10 ms·

Swiss Broadcasting Corporation to pull plug on FM radio

162 points by austinallegro 2y ago

sitkack 2y ago
FM is so simple and robust. It should never be turned off.
- mikemitchelldev 2y ago
  Digital audio is also relatively expensive for some people. There are people who in my community who ride around on their bikes listening to fm radio. A monthly data fee could be hard for some.
  - dark-star 2y ago
    I have never heard of DAB or DAB+ requiring monthly subscription fees? At least I don't pay any, and I have a DAB+ receiver in my car
    - mikemitchelldev 2y ago
      Listening to DAB on a cellphone requires a monthly data plan.
      - arghwhat 2y ago
        You listen to DAB using a DAB radio like you listen to FM broadcasts with an FM radio. If you’re listening to something on your phone through a data plan, it’s not DAB, but an unrelated streaming service.
        dylan604 2y ago
        Not having a radio receiver in a phone has always been one of those WTF things for me. There have been articles on why iOS doesn't have a radio tuner even those the receiver is there claiming because it would divert users from apple music or whatever. It's always felt like a missed opportunity to me though
        devbent 2y ago
        Phones used to have fm receivers! It was common in the early 2010s. They used the headphone cord as an antenna.
        puetzk 2y ago
        Unihertz phones still do (even the tiny Jelly Star)
        arghwhat 2y ago
        The main reason to not have it is that unless you’re out of cellular range or has no data quota left, it’s just worse than just streaming the same stations over the internet, which also offer more content as running FM stations is expensive. Even though older iPhone baseband chips had FM receivers, you’d still need break it out and deal with the antenna setup, with the approach taken by others requiring wired headset and shenanigans in the headphone port. That’s more BOM, and user resistance to wireless headphones or newer models whose baseband chips cut the feature. It used to be a somewhat common feature in phones (including smartphones from other brands), but it usually had quite “eh” reception. And with transitions to DAB, the feature becomes unusable without DAB decoders which I’m sure someone is claiming royalties for.
        vel0city 2y ago
        There's one place where I still bring my old cell phone to use the FM receiver part: sports events. It's nice getting the announcers live instead of on a broadcast delay + digital buffer. Through the internet it's usually several seconds behind the action but on the local low power FM broadcast it's practically zero latency.
      - throw0101b 2y ago
        > Listening to DAB on a cellphone requires a monthly data plan. Cellphones used to include AM/FM radios. Personally I think it might be useful to have them for public service uses: perhaps cell network are more robust than a few years ago, but there are still instances when they could be (are) overwhelmed, and a broadcast-only system could be useful in major emergency events.
        conradfr 2y ago
        Hard to have an antenna with wireless headphones.
        arghwhat 2y ago
        hard to have an efficient VHF antenna using traditional designs Smartphones a lot* of antennas, but most target 1/10th the wavelength of FM radio.
        vel0city 2y ago
        Cell systems still have the ability to push out a message regardless of how "overwhelmed" the towers are. They'll just drop service to some customers while the higher priority emergency message is broadcasted out. A cell network doing a one-way broadcast text message to all clients is a solved problem. And honestly, I greatly prefer this way to push out an emergency message than assume I'm tuned to a radio station or broadcast TV, two things I'm rarely doing. I'm way more likely to be listening or watching local or streaming media instead of watching broadcast TV. Or even just not be doing any of that at all. Lots of people I know wouldn't even be able to tune into a broadcast TV or FM radio station outside of their cars.
  - mozman 2y ago
    I wouldn’t mind if those people blasting FM radio used headphones. I don’t believe it’s because they can’t afford them.
    - Y_Y 2y ago
      Not a good idea on a bike
      - recursive 2y ago
        I've heard this assertion many times. But after having ridden hundreds (thousands?) of hours wearing headphones, I must conclude that it's a perfectly fine idea. People believe headphones will obstruct your hearing. Some do. Some don't. Wear the ones that don't. It's also possible to set the volume to the same level that it would be from a set of handle-bar mounted speakers.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- gpvos 2y ago
  AM is even simpler and even more robust. I think we never should have switched it off.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    But AM isn't switched off.
    - ale42 2y ago
      Depends where. In Switzerland it is.
      - ClassyJacket 2y ago
        I looked for a source for this but can't find any mention of it.
        zuminator 2y ago
        "Most European countries are now running a reduced AM radio service with fewer transmitters, fewer services and lower power. Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Norway (except Svalbard), Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland have completely closed their AM radio services. Denmark retains a part-time long wave service for mariners. Lithuania has closed domestic AM radio, but retains a medium wave transmitter for international broadcasting. Only Cyprus, Hungary, Iceland and Romania (together with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Spain) are continuing with a comprehensive AM radio service." http://frequencyfinder.org.uk/AM_Other_Countries.pdf http://frequencyfinder.org.uk/AM_Other_Countries.pdf
        tempcommenttt 2y ago
        This is outdated. Denmark closed its long wave transmitter last year. The biggest hold out is bbc radio 4 and they stopped special long wave programming and the service is only still on the air because it doubles as a digital signal for some power meters.
- gwbas1c 2y ago
  In the US, our "HD" radio (we don't have DAB) sounds so bad, I end up turning it off and listening to the analog version. It sounds like they reduced bitrate by pitch-shifting down prior to transmission, and then pitch-shifting back up at playback. Everything just has this metallic ring to it: When I tried the classical station, at first I thought there was bells in the piece they were playing until I realized it was a compression artifact. When I listen to talk, I keep hearing a bell/ringing over everyone's voice. I know a lot of the newer codecs also sound great (for the car) at low bitrates, so I don't want to go and blame "quantity over quality."
  - FireBeyond 2y ago
    The whole "HD" thing of HD Radio was a deception to begin with. It blatantly played on the understanding of HD as "high definition", when all it actually meant was Hybrid Digital, i.e. you get a digital audio stream that falls back to a simulcast FM with insufficient signal strength or exceeding error correction thresholds.
