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The digital audio system here in the UK is terrible. They divide up the available bandwidth so much to cram in more channels the stations sound worse than FM (a

The digital audio system here in the UK is terrible. They divide up the available bandwidth so much to cram in more channels the stations sound worse than FM (and they use MPEG2 audio too, which makes it worse). Last week, they crammed in a special Eurovision channel and reduced several other channels from 128kbps to 112kbps to cope. 1xtra (the station I listen to) suddenly sounded so "dull" and slushy.. even just with a 16kbps drop! I had no idea what was going on so asked on DigitalSpy and learnt the above. Long story short, my takeaway is that perhaps it's not just about absolute levels of quality, but also what effect minor effects in bitrate can have on the underlying codec.

72deluxe 11y ago
Is this with a satellite feed or Freeview? I have Sky (basically Freesat because I won't want to pay Sky any money thanks) and the quality is abysmal, even for video. The audio is compressed massively and LOUD all the time, and the video is blocky as can be, with snowy or rainy scenes being unintelligible. You can notice on some adverts that the small text at the bottom is completely unreadable.
- petercooper 11y ago
  No, DAB (for people overseas, DAB is a terrestrially transmitted digital audio service - imagine FM radio but digital). If I'm not in the car, I'll listen online instead (notably, BBC stations sound better streamed over 3G but this has big UX implications when driving). The quality on Sky used to be substantially better than DAB when I used it 10 years ago, but I don't know about it now. That said, I have Sky TV and the picture quality is variable. Most of the channels I watch are fine and all HD channels are very clear.
  - 72deluxe 11y ago
    Informative, thank you. I am glad to know that Sky is decent quality on the HD channels. Strangely they believe that you spend your entire life watching TV and can't comprehend you doing anything else (like typing comments on HN at 9 in the evening.....) A chap at work listens to DAB over some big Questeds and the glitching and artefacting from Radio 2 (ugh I hate hearing that all day) is irritating (down to poor reception). Those Questeds sound great if proper audio is put through them though! It seems a waste to shove DAB Radio 2 and Jeremy Vine and his argument "show" through them.
    - petercooper 11y ago
      Sadly the only way you'll get a better experience from your coworker's DAB radio is to convince them to switch to Radio 3. It's the only DAB station in the UK with a 192kbps bitrate (although only 256kbps is considered to be better than FM under perfect conditions). (Well, technically, DAB+ would make things a ton better as it uses AAC instead, but progress is moving forward very slowly in rolling it out..)

72deluxe 11y ago

Is this with a satellite feed or Freeview? I have Sky (basically Freesat because I won't want to pay Sky any money thanks) and the quality is abysmal, even for video. The audio is compressed massively and LOUD all the time, and the video is blocky as can be, with snowy or rainy scenes being unintelligible. You can notice on some adverts that the small text at the bottom is completely unreadable.

petercooper 11y ago
No, DAB (for people overseas, DAB is a terrestrially transmitted digital audio service - imagine FM radio but digital). If I'm not in the car, I'll listen online instead (notably, BBC stations sound better streamed over 3G but this has big UX implications when driving). The quality on Sky used to be substantially better than DAB when I used it 10 years ago, but I don't know about it now. That said, I have Sky TV and the picture quality is variable. Most of the channels I watch are fine and all HD channels are very clear.
- 72deluxe 11y ago
  Informative, thank you. I am glad to know that Sky is decent quality on the HD channels. Strangely they believe that you spend your entire life watching TV and can't comprehend you doing anything else (like typing comments on HN at 9 in the evening.....) A chap at work listens to DAB over some big Questeds and the glitching and artefacting from Radio 2 (ugh I hate hearing that all day) is irritating (down to poor reception). Those Questeds sound great if proper audio is put through them though! It seems a waste to shove DAB Radio 2 and Jeremy Vine and his argument "show" through them.
  - petercooper 11y ago
    Sadly the only way you'll get a better experience from your coworker's DAB radio is to convince them to switch to Radio 3. It's the only DAB station in the UK with a 192kbps bitrate (although only 256kbps is considered to be better than FM under perfect conditions). (Well, technically, DAB+ would make things a ton better as it uses AAC instead, but progress is moving forward very slowly in rolling it out..)