How Good is Freeview Audio Quality

Hierarchy is roughly: -

5.1 on DVD

No way.

5.1 on DVD (uncompressed)
CD

big gap

5.1 on DVD (compressed) the hf response nowhere near CD quality

gap

FM radio
Nicam on analogue TV
Digital TV (DTT only) higher bitrates on Freeview
Digital TV (satellite)

big gap

DAB (BBC channels broadcasting in joint stereo but played back without
surround)
AM radio
DAB (BBC channels broadcasting in joint stereo but played back with
surround)

massive gap

DAB (independent radio channels/stereo or mono)

massive gap

BBC Asian Network (there is no way the BBC Asian Network comes anywhere
near the quality of the same service on AM)


CD
Nicam on analogue TV (supports Dolby surround)
FM radio
Digital TV (DTT or satellite)
Analogue satellite (even this was pretty good and in stereo)

large gap

DAB
AM radio

What criteria are you using here. Frequency response?
What order would you put them in for dynamic range?

--
Graham.

%Profound_observation%

In article 1inbmtv.otbwud50nsxsN%
lid, Alan Pemberton wrote:
I have been listening to the season this year on both R3 and BBC2/4 via
headphones and they seemed much the same in terms of sound balance and
quality. There was a dreadfully annoying burbling noise on telly but
after a while I realised it was just the celebs waffling.

:-) I noticed that too. The one saving grace is that most of the Proms
were broadcast live so there wasn't too much damage they could do. The
concerts that suffered most from "presentation disease" were the
prerecorded ones, which somebody seemed to think needed the same
treatment as multipart dramas, so we were given a few seconds out of the
middle of the music we were about to hear - just before hearing it. I
hope this stupidity gets no worse. There isn't much to be done about the
burbling celebs, but at least on a live broadcast they have to shut up
for the music itself, recognising that a symphony orchestra in a hall
full of thousands of people is an unstoppable force.

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

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
Alas, most people canna be bothered with the effort involved in doing
non-subjective work, so opt for subjective opinions. Easier to produce,
and by stating them as 'personal opinions' no-one can show you are wrong
if you also refuse to take part in a controlled blind test. :-)

I was an early adopter of DAB due to adverse FM reception here - and was
surprised to find it sounded very much brighter than any of my FM tuners.
I surmised that *perhaps* the makers of the tuner were trying to make it
sound 'better' than FM so set about EQ'ing it to match FM. After that

Was your DAB radio, mono or stereo?

exercise the differences were more limited to my local FM reception
difficulties on some stations which DAB didn't exhibit.. Then, of course,
the kbs was reduced which produced new differences - but only on some
material.

I notice some here talk about the 'metallic' sound of DAB and wonder if
it's simply a similar thing by some tuner makers? Unfortunately I don't
know of a way to do a frequency run on a DAB unit to prove it one way or
the other.

It sounds like someone talking or playing music through squelching mud. It's
impossible to listen to something with so much distortion. What it is
comparable to is the metallic sound produced by Single Side Band (SSB) HAM
radio when decoded using a BFO.

DAB is a step into the stone age. It's effectively dead already now that
mobile phone companies are offering mobile broadband connections to the
internet and any internet radio station broadcasting at 128kbps in mp3 or
64kbps in OGG Vorbis sounds 100 times better.

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:02:02 +0100,
lid (Alan Pemberton) wrote:

There was a dreadfully annoying burbling noise on telly but
after a while I realised it was just the celebs waffling.

:-)

If they were unsure about classical music and that was their first
introduction to it, anyone with even half a brain would have channel
hopped away by the time the music started, possibly never to return.

I don't know where people get this crazy idea that something that
demands from the listener nothing more than willingness to sit still
and listen, perhaps even - shock, horror - concentrate, can be
made more accessible by repulsive pseudo-intellectual twaddle.

I like to think of myself as an intellectual, so I might be expected
to nod my head at the pontifications of the good and the great,
muttering: "How true!", but instead I usually record all music shows
so I can FF over the noise to the beginning of the actual music.

Music, indeed any artistic endeavour, is primarily about *feeling*,
about emotional impact. If music doesn't hit you like a train between
the eyes, if it doesn't carry you down an emotional white-water rapid,
if a picture doesn't make you gasp at its beauty, its desolation, or
whatever it's trying to convey, then it's failed.