    - gwbas1c 2y ago
      When I read about it years ago, It was made out to have a very high bitrate (and quality) if the analog FM signal was replaced completely by a digital signal.
ur-whale 2y ago
Does it mean the 88Mhz -> 108Mhz frequency band will go to back the auction block ?
- digitalsankhara 2y ago
  Maybe, when most regions follow suit. Hate the idea of FM broadcasting turning off. Still, would love some ham radio wideband spectrum. Then people driving to work can listen to the likes of me droning on about <insert favourite ham radio topic here>. Personally I think they should expand community radio wholesale if national broadcasters cannot be arsed.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    What's the demand like for that part of the spectrum in Switzerland? In the US it'd just be gobbled up by another corporate interest; no way that'd go to the amateur service.
    - digitalsankhara 2y ago
      In the US more than likely. In the UK I'm not so sure (can't speak to Switzerland) as there is a healthy community radio scene who may have some democratic influence. There are mutterings of trying to close UK FM broadcasting as well in order to force DAB. I'd like to think there would still be some spectrum allocated for that. If not, the pirates would take over - and good luck to them. This wholesale move away from simple, analogue radio infrastructure (AM/FM/SW radio) is a disaster waiting to happen in the event of a major regional/global catastrophe. Most amateur organisations would not even think about trying to experiment with WBFM anyway - too obsessed with ultra-narrow digital modes.
jcfrei 2y ago
Swiss here: Pretty certain this is part of a pressure campaign by the SRF ("Swiss Radio and Television"). They are facing budget cuts nationally through an initiative that will be voted on probably later this year (https://srg-initiative.ch/ https://srg-initiative.ch/). By preemptively cutting services on their own (that they are not forced to under the text of the initiative) they probably hope to sway voter's opinion.
- chinathrow 2y ago
  Cutting service costs on their own while burdening the cost to their listeners is so backwards. My car radio can't do DAB and it would cost me quite a bit of money to install a replacement radio if I want a proper setup (i.e. as before in terms of usability/integration).
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Some politicians in my country have worked out that when someone tries to force them to spend less, they can cut funding to something popular like libraries, immediately get a bunch of complaints and protests, then declare "Well we tried, it seems voters don't want us to spend less after all"
    - anamax 2y ago
      You fire them by pointing out what they kept vs. what they dropped.
    - Seattle3503 2y ago
      In the US it is called Washington Monument syndrome.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        Being a non-USAn, can you provide the background story for that? Sounds interesting.
red_admiral 2y ago
Switzerland has a national siren network, tested annually, and regularly reminds its citizens "if the sirens sound, turn on the radio to DRS/SRF 1". They've added the swissalert mobile app more recently, but I guess everyone is going to have to buy new radio sets who doesn't have a DAB+ one already.
CodeBeater 2y ago
I have a genuine question, what's to gain from this? I could half-understand it if they were going to re-allocate the 88-108 MHz block, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I could also understand why such an action would be taken if that meant that they could pack more stations in the same spectrum, but considering that Switzerland is a relatively small country, so is there really a market? Even if considering multiple languages per niche. I guess a case could be made for power savings by virtue of (assuming local topography allows) lower power transmitters or by multiplexing various stations on the same transmitter. On a personal level, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about all forms of analog broadcasting being slowly phased out. The tinkerer in me likes the idea of being capable of constructing an information receiving device in an almost "survivalist" manner, but if this trend continues and analog FM really goes the way of the dodo, then I surmise that DAB (or whichever local flavor is chosen) will become easily and cheaply available, which makes my gut feeling a moot point anyway. I don't know, I just don't like the idea of needing a processor to receive broadcast audio, and I can't quite put my finger on why.
- dark-star 2y ago
  It probably lets them scrap large amounts of FM transmitters, relays, broadcasting hardware and maintenance. I assume in a mountainous country such as Switzerland this adds up to quite a lot
  - brnt 2y ago
    Considering DAB has less range, the amount of antennas would need to go up.
    - ale42 2y ago
      But DAB is already deployed, removing the FM part will probably allow them to spare money. I think the transmitters are managed by someone else than SRF (maybe Swisscom broadcast), as any service it can be pretty expensive. This said, I'm not happy about the removal of FM. Now I want to find out what's the cheapest way to broadcast the whole FM band at once using an SDR (inside my house).
globalise83 2y ago
Interesting. I live near Switzerland and the only time I listen to radio is using FM in my car. I hope this same idea doesn't make it to the country where I live.
- generic92034 2y ago
  I guess this will start to happen everywhere in the EU, now. In Germany it has also already started: https://www.heise.de/news/UKW-Radio-Schleswig-Holstein-schaltet-2031-ab-9782945.html https://www.heise.de/news/UKW-Radio-Schleswig-Holstein-schal...
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Might be an anti-anti-fragile move…
switch007 2y ago
My fav ... part of di radio ... is tha you only he ... ha of the broadc ... whe sign i poor... It's useless in the car, in my experience on-and-off the last 10 years or so. Too many blackspots (in the UK)
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  The UK is a bad example, as it adopted DAB (without the "+") far too early. DAB uses the MPEG-1 Audio Layer II "MP2" codec which is a very old codec, and while MP2 actually sounds pretty great at appropriate bitrates (256kb/s or higher), it was decided that quantity was better than quality and so the UK has a large number of poor quality, low bitrate, stations. Sometimes in MONO! DAB+ uses HE-AACv2 which is much better suited to the bitrates that the UK has chosen to use, and in addition has much better error correction, reducing the "bubbling mud" effect that UK DAB listeners are all to familiar with. The sad truth is that FM actually works very well, and can have extremely good audio quality, but capitalism must ruin all good things. The death of the BBC, as now seems inevitable, will be the final shame.
  - switch007 2y ago
    Are you implying DAB+ existed when the UK launched DAB in 1995...? Or we should have not launched DAB at all and waited? DAB+ came out in other countries in the mid 00s and was adopted in the UK in 2016 and now we have over 180 DAB+ stations. But notably missing the BBC.
