Petition to stop FM being switched off

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Ian Smith wrote:
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.

'Mr DAB' only listens to pop music.


That much is crystal clear.

regards, Ian

Paul Martin wrote:
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:

I don't reckon its ideal but according to an Orange engineer I was
talking to on a transmitter site, he said that you could regard it as a
40 megabit capacity wi-fi point and that was just that cell of which
there're rolling out more and more as time goes by!...

Strange that I only ever get a patchy 64kbps equivalent out of my
Orange connection on 3G.

I've just been given a Vodafone 3G dongle by my company, as a trial for
internet and VPN access on my laptop when abroad and/or away from any usable
WiFi. Anyway, had a play with it yesterday in the office, and couldn't pull
more than 400kb/s down, or push more than 200 kb/s up. Not impressive, but
mind you nor was bog standard voice GSM when I tried that in 1996.


--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Paul Martin wrote:
In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Paul Martin wrote:
DAB at 128kbps doesn't like certain presenters' voices, and can also
cause drama to sound rubbish, especially if there's "atmos" in the
mix.

Can't say I've ever heard that. Sure it was at 128 kbps? Sometimes goes
lower and that does sound dreadful.
Any particular presenter? I'll swap over and have a listen.

I forget which, now. Female announcer sibillance seems to trigger some
artefacts.

As indeed it does with FM stereo. If they are doing the usual trick of
slamming into a limiter.

Or the presenter is commiting fellatio with a ribbon mike.

With 128kbps MP2 being Joint (Intensity) Stereo, the stereo image of
some sound effects and atmosphere tends to be muddied. Applause is
particularly difficult to image. On the DSat feeds, JS and Discrete
Stereo are dynamically chosen by the encoder on a block-by-block basis,
but then there is a bit more leeway when you're encoding at 192kbps.

Yes. The real problems with DAB happened when they reduced the bitrate.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I forget which, now. Female announcer sibillance seems to trigger some
artefacts.

As indeed it does with FM stereo. If they are doing the usual trick of
slamming into a limiter.

On Radio Solent a few years ago one presenter's voice would trigger the
transmitter to drop into mono briefly.

--
Mark
Please replace invalid and invalid with gmx and net to reply.

www.paras.org.uk

In message
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote:

Basically, if you understood the technologies that are used then FM
basically can't be worse than DAB.

I /do/ understand the technologies involved. FM is worse than DAB
because all the decoders we use are non-linear, therefore FM
broadcasts, once received, are subject to intermodulation and
harmonic distortions. DAB isn't. It is very much like the vinyl
versus CD and valves versus transistors arguments.

Dave

In article , Ian
Smith scribeth thus
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
"Paul Martin" wrote in message

In article ,
Kráftéé wrote:
jasee wrote:
Alan wrote:
In message , DAB sounds worse
than FM wrote
There's a 10 Downing St petition to stop FM/AM being switched
off:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/AM-FM-Radio/

Why would anyone want to sign something that may prevent us
getting
hundreds of radio stations on DAB?
Why would it do that?
How many more rubbish radio stations (at lower quality than FM) do
you want anyway?
But with a greater bandwidth they wouldn't have to compress the
audio
so much & so you could have better quality sound, the way it should
be!
What greater bandwidth? The trend has been to crank down the
bitrates,
from 128kbps, to 112kbps, and even 96kbps.


Or to switch from stereo to mono to save even more bandwidth...


Of the commercial stations,
only Classic FM has used a half-decent bitrate (160kbps).


Literally 98% of stereo stations on DAB in the UK use a bit rate of
112 or 128 kbps (counting multiple instances of the same station when
they're on different multiplexes).

Radio 3 uses 192kbps. So there you go, much better and sensible use
of valuable bandwidth: 192kbps for R3, where high quality is
essential, 64kbps for R4 where it is mainly mono speech, and close
to that for modern music which is mainly speech and percussion. Ideal.