Sometimes this won't happen the first time you hear or see something -
you might have to get to know the work better before the hairs on the
back of your neck start to tingle - sometimes it's the other way
round - something you thought was good initially turns out not to
have staying power - but ultimately, if you never get an emotional
experience from a piece of art, then it's spelt with a capital 'F'.

The time between the pieces at the Proms are filled with more
pretentious drivel than a right-thinking person will ever want to hear
in a lifetime. It would be better spent seeing a short or hearing a
voice-over about the artists' life and what (s)he was doing when the
piece was composed.

I think I'm going to invent a new reality show: "I'm a celebrity, zip
my mouth up!"

However, I did notice on many concerts severe creaking and other
'bright' noises in the foreground, which I found most distracting (I
kept thinking they were noises in my own room). On the Last Night, I
noticed that some of the music stands had mics attached about halfway up
the uprights. Very odd.

Yes there were some curious un-BBC-of-the-past-like things going on
this year.

Yes, there has been a *lot" of extraneous noise this year, both of the
type you describe and from the audience.

One work in one Prom seemed to be distorted (this is via Freeview or
Freesat, can't remember which), yet the next piece that followed was
fine, I don't know if they had a bad mike and managed to change it
during the stage reshuffle or what.

IIRC, in the days when I went a few times, they used mikes suspended
from above, which I would have thought was a much better way of
getting an overall balanced sound. If what you say is correct, then
that suggests that the BBC has decided to try and mike up each section
of the orchestra and are trying to balance the sound 'on the fly',
instead of just letting the conductor's choice of balance being picked
up by the microphones, which is what they should be doing. That would
also explain why the sound has had some very strange balance this year
- I can't remember all of them now, but many pieces were ruined by
the main melody line being drowned, one example being passages of
Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique.

On Sep 14, 7:24*pm, "R. Mark Clayton"
wrote:
"Davy" wrote in message

. 109.145...

I have a Sony Triniton stereo CRT TV which has pretty good
audio and have recently acquired a Humax 9200 PVR which
has audio outputs. *I am wondering about getting a mid-
prices stereo system to feed the audio into.

How good is the audio on Freeview transmissions. *Can it
drive a woofer? *How would Radio 3 sound?

Davy

Hierarchy is roughly: -

5.1 on DVD
CD
Nicam on analogue TV (supports Dolby surround)
FM radio
Digital TV (DTT or satellite)
Analogue satellite * *(even this was pretty good and in stereo)

large gap

DAB
AM radio

FM is better than NICAM, and you put Analogue satellite last - but
this uses FM for its sound.
You also put Digital TV quite high, and DAB quite low, but they both
use the exact same codec - MP2 - so could both sound exactly the same
in theory.
Each system has artefacts, so rating them like this is an
oversimplification.

wrote in message
...
On Sep 14, 7:24 pm, "R. Mark Clayton"
wrote:
"Davy" wrote in message

. 109.145...

I have a Sony Triniton stereo CRT TV which has pretty good
audio and have recently acquired a Humax 9200 PVR which
has audio outputs. I am wondering about getting a mid-
prices stereo system to feed the audio into.

How good is the audio on Freeview transmissions. Can it
drive a woofer? How would Radio 3 sound?

Davy

Hierarchy is roughly: -

5.1 on DVD
CD
Nicam on analogue TV (supports Dolby surround)
FM radio
Digital TV (DTT or satellite)
Analogue satellite (even this was pretty good and in stereo)

large gap

DAB
AM radio

FM is better than NICAM, and you put Analogue satellite last - but

Correct in the case of Community radio stations, and stations not run by the
BBC since BBC FM stations use NICAM for the links to their transmitters. As
long as the BBC has nothing to do with the loop, FM will always sound better
then NICAM, which is a 10bit system interpolated to 14bits. FM S/N ratio and
dynamic range is about 60dB or better for stereo and 70dB for mono. NICAM
S/N ratio and dynamic range is 54dB stereo and mono. Both FM and NICAM use
companders so the interpolated dynamic range for NICAM is bull****. You can
hear NICAM grating on any decent pair of headphones. I have included the
effect of this in the S/N figure since that's about the level you can hear
it at.

this uses FM for its sound.
You also put Digital TV quite high, and DAB quite low, but they both
use the exact same codec - MP2 - so could both sound exactly the same
in theory.