    - LeoPanthera 2y ago
      I'm saying that the UK should have done one of the following: * Recognized that DAB was not capable enough given the number of stations required, and waited. or: * Cut back on the number of stations so that the remaining ones could be broadcast at an acceptable quality.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Analog radio and and video signals like VGA, fail way more gracefully and linearly, which is why they're still used in many applications today where rough environments are involved and high availability is desired as a degraded signal is better than no signal at all due to some CRC or handshake failure. Digital connections have a terrible failure model, it either works perfectly or not at all, with little in between. In modern datacenters or in radio broadcasting equipment, you can still find VGA connectors or LCD displays using that signal.
pverghese 2y ago
I understand why the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRF) wants to pull the plug on FM radio. But I think there are still some good reasons to keep it around. FM radio is simple and strong, and it can be heard by a lot of people even in areas with bad internet access. FM radio also comes in handy in emergencies, like when natural disasters knock out other ways to communicate.
- BSDobelix 2y ago
  >even in areas with bad internet access. They stop the analog signal, not the whole "air transmission": >>Those who listen to the radio now largely do so via digital audio broadcasting (DAB+) or the internet It's literately the first sentence.
clbrmbr 2y ago
It made me sad when I got into amateur radio to learn that SRI had shut down their famous HF (shortwave) transmissions just a few years prior. But I still listen to podcasts and streaming from RTS/SRF. They do great world news coverage from a kind of detached perspective. Gotta know French or German, for next 6mo until it becomes commonplace to have live transvocalized podcasts.
caseysoftware 2y ago
An FM receiver is pretty basic, cheap, and easily understood/home-built technology. Does DAB+ require an encryption key, license, or otherwise limited-access component that would prevent people from rolling their own receiver?
- rsynnott 2y ago
  No encryption. Manufacturers do have to license HE-ACC, I think (at least in theory; wouldn’t really be any issue for amateurs)
rsynnott 2y ago
Oddly, in Ireland we did the opposite; the last DAB transmitter was switched off a year or so ago (digital radio, oddly, is still available bugs DVB-T2, bundled with the terrestrial digital tv signals, though I’m not sure anyone really listens to it that way).
- piltdownman 2y ago
  DAB made little sense in Ireland. The FM figures used to argue for DAB adoption were skewed by a huge captive drivetime audience who were already pivoting to podcasts and live-streams instead of to DAB/Digital stations. Combine this with cheap and ubiquitous 4G Internet, the introduction of mass audio and podcast streaming services, and the prevalence of smart-home devices at loss-leader prices like the Google Home or Amazon Alexa, and the writing was on the wall from the get-go. In short, the National Broadcaster (RTE) were latecomers to DAB to the point where it was no longer deemed necessary by the time it was implemented. Case in point was when RTÉ shut down the DAB infrastructure, but didnt shutter the digital services populating it: RTÉ Gold/2XM/Pulse continue as online streaming services. The majority of people - even my parents - are now far more tuned in to the likes of Audible and Spotify. When they want e.g. Death Notices or GAA they use a streaming app or the native webcast from the FM station Website. Synchronous single-infrastructure dependent Audio Streaming is now a use-case in search of a problem for the average consumer, outside of certain niches like Naval/Aviation traffic.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    Oh yeah the death notices on the radio. I've never heard anything like that except in Ireland. I haven't thought of that in years. I personally always found that so depressing. But I was very much out of sync there. Due to circumstances I ended up in rural Ireland for a while but I'm a very cosmopolitan person so that didn't work out at all. I need the world, big cities, things to explore. This kind of phenomenon was a reminder of the small size of the community I lived in which depressed me deeply :) I do understand it has value to local people who enjoy life that way. It was a very unique way of using radio though.
    - 2y ago
lqet 2y ago
20 years ago, Germany decided to stop FM broadcasting in 2015. Digital radio (DAB+) was heavily advertised. Despite a fear campaign ("your radio will stop working soon!"), almost nobody cared or replaced their working cheap kitchen or car radio. The plan to stop FM broadcasting was finally abandoned in 2011, because radio stations would've lost 80% of their listeners. My parents bought a DAB+ kitchen radio in 2009, but never liked it and it stopped working after a few years. They replaced it with a new FM radio.
- empath75 2y ago
  Yeah to me, it seems like FM radio + internet audio over cellular is a great mix of choices, and "digital radio" is pointless. If you want to do digital radio, make a carplay/android app.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    Digital radio allows for far more efficient use of spectrum than FM
    - randomdata 2y ago
      Imagine: Instead of three radio stations all playing the same song, you could have 100 stations all playing the same song!
      - crote 2y ago
        Or perhaps they could play different songs! In my country DAB has station dedicated to playing classical music, jazz, youth-oriented pop music, current affairs, religion, rock music - not to mention dozens of local radio stations! FM allows for only a very limited number of stations, which means it ends up in a bidding war between the large commercial stations - who in turn have to play fairly generic music to attract a large number of listeners. With DAB there's plenty of space left over for niche stations, as they can transmit essentially for free.
openrisk 2y ago
This is the analog (pun) in radio technology of abandoning physical cash and switching exclusively to digital money. Optimisation, efficiency and monoculture versus redundancy, resilience and diversity.
Yakub-AlEspunj 2y ago
The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation is pulling the plug on FM radio. How quaint. I'm not a fan of DAB+. The range is less than FM, and the compression artifacts are a real treat. Why not just go back to good ol' analog AM, then? Oh wait, it's been deemed too "rustic" and "unmodern". FM was a great way to listen to the radio, don't you think? You could actually hear the music without it sounding like a tin can on a string. And don't even get me started on the so-called "HD Radio" nonsense in the States. It's just a way to cram more commercials down our throats and make our radios more expensive. What's with this obsession with "spectrum efficiency" and "bandwidth management"? Can't we just have a simple, reliable way to listen to the radio without it sounding like it's coming from a broken tape deck? I still remember when LW was around. That was real broadcasting. None of this fancy-schmancy digital stuff. Just pure, raw signal strength. You could pick it up with a pair of cans and a piece of twine, no problem. So, yeah, Switzerland, go ahead and pull the plug on FM. See if I care. I'll just use my trusty AM radio and enjoy the beautiful, analog sound of static.
