That’s one reason I assumed Classic FM were sticking with FM - they’d need a name change otherwise we pedants would be upset.
1 Like
In many ways I’m glad I never bought a DAB radio for the house when the ancient analogue ones work just fine. I’m trying to remember what my ancient budget Denon tuner had digitally - RDS or something???
Kids would find us having to memorise various frequencies for different channels locally quite hilarious I suspect.
I’d imagine a lot of elderly people who really prize listening to the radio will have purchased DAB so it’s odd to me that Classic FM are ditching vanilla DAB as surely a large part of their listener demographic is probably older, and youngsters will potentially just stream from apps.
A modern solution to a problem that never really existed?
Better be careful or I’ll start moaning about heat pumps.
1 Like
The only DAB we get in Canada is an aluminum can filled with a bloody nice lager. I did initially, actually think this thread was about DAB beer. But again, duh, I’m Canadian …
3 Likes
DAB is a pretty good beer, very common in the Dortmund area where I believe the main brewery is or was.
Anyway staying on track. Does anyone know what bitrate Classic FM are going to transmit on DAB+, might give an indication as to whether or not it will be significantly better than the old DAB. As others have mentioned I don’t understand why they do not have a hi-res option via streaming.
2 Likes
I don’t know, but you can’t compare bit rates meaningfully between DAB and DAB+, because the latter uses far more efficient and advanced codecs such as AAC and AAC+, compared to the the very early inefficient codec of DAB which is MP2, which go back to the 1980s.
With AAC+ a station at 80kbps should sound ok, possibly equivalent to a DAB to at more than double that.
For reference the BBC uses 192kbps MP2 for digital radio on DVB, but significantly less overall and some in mono only on DAB.
2 Likes
Many thanks for the prompt reply. I forgot about different codecs etc being used.
Well the radio must be DAB+.
There only seemed to be a dozen or so stations listed in the menu until I clicked what I thought was a station I’d never heard of (D1?) which turned out to be a folder of stations listed alphabetically, and Gold was there which I’d read was DAB+ only.
Problem solved but none of the information setting actually detailed if stations were DAB or DAB+. Maybe the’re not intended to.
Yes D1 (Digital One) is a digitalradio multiplex name which contains DAB and DAB+ stations. Digital radio use a system of multiplexes which contain the radio channels or slots belonging to it. Each multiplex is on its own frequency, and the radio channels ‘share’ the multiplex radio frequency.
D1 is notorious for being of poor or of mediocre sound quality (compared to FM) as they use low or very low bit rates within the multiplex, even the DAB+ stations mostly have very limited bandwidth (some down to 24 kbps), with many of the DAB stations only in mono,
1 Like
Agreed. I find FM sounds noticeably better than DAB in my car.
My car only has DAB/DAB+ (I think), no FM, thank you Elon… It does however allow me to play music from my USB attached SSD which has a lot of Hi Res (including 192/24) on it with no problems at all. I’ve yet to try mobile streaming but I can play video in the car whilst on the drive and connected to my house WiFi. Grandchildren think this is a bit of a laugh.
Suppose I’ll have to wait until Classic FM change over to confirm the DAB+ element. The car does list (and play) the usual DAB+ national stations but does not confirm if you are receiving them in DAB or DAB+.
That’s part of the confusion I think, same on mine.
2 Likes
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.