DAB uses mp2 at bitrates of 128kbps or lower, which it was never designed
for and should never have been allowed to be used on it.

320kbps is the bare minimum for mp2 to sound close to CD quality. OfCom and
its predecessor should have forced all DAB broadcasters to encode at no
lower than 256kbps for stereo like they do in Europe. And this is before we
even get to the fact that the transmitter power currently used for DAB is
not sufficient enough to provide an unbroken signal on mobile receivers in
most parts of the country, which is why most car radio manufacturers
abandoned it from the start as being totally useless.

Each system has artefacts, so rating them like this is an
oversimplification.

All that needs saying is DAB is complete and utter rubbish and is
effectively dead and buried. Don't spend your money on it. The internet is
now recognised at the main platform for digital radio, both fixed and
mobile.

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
I was an early adopter of DAB due to adverse FM reception here - and
was surprised to find it sounded very much brighter than any of my FM
tuners. I surmised that *perhaps* the makers of the tuner were trying
to make it sound 'better' than FM so set about EQ'ing it to match FM.
After that

Was your DAB radio, mono or stereo?

I'd have thought 'tuner' gave a clue. Stereo.

exercise the differences were more limited to my local FM reception
difficulties on some stations which DAB didn't exhibit.. Then, of
course, the kbs was reduced which produced new differences - but only
on some material.

I notice some here talk about the 'metallic' sound of DAB and wonder
if it's simply a similar thing by some tuner makers? Unfortunately I
don't know of a way to do a frequency run on a DAB unit to prove it
one way or the other.

It sounds like someone talking or playing music through squelching mud.
It's impossible to listen to something with so much distortion.

Isn't that due to poor signal?

What it is comparable to is the metallic sound produced by Single Side
Band (SSB) HAM radio when decoded using a BFO.

Dunno that one.

DAB is a step into the stone age. It's effectively dead already now that
mobile phone companies are offering mobile broadband connections to the
internet

You plug your mobile phone into your Hi-Fi?

and any internet radio station broadcasting at 128kbps in mp3
or 64kbps in OGG Vorbis sounds 100 times better.

With respect, that's ********.

--
*If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? *

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

On Tue, 16 Sep 2008 12:19:34 +0100, Roderick Stewart
wrote:

In article
. 145, Davy

People whose only experience of listening to music has been
through loudspeakers - even hi-fi loudspeakers - are often
surprised by what they hear the first time they attend a live
classical concert, the most usual comment being that their hi-fi
system has more bass. I think a lifetime of listening to "pretend
sound" through little boxes probably distorts people's
expectations of what the real thing should sound like. I'm not
sure which is worse, little boxes that are forced to try to
behave like big boxes, or really big boxes that are so powerful
that the bass makes your vision go blurred and gives you a
headache, but the only real cure is once in a while to go to a
real concert of real music played on real acoustic instruments
with no electronics involved and hear for yourself what the
various boxes are trying to imitate. If you've never done this, I
can recommend it.

Yes, you're absolutely right ...

1) I think there are far too many people around today who've probably
never heard accoustic music much if at all, barring perhaps a busker
in the street (and even half of them seem to be miked up these days).
Even though I was raised on accoustic music, it can still be a
revelation what things really should sound like, when you first hear
them.

There's nothing to beat the sound of a really good accoustic guitar
with a new set of strings (except possibly, no certainly, a better
player than me playing it), or sitting next to someone playing a harp
or an Appalachian dulcimer in a session, or making the coffee for the
band that my ex-wife played in while they ran through numbers in the
front room, or the sound of a piobaireachd carrying down the glen of a
summer evening, or indeed an orchestra playing a favourite symphony.

The loudspeakers built into TV sets, even expensive ones, are
usually not particularly good and sometimes dreadful. If you
actually prefer a TV set to a good hi-fi system, then you're
probably correct suggesting that this is just familiarity with
the sound of plastic. If that's your personal preference, then
nobody can tell you categorically that you're "wrong", but I
would suggest again that you seek an opportunity to hear the real
thing. Perhaps you could even try to "train" your ears to become
accustomed to the sound of a hi-fi system, as you've noted
yourself the extra headroom, almost certainly resulting from a
flatter frequency response, and you may in time find this more
restful to listen to.