- hwsoftwarellc 2y ago
  This user is using ChatGPT to generate replies.
bad_username 2y ago
Does DAB really offer better quality? From what I know, stations opt for puny 64kbps streams which sound nowhere near as good as FM can.
- coretx 2y ago
  That's done on purpose so that they can roll out conditional access / DRM. In order to make people pay for that, they need to be invested in hardware first ( DAB radios ) and suffer from poor quality channels.... DAB is optimized to make money, not to serve the general public.
  - gpvos 2y ago
    Source?
    - coretx 2y ago
      https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
  - avidiax 2y ago
    Same thing with ATSC 3.0. You can read the industry's claims as to why DRM is needed in broadcast (to ensure authenticity mainly), but you'll have to read between the lines that it's to make broadcast TV impossible to record, ads impossible to skip, and (probably eventually) sweet talk regulators into allowing pay-per-view or paid access "premium" channels, probably leeching off the bandwidth (and quality) of the "free-to-air" channels they are legally a required to broadcast to maintain their licenses. https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0-ota-tv-explains-why-drm-is-needed-for-free-ota-tv/ https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0...
- zinekeller 2y ago
  In theory, yes, it really can, but as you stated, in practice, no. This is basically the equivalent thing on digital TV between the US and Canada: most US broadcasters tried to pack as much channels as possible (that sometimes digital broadcasts are objectively worse than analog ones because of bitrate starvation) while Canada usually only have a 1:1 correspondence between virtual and physical channels (sometimes 2:1 but there isn't really much more than that). This is not Switzerland, but the BBC apparently uses 192 kbps only at Radio 3 (their classical music station), while other BBC stations are either 128 kbps or 64 kbps only.
xysg 2y ago
The reverse scenario happened here in Singapore. It was the first in Asia to introduce DAB in 1999. The national broadcaster MediaCorp then decided to cease DAB transmission in 2011, forcing those who've invested in new DAB equipment to throw them out the window (while many are dual-FM/DAB sets, some more affordable ones are exclusively DAB-only). Interesting that the decision was made to go backwards in technology, likely motivated by economics.
- hulitu 2y ago
  > the decision was made to go backwards in technology What is so forward about DAB ? In theory it sounds excelent. In practice it sounds like crap due to using the lowest bitrate possible.
  - coretx 2y ago
    DAB is optimized for "rights holders". Not for radio stations, not for end users, not for the state. It's designed against everyone but the rights holder / copyrights industry interests.
    - gpvos 2y ago
      How so? It's not encrypted or anything similar.
      - coretx 2y ago
        https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
        teractiveodular 2y ago
        Is this actually used anywhere? To me it feels like DAB and any putative DRM mechanisms have already been basically obsoleted by streaming systems like Spotify.
jeffrallen 2y ago
DAB has worse behavior with marginal signal quality. When a FM signal may be slightly degraded with static, DAB just gives up entirely. I really hate that engineers, regulators, and businesspeople managed to work together to make something simple and reliable less reliable but more "modern".
- coretx 2y ago
  It's worse on purpose. They did not even try to be "modern". Here you can read what it's about: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
- gadders 2y ago
  Agreed. DAB reception is very poor in comparison.
- femto 2y ago
  Probably because DAB has been designed to be spectrally efficient, allowing one to cram as many radio channel as possible into a slice of spectrum. It's a property of error control codes, as used in DAB: that the closer one gets to optimal performance, the sharper the cutoff between working and not working. As range increases: works, works, works, BAM, gone... If it's optimal, the quality of a digital link will be pretty well perfect up until that cutoff (but no link is truly optimal). DAB's design placed emphasis on more channels rather than longer range, so the point at which DAB cuts out will likely be before the point that FM has degraded to unintelligibly. In theory there can be a region where FM has degraded but DAB is still holding up, but in the name of more channels this region is probably small.
- throw0101b 2y ago
  > When a FM signal may be slightly degraded with static, DAB just gives up entirely. You'd think that this would be a good scenario for 'hierarchical modulation': > Hierarchical modulation is particularly used to mitigate the cliff effect in digital television broadcast, particularly mobile TV, by providing a (lower quality) fallback signal in case of weak signals, allowing graceful degradation instead of complete signal loss. It has been widely proven and included in various standards, such as DVB-T, MediaFLO, UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband, a new 3.5th generation mobile network standard developed by 3GPP2), and is under study for DVB-H. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modulation Combine that with scalable audio quality: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_SLS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_SLS * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling
sschueller 2y ago
Nobody wants this especially since there are still quite a lot of cars that have old radios. I thought there was an agreement that we would wait a little longer but for what ever reason the SRG thinks they know better.
- xnyan 2y ago
  Something similar happened with TV broadcasts in the US ~15 years ago. The solution was just to provide an adaptor for free for anyone who wanted one.
  - pintxo 2y ago
    Adapters are not much use on a car, are they?
    - FreezingKeeper 2y ago
      They are available https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product-group-tests/88304/best-dab-car-radio-adaptors https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product-group-tests/88304/best...
      - ClassyJacket 2y ago
        Just a matter of time before my state makes it illegal to touch one of those while driving, if they haven't already.
  - whoopdedo 2y ago
    They weren't free. They were subsidized and consequently what used to be a $20 converter jumped to $35 overnight because that was how much retailers knew they could milk out of the rebate.

