No DAB reception in cars near BBC Television Centre!

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message

In article ,
Fred Anonymous wrote:
Personally, I reckon that the Internet will be the way to go. Why
have
Radio 7 in DAB mono when you can have it from the Internet in
stereo?
Why operate transmitters when you can send the programmes down the
Internet?

Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff
on R7
that's actually in stereo?


Be quiet Plowman. Stop defending the indefensible. It's the 21st
century FFS.



--
Steve - www.savefm.org - stop the BBC bullies switching off FM

www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

"It is the sheer volume of online audio content available via
internet-connected devices which terrifies the UK radio industry. I
believe that broadband-delivered radio will explode in the years to
come, offering very local, unregulated content, as well as opening a
window to the radio stations of the world." - from the Myers Report

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Fred Anonymous wrote:
Personally, I reckon that the Internet will be the way to go. Why have
Radio 7 in DAB mono when you can have it from the Internet in stereo?
Why operate transmitters when you can send the programmes down the
Internet?

Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff on R7
that's actually in stereo?

Reminds me a bit of the early stereo days when they used to switch off the
pilot tone for mono broadcasts - and got complaints from listeners...

I expect they liked the hiss.

--
Max Demian

On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:51:16 +0100, DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

The problem is that the BBC is extremely biased towards DAB and biased
against Internet radio

Because the BBC are are afraid of and know that when people start using
Internet radio they will find stations other than the BBC which are better,
and also better at providing international news which is also from a non-BBC
filtered viewpoint, rather than people finding a few bad quality popular music
stations competing with them on DAB.

"J G Miller" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:51:16 +0100, DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:

The problem is that the BBC is extremely biased towards DAB and
biased
against Internet radio

Because the BBC are are afraid of and know that when people start
using
Internet radio they will find stations other than the BBC which are
better, and also better at providing international news which is
also
from a non-BBC filtered viewpoint, rather than people finding a few
bad
quality popular music stations competing with them on DAB.


I've never thought about the non-BBC filtered news thing, but they
certainly want as few people to listen to Internet radio because they
think that those that do are less likely to listen to BBC stations.

They're bullies, basically, and we don't pay them to take decisions
that are against the interests of licence-fee payers just so that they
can protect their audiences.



--
Steve - www.savefm.org - stop the BBC bullies switching off FM

www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - digital radio news & info

"It is the sheer volume of online audio content available via
internet-connected devices which terrifies the UK radio industry. I
believe that broadband-delivered radio will explode in the years to
come, offering very local, unregulated content, as well as opening a
window to the radio stations of the world." - from the Myers Report

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Fred Anonymous wrote:
Personally, I reckon that the Internet will be the way to go. Why have
Radio 7 in DAB mono when you can have it from the Internet in stereo?
Why operate transmitters when you can send the programmes down the
Internet?

Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff on R7
that's actually in stereo?

Reminds me a bit of the early stereo days when they used to switch off the
pilot tone for mono broadcasts - and got complaints from listeners...

--
*Ever stop to think and forget to start again?

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

Hi Dave.

I usually listen to Radio 7 around 6pm or 11pm. This is when I can sit down
and appreciate the stereo image. Of course, if I am busy then I will record
the programme and play it later when I, once again, can listen in stereo.

I bought my first stereo tuner nearly 40 years ago so I see Radio 7's "mono
only in DAB" as a very backward step.

Regards.

In article ,
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff
on R7
that's actually in stereo?


Be quiet Plowman. Stop defending the indefensible. It's the 21st
century FFS.

Thanks for confirming your only interest in radio is reading specs rather
than listening to it.

--
*(on a baby-size shirt) "Party -- my crib -- two a.m

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

In article ,
Fred Anonymous wrote:
Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff on
R7 that's actually in stereo?

Reminds me a bit of the early stereo days when they used to switch off
the pilot tone for mono broadcasts - and got complaints from
listeners...

Hi Dave.

I usually listen to Radio 7 around 6pm or 11pm. This is when I can sit
down and appreciate the stereo image. Of course, if I am busy then I
will record the programme and play it later when I, once again, can
listen in stereo.

My guess is you're pretty rare. Most listen to radio while doing other
things.

I bought my first stereo tuner nearly 40 years ago so I see Radio 7's
"mono only in DAB" as a very backward step.

Could be there'd be no R7 had they stuck to the original data rates on DAB.

--
*When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty*

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

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Fred Anonymous wrote:
Personally, I reckon that the Internet will be the way to go. Why have
Radio 7 in DAB mono when you can have it from the Internet in stereo?
Why operate transmitters when you can send the programmes down the
Internet?

Just how often do you sit down in the sweet spot to listen to stuff on R7
that's actually in stereo?

I don't really listen to R7, but I do like music in stereo, and some of
the principles would be the same.

I find I don't need to sit in the sweet spot to hear that stereo sounds
better than mono. Obviously there is an even better stereo experience
actually sitting in the sweet spot, and I like to experience that
occasionally. However most of the time just having 2 speakers in
reasonable locations is enough to enjoy stereo, while doing other things.

Richard E.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:


Could be there'd be no R7 had they stuck to the original data rates on DAB.


Or if they'd used aac instead of mp2, then it would be there in stereo,
at hi-fi quality.

Richard E.

Brian Gaff wrote:
I heard a worrying thing the other day that there are some plans afoot to
supply smaller fm transmitters from a dab feed.

If this is true, and not just word of mouth, then we all might as well shove
cotton wool in our ears now.

Don't know whether they will actually do it. However if you consider the
number of small FM relay stations, it would be very expensive to switch
them all to DAB when/if the FM switch off goes ahead. But of course if
they switch off the main FM sites, then where would the small relay
stations get their feeds from. So in some ways feeding them from DAB
makes sense (appart from one problem, DAB doesn't actually make sense).


The problem on dab is that the stations seem to vary so much in how they
sound. Do they keep changing the bit rate at a whim?

Sound quality doesn't just depend upon bit rate. Some pieces of audio
are harder to encode then others. Hence for a given bit rate, quality
will vary depending upon what you are encoding.

What they ought to do is use high enough bit rates to cope with the hard
to encode parts, but of course that is not what they do. They use bit
rates that almost work when encoding the easy bits, so on the hard
parts, the audio quality falls apart.

Listen to the
difference in London between lbc's two stations when they join up at night
on dab. Both are worse than fm, but the medium wave dab version is far far
worse in that it is quite clearly very low bit rate.
Gritty and dynamic limited.

Possibly different pre processing of the audio, and different encoders.
Perhaps they save money by taking the pre processed audio that is fed to
the FM and MW transmitters. If that is the case then the MW version
would probably have more processing than the FM version.

Richard E.