill Band II.

Having been a radio listener in pirate radio splattered london for a good part
of my life I can assure you that I've yet to come across any consumer FM
radio - be it kitchen radio, hifi tuner or car jobbie - that would not be
affected by a station 0.6 Mhz away from the one it was tuned to.

In fact pirate radio was the reason I bought some DAB kit though pirate
activity doesn't seem to be affecting the stations i listen to so much now
so I've gone back to FM (plus my not so great Sony DAB portable broke after
18 months anyway). Luckily pirate radio on DAB is pretty unlikely because
they'd either have to trash an entire multiplex to get their signal out in
which case they'd be off air in no time, or they'd have to pick an unused DAB
channel and hope all their retarded 15 year old listeners could figure out
how to retune a DAB set. Of course they'd have to nick one first.

B2003

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009 09:45:06 +0000, boltar2003 wrote:

On 18 Aug 2009 09:30:42 GMT
Christopher Hunter wrote:
Pioneer tuner. A quick listen showed that he was suffering from the
over- modulated "ethnic" pirate that was 600 kHz away from the Radio 4
he was trying to hear. I put this tuner on the bench, and had a look at
its selectivity. It was truly horrible. The IF filtering was done with
just one cheap ceramic filter, so the acceptance bandwidth was close to
500 kHz. Modification to the IF strip resolved the problem, but it's
poorly designed, over-priced rubbish like that which will kill Band II.

Having been a radio listener in pirate radio splattered London for a
good part of my life I can assure you that I've yet to come across any
consumer FM radio - be it kitchen radio, hi-fi tuner or car jobbie -
that
would not be affected by a station 0.6 Mhz away from the one it was
tuned to.

I live at a very high point in North London so field strengths are high,
and my reasonable quality domestic "hi-fi" tuner (a NAD) with an outdoor
J-pole aerial has no difficulty whatsoever in separating stations 300 kHz
apart.

In fact pirate radio was the reason I bought some DAB kit though pirate
activity doesn't seem to be affecting the stations I listen to so much
now so I've gone back to FM (plus my not so great Sony DAB portable
broke after 18 months anyway).

It's still there - I can hear (roughly) 20 unlicensed stations up here.

Luckily pirate radio on DAB is pretty
unlikely because they'd either have to trash an entire multiplex to get
their signal out in which case they'd be off air in no time, or they'd
have to pick an unused DAB channel and hope all their retarded 15 year
old listeners could figure out how to retune a DAB set.

There are two pirate multiplexes that have sprung up in France, so it's
probably going to happen here soon enough. The technology is actually
quite simple.

Of course they'd have to nick one first.

8-)