162 points by austinallegro 2y ago

sitkack 2y ago

FM is so simple and robust. It should never be turned off.

mikemitchelldev 2y ago
Digital audio is also relatively expensive for some people. There are people who in my community who ride around on their bikes listening to fm radio. A monthly data fee could be hard for some.
- dark-star 2y ago
  I have never heard of DAB or DAB+ requiring monthly subscription fees? At least I don't pay any, and I have a DAB+ receiver in my car
  - mikemitchelldev 2y ago
    Listening to DAB on a cellphone requires a monthly data plan.
    - arghwhat 2y ago
      You listen to DAB using a DAB radio like you listen to FM broadcasts with an FM radio. If you’re listening to something on your phone through a data plan, it’s not DAB, but an unrelated streaming service.
      - dylan604 2y ago
        Not having a radio receiver in a phone has always been one of those WTF things for me. There have been articles on why iOS doesn't have a radio tuner even those the receiver is there claiming because it would divert users from apple music or whatever. It's always felt like a missed opportunity to me though
        devbent 2y ago
        Phones used to have fm receivers! It was common in the early 2010s. They used the headphone cord as an antenna.
        puetzk 2y ago
        Unihertz phones still do (even the tiny Jelly Star)
        arghwhat 2y ago
        The main reason to not have it is that unless you’re out of cellular range or has no data quota left, it’s just worse than just streaming the same stations over the internet, which also offer more content as running FM stations is expensive. Even though older iPhone baseband chips had FM receivers, you’d still need break it out and deal with the antenna setup, with the approach taken by others requiring wired headset and shenanigans in the headphone port. That’s more BOM, and user resistance to wireless headphones or newer models whose baseband chips cut the feature. It used to be a somewhat common feature in phones (including smartphones from other brands), but it usually had quite “eh” reception. And with transitions to DAB, the feature becomes unusable without DAB decoders which I’m sure someone is claiming royalties for.
        vel0city 2y ago
        There's one place where I still bring my old cell phone to use the FM receiver part: sports events. It's nice getting the announcers live instead of on a broadcast delay + digital buffer. Through the internet it's usually several seconds behind the action but on the local low power FM broadcast it's practically zero latency.
    - throw0101b 2y ago
      > Listening to DAB on a cellphone requires a monthly data plan. Cellphones used to include AM/FM radios. Personally I think it might be useful to have them for public service uses: perhaps cell network are more robust than a few years ago, but there are still instances when they could be (are) overwhelmed, and a broadcast-only system could be useful in major emergency events.
      - conradfr 2y ago
        Hard to have an antenna with wireless headphones.
        arghwhat 2y ago
        hard to have an efficient VHF antenna using traditional designs Smartphones a lot* of antennas, but most target 1/10th the wavelength of FM radio.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        Cell systems still have the ability to push out a message regardless of how "overwhelmed" the towers are. They'll just drop service to some customers while the higher priority emergency message is broadcasted out. A cell network doing a one-way broadcast text message to all clients is a solved problem. And honestly, I greatly prefer this way to push out an emergency message than assume I'm tuned to a radio station or broadcast TV, two things I'm rarely doing. I'm way more likely to be listening or watching local or streaming media instead of watching broadcast TV. Or even just not be doing any of that at all. Lots of people I know wouldn't even be able to tune into a broadcast TV or FM radio station outside of their cars.
- mozman 2y ago
  I wouldn’t mind if those people blasting FM radio used headphones. I don’t believe it’s because they can’t afford them.
  - Y_Y 2y ago
    Not a good idea on a bike
    - recursive 2y ago
      I've heard this assertion many times. But after having ridden hundreds (thousands?) of hours wearing headphones, I must conclude that it's a perfectly fine idea. People believe headphones will obstruct your hearing. Some do. Some don't. Wear the ones that don't. It's also possible to set the volume to the same level that it would be from a set of handle-bar mounted speakers.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
gpvos 2y ago
AM is even simpler and even more robust. I think we never should have switched it off.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  But AM isn't switched off.
  - ale42 2y ago
    Depends where. In Switzerland it is.
    - ClassyJacket 2y ago
      I looked for a source for this but can't find any mention of it.
      - zuminator 2y ago
        "Most European countries are now running a reduced AM radio service with fewer transmitters, fewer services and lower power. Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Norway (except Svalbard), Slovakia, Sweden and Switzerland have completely closed their AM radio services. Denmark retains a part-time long wave service for mariners. Lithuania has closed domestic AM radio, but retains a medium wave transmitter for international broadcasting. Only Cyprus, Hungary, Iceland and Romania (together with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Spain) are continuing with a comprehensive AM radio service." http://frequencyfinder.org.uk/AM_Other_Countries.pdf http://frequencyfinder.org.uk/AM_Other_Countries.pdf
        tempcommenttt 2y ago
        This is outdated. Denmark closed its long wave transmitter last year. The biggest hold out is bbc radio 4 and they stopped special long wave programming and the service is only still on the air because it doubles as a digital signal for some power meters.
gwbas1c 2y ago
In the US, our "HD" radio (we don't have DAB) sounds so bad, I end up turning it off and listening to the analog version. It sounds like they reduced bitrate by pitch-shifting down prior to transmission, and then pitch-shifting back up at playback. Everything just has this metallic ring to it: When I tried the classical station, at first I thought there was bells in the piece they were playing until I realized it was a compression artifact. When I listen to talk, I keep hearing a bell/ringing over everyone's voice. I know a lot of the newer codecs also sound great (for the car) at low bitrates, so I don't want to go and blame "quantity over quality."
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  The whole "HD" thing of HD Radio was a deception to begin with. It blatantly played on the understanding of HD as "high definition", when all it actually meant was Hybrid Digital, i.e. you get a digital audio stream that falls back to a simulcast FM with insufficient signal strength or exceeding error correction thresholds.
  - gwbas1c 2y ago
    When I read about it years ago, It was made out to have a very high bitrate (and quality) if the analog FM signal was replaced completely by a digital signal.

