Petition to stop FM being switched off

In message , Paul Martin
writing at 10:38:24 in his/her local time opines:-
In article ,
Eps wrote:

Radio 4 is in mono on DAB quite frequently in the evening whereas it's
in stereo on FM. Not sure how anyone can deny that it's better to have
stereo than mono.

I am deaf in one ear, I wish all audio broadcasts were in mono.

In theory its easy to force mono on the receiving device but not that
many actually let you.

You're not Brian Wilson, are you? :-)

It's a fallacy that someone who is deaf in one ear can't hear in stereo;
and it's a fallacy that deprived us of stereo Beach Boys recordings for
a long time :-(

While you indeed need two eyes for stereoscopic vision, the hearing
mechanism works rather differently, and can perfectly well detect the
phase and timing differences inherent in the sound from spread-out live
sources arriving via different paths - including reflected paths.

It may well be, though, that the simulation of stereo obtained by
pan-potting between two fixed point sources (loudspeakers) does not work
so well for the single ear - though turning side on to them is worth
trying.

But plain stereo over headphones certainly won't work....




--
Roy Brown 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd useful, or believe to be beautiful' William Morris

On 26 June, 10:58, tony sayer wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus



bugbear wrote:
Graham Murray wrote:
bugbear writes:

There's not enough business to use all the slots on DVB or current
DAB - where's the business model to pay for all these stations
you dream of?

So why do they not increase the bitate of the stations that are
transmitting, thus increasing the quality?

Good question - I wish they would.

Maybe the recievers or the modulators they have cannot cope?

* BugBear

For FM not problem .. but dab these only so many bits in the MUX...
--
Tony Sayer

Perhaps I need to make my point more bluntly. I won't sign any
petition that is not written in English. Too many people these days
rely on spell check and disregard their own knowledge of our language
or are too idle to look in an English dictionary. The number of people
who will put their name to a petition written in American about UK
national British radio will be hugely reduced because it was written
in haste and without care. We should care for our language and for our
national broadcasters and ensure that in the UK we write in Engish. I
for one will not sign this scruffy document.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
wrote:
The comparison between FM and DAB is nothing like the comparison
between gramophone recordings and compact discs. The digital bit rate
on CD is about 10 times the best rates we are now using on DAB and is
not subject to any destructive bit-rate reduction.

And that resolves to how much the compression algorithms suit teh
material being played.

I'm sure compression algorithms can be tailored for various types of
material, but the result can never be as good as something that doesn't
use any compression at all.

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

In article , Jn wrote:
I don't personally believe there would be enough people who want this
unless you can have some killer content/facility (just having thousands
of music/talk stations isn't that attractive). But then people do seem
willing to part with around £50/month for satellite services so I could
well be wrong, again.

Comparing my internet radio at home with other sources of the same kind of
thing, instead of having a choice of just *two* classical music stations
on FM, the same two on DAB at poorer quality, or only *one* on freeview, I
have *dozens* from all over the world, some concentrating on particular
styles of music, some of them at much better quality than any of the
alternatives. If that isn't a selling point, I don't know what is. If it's
available at reasonable cost as an option the next time I buy a car, I'll
definitely go for it. DAB doesn't offer me anything I haven't already got,
but internet radio does. Simple as that.

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

In article et, Dave
Liquorice wrote:
A 3G internet car radio with a reasonable number of presets doesn't need
us to invent anything new - just to extend and reconfigure what we've
already got. With literally thousands of radio stations, everybody can
have their choice of quality or quantity.

Untill they are all trying to listen through one cell in a traffic
jam on the M6...

As a broadcast medium the internet is not upto it, at least with
todays system. If multicast ever gets out there in a meaningful way
things might be different but how many connections can a single 3G
cell support at say 128kbps each susutained?

You're talking about today. I'm talking about tomorrow. Who would have
thought when the telephone was invented in the days of Queen Victoria that
the same twisted copper wires intended for 3kHz audio could one day carry
moving colour pictures and stereo sound...?

Where there's a will there's a way.

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

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:06:12 +0100, tony sayer
wrote:

snip

I remember once being given a demonstration of Vinyl-v-CD by Derek
Scotland of Audiolab fame.

I was amazed at how good he got the Vinyl to sound, and that it seems
was due to the right equipment and some Japanese pressings. OK not quite
the same in terms of distortion and absolute signal to noise ratio but
very impressive indeed;!..


I had much the same demonstration given to me at Grahams of Islington
back on the '90s. I'd pitched up with a couple of grand fully
intending to buy a spiffing CD deck.
The chap asked me a few questions and we discussed options, and then
he asked me if I'd ever heard a decent record deck.
I told him I'd heard a Rega Planar 3, so he suggested - just for fun -
that I have a listen to a couple of decks.

