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DAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.
by voltagex_ 10y ago
DAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.
- l1ambda 10y agoI believe it. That's not nearly enough bits.
- Bamberg 10y agoIt seems that to achieve the same perceived quality as FM you need about 160kbit/s (when using DAB). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting
- tormeh 10y agoIf you live next to the radio tower, perhaps. I prefer to have more sound in my noise than FM can offer.
- scholia 10y agoWhat sort of aerial are you using?
- scholia 10y agoI ask because FM waves are 2.8 to 3.4 metres long, so a quarter-wave FM aerial should be 70-86cm (28-33 inches) long....
- tormeh 10y agoNo idea. Car radios etc. They work amazingly well in Oslo, but they're useless out in the bushes. Radio isn't fun when you only hear half the conversation. Give me error correction and lossy codecs any time.
- scholia 10y agoWell, if there's no signal you won't get a result whether it's analogue or digital, In fact, digital works less well at low signal strengths: instead of a noisy, hissy FM radio you usually get nothing ;-) AM goes further, of course, if AM is available...
- snom380 10y agoThe bitrate requirement should be lower for DAB+, although this article seems to contradict that: http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2013/11/what-bitrate-is-needed-to-sound-like-analog-fm/ http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2013/11/what-bitrate-is-...
- snom380 10y agoIt can be set independently per station. As an example, in Norway the NRK Jazz channel transmits at 64 kbit/s, while NRK Klassisk (classical music) transmits at 96 kbit/s.
- jhasse 10y ago96 kbit/s AAC still isn't enough IMHO. 128 kbit/s OPUS would be awesome :)
- scholia 10y agoDAB mandated the use of MP2, which pre-dated MP3. DAB+ uses MP4 aacPlus(HE-AAC v2). Unfortunately this doesn't improve sound quality because stations use the extra efficiency to switch to lower bit-rates. Some countries have stations at 48kbps. The UK is leading the drive to lower sound quality with DAB+ stations on the SDL multiplex at 32kbps. Note that DAB+ also hides a cost increase because stations have to pay Fraunhofer for its patents. Fun, isn't it? ;-)
- kuschku 10y ago> because stations have to pay Fraunhofer for its patents. Fun, isn't it? ;-) Fun it is, considering that money goes all back to Germany! insert evil German laugh here
- gambiting 10y agoThe worst thing about DAB for me is that any signal interruption causes complete lack of sound, and then my car takes at least 5 seconds to tune back in. It's extremely infuriating - I much prefer FM radio which gets noisy, but at least you can continue listening, even when driving through poor signal area.
- Johnythree 10y agoOnly with cheap radios. Any advanced receiver will be constantly hunting for the best backup channel so the change over is undetectable.
- gambiting 10y agoI have a top of the line, 2016 Mercedes-AMG - you'd think that would have the best DAB receiver you can have,no? I mean, obviously it doesn't because it does this, but as a consumer I have no control over the type of DAB receiver in my car. So saying that oh it's fine, because only cheap receivers do that does not help - especially since FM behaves consistently, no matter how expensive receiver you are using.