ur-whale 2y ago

Does it mean the 88Mhz -> 108Mhz frequency band will go to back the auction block ?

digitalsankhara 2y ago
Maybe, when most regions follow suit. Hate the idea of FM broadcasting turning off. Still, would love some ham radio wideband spectrum. Then people driving to work can listen to the likes of me droning on about <insert favourite ham radio topic here>. Personally I think they should expand community radio wholesale if national broadcasters cannot be arsed.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  What's the demand like for that part of the spectrum in Switzerland? In the US it'd just be gobbled up by another corporate interest; no way that'd go to the amateur service.
  - digitalsankhara 2y ago
    In the US more than likely. In the UK I'm not so sure (can't speak to Switzerland) as there is a healthy community radio scene who may have some democratic influence. There are mutterings of trying to close UK FM broadcasting as well in order to force DAB. I'd like to think there would still be some spectrum allocated for that. If not, the pirates would take over - and good luck to them. This wholesale move away from simple, analogue radio infrastructure (AM/FM/SW radio) is a disaster waiting to happen in the event of a major regional/global catastrophe. Most amateur organisations would not even think about trying to experiment with WBFM anyway - too obsessed with ultra-narrow digital modes.

jcfrei 2y ago

Swiss here: Pretty certain this is part of a pressure campaign by the SRF ("Swiss Radio and Television"). They are facing budget cuts nationally through an initiative that will be voted on probably later this year (https://srg-initiative.ch/ https://srg-initiative.ch/). By preemptively cutting services on their own (that they are not forced to under the text of the initiative) they probably hope to sway voter's opinion.

chinathrow 2y ago
Cutting service costs on their own while burdening the cost to their listeners is so backwards. My car radio can't do DAB and it would cost me quite a bit of money to install a replacement radio if I want a proper setup (i.e. as before in terms of usability/integration).
- michaelt 2y ago
  Some politicians in my country have worked out that when someone tries to force them to spend less, they can cut funding to something popular like libraries, immediately get a bunch of complaints and protests, then declare "Well we tried, it seems voters don't want us to spend less after all"
  - anamax 2y ago
    You fire them by pointing out what they kept vs. what they dropped.
  - Seattle3503 2y ago
    In the US it is called Washington Monument syndrome.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      Being a non-USAn, can you provide the background story for that? Sounds interesting.

red_admiral 2y ago

Switzerland has a national siren network, tested annually, and regularly reminds its citizens "if the sirens sound, turn on the radio to DRS/SRF 1". They've added the swissalert mobile app more recently, but I guess everyone is going to have to buy new radio sets who doesn't have a DAB+ one already.

CodeBeater 2y ago

I have a genuine question, what's to gain from this? I could half-understand it if they were going to re-allocate the 88-108 MHz block, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I could also understand why such an action would be taken if that meant that they could pack more stations in the same spectrum, but considering that Switzerland is a relatively small country, so is there really a market? Even if considering multiple languages per niche. I guess a case could be made for power savings by virtue of (assuming local topography allows) lower power transmitters or by multiplexing various stations on the same transmitter. On a personal level, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about all forms of analog broadcasting being slowly phased out. The tinkerer in me likes the idea of being capable of constructing an information receiving device in an almost "survivalist" manner, but if this trend continues and analog FM really goes the way of the dodo, then I surmise that DAB (or whichever local flavor is chosen) will become easily and cheaply available, which makes my gut feeling a moot point anyway. I don't know, I just don't like the idea of needing a processor to receive broadcast audio, and I can't quite put my finger on why.

dark-star 2y ago
It probably lets them scrap large amounts of FM transmitters, relays, broadcasting hardware and maintenance. I assume in a mountainous country such as Switzerland this adds up to quite a lot
- brnt 2y ago
  Considering DAB has less range, the amount of antennas would need to go up.
  - ale42 2y ago
    But DAB is already deployed, removing the FM part will probably allow them to spare money. I think the transmitters are managed by someone else than SRF (maybe Swisscom broadcast), as any service it can be pretty expensive. This said, I'm not happy about the removal of FM. Now I want to find out what's the cheapest way to broadcast the whole FM band at once using an SDR (inside my house).

globalise83 2y ago

Interesting. I live near Switzerland and the only time I listen to radio is using FM in my car. I hope this same idea doesn't make it to the country where I live.

generic92034 2y ago
I guess this will start to happen everywhere in the EU, now. In Germany it has also already started: https://www.heise.de/news/UKW-Radio-Schleswig-Holstein-schaltet-2031-ab-9782945.html https://www.heise.de/news/UKW-Radio-Schleswig-Holstein-schal...

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Might be an anti-anti-fragile move…

switch007 2y ago

My fav ... part of di radio ... is tha you only he ... ha of the broadc ... whe sign i poor... It's useless in the car, in my experience on-and-off the last 10 years or so. Too many blackspots (in the UK)

LeoPanthera 2y ago
The UK is a bad example, as it adopted DAB (without the "+") far too early. DAB uses the MPEG-1 Audio Layer II "MP2" codec which is a very old codec, and while MP2 actually sounds pretty great at appropriate bitrates (256kb/s or higher), it was decided that quantity was better than quality and so the UK has a large number of poor quality, low bitrate, stations. Sometimes in MONO! DAB+ uses HE-AACv2 which is much better suited to the bitrates that the UK has chosen to use, and in addition has much better error correction, reducing the "bubbling mud" effect that UK DAB listeners are all to familiar with. The sad truth is that FM actually works very well, and can have extremely good audio quality, but capitalism must ruin all good things. The death of the BBC, as now seems inevitable, will be the final shame.
- switch007 2y ago
  Are you implying DAB+ existed when the UK launched DAB in 1995...? Or we should have not launched DAB at all and waited? DAB+ came out in other countries in the mid 00s and was adopted in the UK in 2016 and now we have over 180 DAB+ stations. But notably missing the BBC.
  - LeoPanthera 2y ago
    I'm saying that the UK should have done one of the following: * Recognized that DAB was not capable enough given the number of stations required, and waited. or: * Cut back on the number of stations so that the remaining ones could be broadcast at an acceptable quality.
Rinzler89 2y ago
Analog radio and and video signals like VGA, fail way more gracefully and linearly, which is why they're still used in many applications today where rough environments are involved and high availability is desired as a degraded signal is better than no signal at all due to some CRC or handshake failure. Digital connections have a terrible failure model, it either works perfectly or not at all, with little in between. In modern datacenters or in radio broadcasting equipment, you can still find VGA connectors or LCD displays using that signal.