I wasn't expecting much, and to be honest I was quite keen to walk out
with a posh CD deck...but as they'd asked me to bring both vinyl and
CD albums along it seemed like a good idea.
I had a few albums on both media, so he started off with the CD
versions - all of which sounded amazing...and then he played the
vinyl, first on a Rega, then on a more expensive deck and finally on a
Linn.
I was shocked at the difference.
Listening to the Eric Dolphy album on CD was, I thought, a revelation
- but on the Linn my chair had moved from in front of the band to
within it.
I remember saying to the chap that I couldn't understand how anyone
who'd had this demonstration would buy a CD deck.

The odd thing is that although the vinyl had a few pops and crackles I
simply didn't notice them - which was rather ironic considering that
I'd gone there with the purpose of buying a bit of kit that eliminated
the problem.
I left with a Linn, and I still have it to this day.

Regards,


--
Steve ( out in the sticks )
Email: Take time to reply: timefrom_usenet{at}gmx.net

charles wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:


the real solution is to go higher in frequency. Much more space, and not
already allocated. AND it doesn't hop skip and jump all over the world.

trouble is that the higher frequency the less the 'bending' round obstacles
and the less penetration through building materials.

Thats what broadband is for! BUT GHz stuff bounces OFF buildings and
diffracts through gaps. so its not all bad!

tony sayer wrote:
In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus
tony sayer wrote:
In article , Fredxx
scribeth thus
"Ian Smith" wrote in message
o.uk...
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

In other words, you live in a crap FM reception area.
There is some truth in that.
Reception quality is different to audio quality, and anybody who has
reasonably good reception quality on both DAB and FM will receive higher
qulaity on FM.
Well, most people don't agree with you. Whether they are discerning or
not, I don't know.

I don't agree with you in terms of quality. I have an excellent sound
system and I've never managed to get anything that gets near hiss-free on
FM.

This is very much like the vinyl v CD discussion. Vinyl have me crackly
playback, oven on a good deck and with a new pressing. CD gave me click
and pop free playback - no matter what any HiFi mag says, the 'quality' of
my CD experience is higher.
On paper the CD should be miles ahead of vinyl. Most CDs uses 2 channels
of 16 bits at 44.1kSamples/sec. There is no sompression so there are no
artifacts. The data rate is an astounding 1.4Mb/s. 16 bits give 72dB audio
range which is better than my ears.

I remember once being given a demonstration of Vinyl-v-CD by Derek
Scotland of Audiolab fame.

I was amazed at how good he got the Vinyl to sound, and that it seems
was due to the right equipment and some Japanese pressings. OK not quite
the same in terms of distortion and absolute signal to noise ratio but
very impressive indeed;!..
Early D to A chips suffered from 'crossover distortion' (actually MSB
inaccuracy). That was one reason for the myth of 'CD sounds worse'

By the early 80's that was all history.


Likewise, the 'quality' of my DAB experience on radio 3 is higher than I
could have ever achieved with FM (in any location I've ever tried it).
Arguments about R4 speech radio in mono being compared to FM are just
futile and don't relate to any real user experience.
It's easy to show that performance of FM is generally superior to DAB,
however it just goes to show how subjective the human ear-brain interface is
that it can be fooled into thinking otherwise so easily.


Well FM given a sufficient signal, and remember too that DAB needs a
sufficient signal to work properly, can be very good indeed. And unlike
DAB where that is degraded due to the "cost of bits" FM degrades to Mono
only because of the signal level.

I prefer a GOOD digital implementation, mostly because the common
problems with FM are because the signal is NOT good.

Wouldn't have thought that where you lived they'd be any problems but
there is a DAB transmitter in your backyard;!..

Is there? Tacolneston is a LONG way away mate. No decent FM here.


Unless you lose frames completely, the response of a decent digital
system in noise is better.

So a hissy FM signal becomes a perfectly clean digital signal.

Whereas an FM signal goes to mono then a bit of hiss, a DAB signal goes
to bubblin mud then silence;!..

Ah, but it does that when the FM has already gone..That's the thing with
digits. A lot easier to pull them out of noise.


Also, the problems of audio distortion only start after what is in
decent signal conditions a 'perfect' decoder. Misaligned IF strips wont
affect the sound quality at all as long as the decoder can decode, it
will decode 'perfectly'


Misaligned FM strips are long gone now..

As are decent ones. Its all a ceramic filter innit? sound HORRIBLE by
comparison.