2) As you suggest, a good hifi should have an absolutely flat
frequency response from around 10 or 25 Hz up to 22 to 25KHz, minimum
100dB SN Ratio, and THD of small fractions of a percent, with speaker
systems to match. Such a system is capable of conveying the full
timbre of natural accoustic sound, including all its transients and
ambience. Cheap stereos can not do this.

3) Tastes in music change, and that includes the sound balance. The
advent first of disco and then of club and dance music, as well as the
influence of genres of such as rap, have led to a modern taste in
sound which to my ears is bass heavy and artificially aggressive. I
find my ears tire of this sort of music much more quickly than they do
when I listen to something which has a well-balanced sound.

4) Further, because modern sound engineers are used to this sound ...

a) It is no longer enough, so now modern chart hits often undergo
similar DSP to advertisements to increase their impact. Someone, I
think in this ng or perhaps uk.music.folk, posted a good link about
this recently, but, despite much searching, I've been unable to find
it.

b) If called upon to restore old recordings, instead of merely
sampling them digitally, they tend to try to recreate this modern
sound from them but simply end up ruining them. As an example of this
try comparing those Fleetwood Mac tracks which are on both their
Greatest Hits CD and the Rumours CD. I think you will agree that those
on the Greatest Hits CD have an authentic balanced sound and compare
favourably with the original vinyl, whereas those on the Rumours CD
sound muffled/bass heavy/lacking in transients and do not.

c) Now I'm beginning to wonder whether they're even doing the same to
the Prom broadcasts, as explained in another post.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
I was an early adopter of DAB due to adverse FM reception here - and
was surprised to find it sounded very much brighter than any of my FM
tuners. I surmised that *perhaps* the makers of the tuner were trying
to make it sound 'better' than FM so set about EQ'ing it to match FM.
After that

Was your DAB radio, mono or stereo?

I'd have thought 'tuner' gave a clue. Stereo.

The first DAB radios I remember on the market were all mono. That should
have given people a big clue that the system used in the UK was rubbish.


exercise the differences were more limited to my local FM reception
difficulties on some stations which DAB didn't exhibit.. Then, of
course, the kbs was reduced which produced new differences - but only
on some material.

I notice some here talk about the 'metallic' sound of DAB and wonder
if it's simply a similar thing by some tuner makers? Unfortunately I
don't know of a way to do a frequency run on a DAB unit to prove it
one way or the other.

It sounds like someone talking or playing music through squelching mud.
It's impossible to listen to something with so much distortion.

Isn't that due to poor signal?

No. It's due to low bit rate. Poor signal would means you got no sound at
all. It's either all or nothing with digital. That's why DAB is useless in
car radios. DAB doesn't even have built in redundancy. If you loose part of
the signal it's undecodable. It can't be reconstructed completely without
severe dropout. It was ill-conceived right from the very start. It's 1980's
technology.


What it is comparable to is the metallic sound produced by Single Side
Band (SSB) HAM radio when decoded using a BFO.

Dunno that one.

DAB is a step into the stone age. It's effectively dead already now that
mobile phone companies are offering mobile broadband connections to the
internet

You plug your mobile phone into your Hi-Fi?

There are mobile phones with line out, same with laptop and palmtop
computers which even have SPDIF out.


and any internet radio station broadcasting at 128kbps in mp3
or 64kbps in OGG Vorbis sounds 100 times better.

With respect, that's ********.

No it isn't.

I've steamed internet radio in both OGG Vorbis and mp3. Mp3's only advantage
is that it handles clipping better. OGG at 64kbps beats mp3 at 128kbps, AAC
at 64kbps, and mp2 at 160 kbps. Mp2 at anything lower than 192kbps can't
preserve Dolby Surround encoding. In fact I don't think any commercially
used codec can preserve Dolby Surround encoding at bitrates less than
192kbps because they all use some form of joint stereo below 192kbps, so
even if DAB2 uses AAC it will still be rubbish. The only hope for DAB2 is if
the stations all broadcast in Dolby 5.1.

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
FM will always sound better
then NICAM, which is a 10bit system interpolated to 14bits.

Not 11 bit?

--
*Taxation WITH representation ain't much fun, either.

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