pverghese 2y ago

I understand why the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRF) wants to pull the plug on FM radio. But I think there are still some good reasons to keep it around. FM radio is simple and strong, and it can be heard by a lot of people even in areas with bad internet access. FM radio also comes in handy in emergencies, like when natural disasters knock out other ways to communicate.

BSDobelix 2y ago
>even in areas with bad internet access. They stop the analog signal, not the whole "air transmission": >>Those who listen to the radio now largely do so via digital audio broadcasting (DAB+) or the internet It's literately the first sentence.

clbrmbr 2y ago

It made me sad when I got into amateur radio to learn that SRI had shut down their famous HF (shortwave) transmissions just a few years prior. But I still listen to podcasts and streaming from RTS/SRF. They do great world news coverage from a kind of detached perspective. Gotta know French or German, for next 6mo until it becomes commonplace to have live transvocalized podcasts.

caseysoftware 2y ago

An FM receiver is pretty basic, cheap, and easily understood/home-built technology. Does DAB+ require an encryption key, license, or otherwise limited-access component that would prevent people from rolling their own receiver?

rsynnott 2y ago
No encryption. Manufacturers do have to license HE-ACC, I think (at least in theory; wouldn’t really be any issue for amateurs)

rsynnott 2y ago

Oddly, in Ireland we did the opposite; the last DAB transmitter was switched off a year or so ago (digital radio, oddly, is still available bugs DVB-T2, bundled with the terrestrial digital tv signals, though I’m not sure anyone really listens to it that way).

piltdownman 2y ago
DAB made little sense in Ireland. The FM figures used to argue for DAB adoption were skewed by a huge captive drivetime audience who were already pivoting to podcasts and live-streams instead of to DAB/Digital stations. Combine this with cheap and ubiquitous 4G Internet, the introduction of mass audio and podcast streaming services, and the prevalence of smart-home devices at loss-leader prices like the Google Home or Amazon Alexa, and the writing was on the wall from the get-go. In short, the National Broadcaster (RTE) were latecomers to DAB to the point where it was no longer deemed necessary by the time it was implemented. Case in point was when RTÉ shut down the DAB infrastructure, but didnt shutter the digital services populating it: RTÉ Gold/2XM/Pulse continue as online streaming services. The majority of people - even my parents - are now far more tuned in to the likes of Audible and Spotify. When they want e.g. Death Notices or GAA they use a streaming app or the native webcast from the FM station Website. Synchronous single-infrastructure dependent Audio Streaming is now a use-case in search of a problem for the average consumer, outside of certain niches like Naval/Aviation traffic.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  Oh yeah the death notices on the radio. I've never heard anything like that except in Ireland. I haven't thought of that in years. I personally always found that so depressing. But I was very much out of sync there. Due to circumstances I ended up in rural Ireland for a while but I'm a very cosmopolitan person so that didn't work out at all. I need the world, big cities, things to explore. This kind of phenomenon was a reminder of the small size of the community I lived in which depressed me deeply :) I do understand it has value to local people who enjoy life that way. It was a very unique way of using radio though.
  - 2y ago

lqet 2y ago

20 years ago, Germany decided to stop FM broadcasting in 2015. Digital radio (DAB+) was heavily advertised. Despite a fear campaign ("your radio will stop working soon!"), almost nobody cared or replaced their working cheap kitchen or car radio. The plan to stop FM broadcasting was finally abandoned in 2011, because radio stations would've lost 80% of their listeners. My parents bought a DAB+ kitchen radio in 2009, but never liked it and it stopped working after a few years. They replaced it with a new FM radio.

empath75 2y ago
Yeah to me, it seems like FM radio + internet audio over cellular is a great mix of choices, and "digital radio" is pointless. If you want to do digital radio, make a carplay/android app.
- TylerE 2y ago
  Digital radio allows for far more efficient use of spectrum than FM
  - randomdata 2y ago
    Imagine: Instead of three radio stations all playing the same song, you could have 100 stations all playing the same song!
    - crote 2y ago
      Or perhaps they could play different songs! In my country DAB has station dedicated to playing classical music, jazz, youth-oriented pop music, current affairs, religion, rock music - not to mention dozens of local radio stations! FM allows for only a very limited number of stations, which means it ends up in a bidding war between the large commercial stations - who in turn have to play fairly generic music to attract a large number of listeners. With DAB there's plenty of space left over for niche stations, as they can transmit essentially for free.

openrisk 2y ago

This is the analog (pun) in radio technology of abandoning physical cash and switching exclusively to digital money. Optimisation, efficiency and monoculture versus redundancy, resilience and diversity.