I've had a FM versus CD setup here using a first class NCO type
modulator and only about one person could reliably tell the difference
and that was on solo soprano voice!.
Odd that. I got the worst FM degradations when I played with it years
ago on complex upper register stuff..mainly due to phase shifts at high
modulation depthsh and pretty high frequencies..upset the stereo
decoding as well.


This was a very good transmitter driver unit a Harris CD which has specs
more like a very good audio amp..

In the days when it was only the home service, the light program etc
etc. and guaranteed 400KHZ spacings a very broadband IF strip gave you
very decent performance: the necessity to pull that down to reject
adjacent channels in a more crowded spectrum bolloxed up the audio
performance. Add in cheap ceramic IF filters instead of tuneable cans,
and for most people, the performance wasn't that good. OK you COULD get
very expenisve tailored filters that were both fast cutoff and minimal
phase shift, but that was serious money..

I think a lot of that was -then- rather than now;!..


I am not so sure Tony. My best ever IF strip was one 6 pole filter, we
replacee with 2 x 4 pole to get selectivity up, but it weren't as
good..now you cant do (IMHO ) the real banana without 1east least an 8
pole for selectivity and unless you go mad, really 10 or 12 poles to
both preserve the quality and kill the next door channels.

There may be commercial SAW stuff that emulates that level, don't know,
BUT the point remains that necessary sidebands are out there +- 200KHz
for quality, as are other stations. The final conclusion I came to was
that the actual theoretical quality would never be achieved - you
either had adjacent channel burbles, OR knocked the clarity out of the
top end.

The great think about DAB is that adjacent channel burble gets stamped
on. As long as its below the main signal level, you will never hear it.

The move from AM to FM was really about exchanging a direct reflection
of S/N ratio in an AM baseband modulated channel with a better S/N ratio
by using more channel width than the audio was. So more bandwidth, less
noise.

But then the BBC WAS the only transmission agency.,

Times change.





I suppose what I am saying is, whilst in theory an FM signal is superior
to a bad DAB signal, the reality of MOST peoples experience is that
neither the signal strength, nor the quality of the receiving equipment
is good enough to make that a fact in practice.

Compared to that irritating noise that is UK DAB not quite so..

Well I haven't tried DAB on radio..its fine on the TV channels tho.

Not that I'm against digital modes of transmission for instance for home
use on satellite the German broadcasters are very generous with the bits
and it shows .. well rather sounds
With digits, the chipsets take all the hard work out of the quality: you
get a predictable performance at far lower production costs.


In fact some car radios now used DSP..for FM ..

Yep. An area I was looking into when I decided there was no future in
circuit design any more..

Frankly here, I get a better audio performance out of audio streaming
over the internet than I do for all but my most expensive tuner.

Something wring there then.. tho net streaming with the best stations
can be very good..

No, juts te most expensive tuner has a decent S/N and senitivity. The
rest are crap and/or portables. Signal is not good here.

I mean fer chrissake I was getting RUSSIAN instead of radio 2.. on FM.
Leastways it sounded slavic. That was an FM portable..some sort of freak
atmospherics I suppose.

Yes also affects DAB badly to due to that time of year again as I'm sure
your digital telly will be playing up where you are and your aerials
pointing unless you've got a sky dish now?..

Never ever a dish!

Get a bit of digital breakup now and again. Must realign the aerial again

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Eeyore wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Besides, DAB is inferior. Good FM beats it hands down.
I'm surprised at that statement from you, Graham. DAB at a decent
bitrate knocks FM into touch. Of course if you want to compare 'good'
FM to poor bitrate DAB to make a point, so be it.

DAB sadly AIUI uses an ancient codec that's fixed in stone. The choice of
codec should have been left open to allow for improvements.

Just how? The receiver had to decode the signal. And making one which
could be re-programmed would cost a fortune. But of course it is proposed
to change the codec on DAB - making all older sets obsolete.

Like the dials on valve radios..saying 'Hilversum' 'Light Programme' and
the like.

Times change..

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:04:35 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
Eeyore wrote:


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Besides, DAB is inferior. Good FM beats it hands down.

I'm surprised at that statement from you, Graham. DAB at a decent
bitrate knocks FM into touch. Of course if you want to compare 'good'
FM to poor bitrate DAB to make a point, so be it.

DAB sadly AIUI uses an ancient codec that's fixed in stone. The choice of
codec should have been left open to allow for improvements.

Just how? The receiver had to decode the signal. And making one which
could be re-programmed would cost a fortune. But of course it is proposed
to change the codec on DAB - making all older sets obsolete.

I'm not convinced. A lot of consumer level electronics have firmware
that can be updated 'over the air'. MP3 players, mobile phones and
STBs to name but 3.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
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posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
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