Yep but why degrade Radio 4 speech anyway?..

If its an issue why don't they turn off FM and got back to 198 kHz?..


You can't do that with FM.

Why would they want 2 ?..

The sooner it gets switched over the
community radio the better.


Really, just how many comm stations do you think can be sustained?..
regards, Ian

--
Tony Sayer

In article , Ian
Smith scribeth thus
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:


Yeah, that's for YOU. But for anybody with good reception quality on
both DAB and FM the quality on FM is better. Basically, if you
understood the technologies that are used then FM basically can't be
worse than DAB.

I designed and built by first stereo FM tuner when I was still at
school, so I probably do understand it.

I have lived in many locations and I have never ever had what I
consider to be an adequately listenable (HiFi) FM reception (for
classical and operatic music, where very quiet periods can be
common). Even with an FM feed over cable (where over modulation from
the head-end kit causes problems with high-peak-level content) the
overall listener experience is unacceptable. My experience is that
FM will always have hiss if listened to on good equipment in any
real-world situation. DAB doesn't. With a good aerial I have never
heard any drop-out, burbling or twanging to interrupt my listening
even with the most demanding programmes and the widest dynamic range
over DAB.


Jeezzzz just where do you, and have you lived?..

Yes 'perfect' and 'idealised' FM is fairly good, but you just don't
get it very often. Add to this that the trade-off between hiss and
over-modulation with classical and operatic content is impossible to
reconcile with FM. You can also frequently hear tearing of the high
audio frequencies where the demodulator is unable to follow the HF
audio content - even with good tuners. The average Pure Evoke DAB
portable will produce better audio performance on this sort of
programme content when plumbed through a good system.

The majority of people rate DAB quality to be higher than FM. Fact.
This is also my experience.


Arguments about R4 speech radio in mono being compared to
FM are just futile and don't relate to any real user experience.


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.

You obviously didn't read what I wrote, did you? You responded with
the same futile point.

regards, Ian

--
Tony Sayer

In article , charles
scribeth thus
In article ,
tony sayer wrote:

Mate of mine has a factory fit DABble radio comparing FM from Madingley
near Cambridge 500 watts of FM out performs 4 kW of DAB!..

Been in the car and seen it myself!..

Sound as though the aerial system in the car doesn't work properly at Band
III.


Quarter wave around 12 inches long. Mounted to the rear of the roof....
--
Tony Sayer

In article , The Natural Philosopher wrote:
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.

Lossless compression does exist.
If there is total silence, you dont need a full bandwidth to carry it..
The real point is, what is the information content?

Oh it exists all right, but it's not being used for broadcasting.

As far as I know, the only non-compressed digital audio available to the
public is on CDs. It's a good job the CD was invented when it was; a few
years later and it would have been cheapened by cloth-eared philistines like
all the other formats.

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

In article , Dave Higton wrote:
I /do/ understand the technologies involved. FM is worse than DAB
because all the decoders we use are non-linear, therefore FM
broadcasts, once received, are subject to intermodulation and
harmonic distortions. DAB isn't. It is very much like the vinyl
versus CD and valves versus transistors arguments.

My apologies for repeating myself, but this silly argument seems to
have been repeated a few times and needs nailing down.

Saying that a comparison between FM and DAB is like a comparison
between vinyl and CD is nuts. DAB uses destructive digital bit-rate
reduction; CD doesn't. CD audio is sampled at more than twice the
highest frequency most people can hear, with enough bits to give a
dynamic range greater than any mechanical gramophone system and
certainly well beyond that of a typical living room, and then no
information is thrown away. None at all. It's better than FM, better
than gramophone records, better than tape cassetes, and it stays that
way all the way to the customer.

The main criticisam of DAB is that information *is* thrown away in such
a manner that it can never be completely recovered, not even
theoretically, and this is done by the broadcasters themselves before
the signal even gets to the transmitter.

Rod.
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