Yakub-AlEspunj 2y ago

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation is pulling the plug on FM radio. How quaint. I'm not a fan of DAB+. The range is less than FM, and the compression artifacts are a real treat. Why not just go back to good ol' analog AM, then? Oh wait, it's been deemed too "rustic" and "unmodern". FM was a great way to listen to the radio, don't you think? You could actually hear the music without it sounding like a tin can on a string. And don't even get me started on the so-called "HD Radio" nonsense in the States. It's just a way to cram more commercials down our throats and make our radios more expensive. What's with this obsession with "spectrum efficiency" and "bandwidth management"? Can't we just have a simple, reliable way to listen to the radio without it sounding like it's coming from a broken tape deck? I still remember when LW was around. That was real broadcasting. None of this fancy-schmancy digital stuff. Just pure, raw signal strength. You could pick it up with a pair of cans and a piece of twine, no problem. So, yeah, Switzerland, go ahead and pull the plug on FM. See if I care. I'll just use my trusty AM radio and enjoy the beautiful, analog sound of static.

hwsoftwarellc 2y ago
This user is using ChatGPT to generate replies.

bad_username 2y ago

Does DAB really offer better quality? From what I know, stations opt for puny 64kbps streams which sound nowhere near as good as FM can.

coretx 2y ago
That's done on purpose so that they can roll out conditional access / DRM. In order to make people pay for that, they need to be invested in hardware first ( DAB radios ) and suffer from poor quality channels.... DAB is optimized to make money, not to serve the general public.
- gpvos 2y ago
  Source?
  - coretx 2y ago
    https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
- avidiax 2y ago
  Same thing with ATSC 3.0. You can read the industry's claims as to why DRM is needed in broadcast (to ensure authenticity mainly), but you'll have to read between the lines that it's to make broadcast TV impossible to record, ads impossible to skip, and (probably eventually) sweet talk regulators into allowing pay-per-view or paid access "premium" channels, probably leeching off the bandwidth (and quality) of the "free-to-air" channels they are legally a required to broadcast to maintain their licenses. https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0-ota-tv-explains-why-drm-is-needed-for-free-ota-tv/ https://cordcuttersnews.com/the-team-behind-nextgen-atsc-3-0...
zinekeller 2y ago
In theory, yes, it really can, but as you stated, in practice, no. This is basically the equivalent thing on digital TV between the US and Canada: most US broadcasters tried to pack as much channels as possible (that sometimes digital broadcasts are objectively worse than analog ones because of bitrate starvation) while Canada usually only have a 1:1 correspondence between virtual and physical channels (sometimes 2:1 but there isn't really much more than that). This is not Switzerland, but the BBC apparently uses 192 kbps only at Radio 3 (their classical music station), while other BBC stations are either 128 kbps or 64 kbps only.

xysg 2y ago

The reverse scenario happened here in Singapore. It was the first in Asia to introduce DAB in 1999. The national broadcaster MediaCorp then decided to cease DAB transmission in 2011, forcing those who've invested in new DAB equipment to throw them out the window (while many are dual-FM/DAB sets, some more affordable ones are exclusively DAB-only). Interesting that the decision was made to go backwards in technology, likely motivated by economics.

hulitu 2y ago
> the decision was made to go backwards in technology What is so forward about DAB ? In theory it sounds excelent. In practice it sounds like crap due to using the lowest bitrate possible.
- coretx 2y ago
  DAB is optimized for "rights holders". Not for radio stations, not for end users, not for the state. It's designed against everyone but the rights holder / copyrights industry interests.
  - gpvos 2y ago
    How so? It's not encrypted or anything similar.
    - coretx 2y ago
      https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
      - teractiveodular 2y ago
        Is this actually used anywhere? To me it feels like DAB and any putative DRM mechanisms have already been basically obsoleted by streaming systems like Spotify.

jeffrallen 2y ago

DAB has worse behavior with marginal signal quality. When a FM signal may be slightly degraded with static, DAB just gives up entirely. I really hate that engineers, regulators, and businesspeople managed to work together to make something simple and reliable less reliable but more "modern".

coretx 2y ago
It's worse on purpose. They did not even try to be "modern". Here you can read what it's about: https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01.02.01_60/ts_102367v010201p.pdf https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/102300_102399/102367/01...
gadders 2y ago
Agreed. DAB reception is very poor in comparison.
femto 2y ago
Probably because DAB has been designed to be spectrally efficient, allowing one to cram as many radio channel as possible into a slice of spectrum. It's a property of error control codes, as used in DAB: that the closer one gets to optimal performance, the sharper the cutoff between working and not working. As range increases: works, works, works, BAM, gone... If it's optimal, the quality of a digital link will be pretty well perfect up until that cutoff (but no link is truly optimal). DAB's design placed emphasis on more channels rather than longer range, so the point at which DAB cuts out will likely be before the point that FM has degraded to unintelligibly. In theory there can be a region where FM has degraded but DAB is still holding up, but in the name of more channels this region is probably small.
throw0101b 2y ago
> When a FM signal may be slightly degraded with static, DAB just gives up entirely. You'd think that this would be a good scenario for 'hierarchical modulation': > Hierarchical modulation is particularly used to mitigate the cliff effect in digital television broadcast, particularly mobile TV, by providing a (lower quality) fallback signal in case of weak signals, allowing graceful degradation instead of complete signal loss. It has been widely proven and included in various standards, such as DVB-T, MediaFLO, UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband, a new 3.5th generation mobile network standard developed by 3GPP2), and is under study for DVB-H. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_modulation Combine that with scalable audio quality: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_SLS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_SLS * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitrate_peeling

sschueller 2y ago

Nobody wants this especially since there are still quite a lot of cars that have old radios. I thought there was an agreement that we would wait a little longer but for what ever reason the SRG thinks they know better.

xnyan 2y ago
Something similar happened with TV broadcasts in the US ~15 years ago. The solution was just to provide an adaptor for free for anyone who wanted one.
- pintxo 2y ago
  Adapters are not much use on a car, are they?
  - FreezingKeeper 2y ago
    They are available https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product-group-tests/88304/best-dab-car-radio-adaptors https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product-group-tests/88304/best...
    - ClassyJacket 2y ago
      Just a matter of time before my state makes it illegal to touch one of those while driving, if they haven't already.
- whoopdedo 2y ago
  They weren't free. They were subsidized and consequently what used to be a $20 converter jumped to $35 overnight because that was how much retailers knew they could milk out of the rebate.