So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd ask here,
why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any chance of these coming
to us?
Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________

"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd ask
here, why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any chance of these
coming to us?

I thought "DRM" stood for "Digital Rights Management". What has that to do
with radio? And I've never heard of "HD" radio, the term is essentially
meaningless, it sounds like someone trying to jump on the HDTV bandwagon.

Why did we go DAB? Well "DAB" simply stands for "Digital Audio Broadcasting"
so the term applies to *any* form of digital "radio". Why did we go for the
system we have? At the time it was adopted it was felt to be a good
compromise between quality and cost that's why.

David.

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd ask
here, why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any chance of
these coming to us?

I thought "DRM" stood for "Digital Rights Management". What has that to do
with radio? And I've never heard of "HD" radio, the term is essentially
meaningless, it sounds like someone trying to jump on the HDTV bandwagon.

Why did we go DAB? Well "DAB" simply stands for "Digital Audio
Broadcasting" so the term applies to *any* form of digital "radio". Why
did we go for the system we have? At the time it was adopted it was felt
to be a good compromise between quality and cost that's why.

David.



DRM is Digital Radio Mondial, it is a low bit-rate digital radio that can
use short and medium-wave AM transmitters, and using AAC+ compression, is
capable of quite decent results, if not up to FM standards. It is being
promoted as a replacement for short-wave AM in those countries (like
Indonesia) which need a long-range radio medium of better quality than
short-wave.

There have been suggestions that Europe could adopt DRM for AM, but I've
heard no more about his in recent times.

HD radio is an American digital radio system, roughly comparable to our DAB,
but as I understand it use as a more modern form of compression than the MP2
of DAB, but at no greater bit rates than we're using, but which nevertheless
should therefore manage better quality.

S.

http://audiopages.googlepages.com

The clever bit about hd radio is that it can be used on the same
transmission as fm at the same time.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd ask
here, why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any chance of
these coming to us?

I thought "DRM" stood for "Digital Rights Management". What has that to
do with radio? And I've never heard of "HD" radio, the term is
essentially meaningless, it sounds like someone trying to jump on the
HDTV bandwagon.

Why did we go DAB? Well "DAB" simply stands for "Digital Audio
Broadcasting" so the term applies to *any* form of digital "radio". Why
did we go for the system we have? At the time it was adopted it was felt
to be a good compromise between quality and cost that's why.

David.



DRM is Digital Radio Mondial, it is a low bit-rate digital radio that can
use short and medium-wave AM transmitters, and using AAC+ compression, is
capable of quite decent results, if not up to FM standards. It is being
promoted as a replacement for short-wave AM in those countries (like
Indonesia) which need a long-range radio medium of better quality than
short-wave.

There have been suggestions that Europe could adopt DRM for AM, but I've
heard no more about his in recent times.

HD radio is an American digital radio system, roughly comparable to our
DAB, but as I understand it use as a more modern form of compression than
the MP2 of DAB, but at no greater bit rates than we're using, but which
nevertheless should therefore manage better quality.

S.

http://audiopages.googlepages.com

"Serge Auckland" wrote in message
...

HD radio is an American digital radio system, roughly comparable to
our DAB,


I would personally describe them as being very different systems, but
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "roughly comparable to our
DAB". They both use OFDM for their transmission scheme, but other than
that they're very different.


but as I understand it use as a more modern form of compression than
the MP2 of DAB, but at no greater bit rates than we're using, but
which nevertheless should therefore manage better quality.


HD Radio uses a codec that is similar to AAC+, so they could use far
lower bit rates than we use with MP2 and still deliver higher audio
quality (40 kbps AAC+ provides the same level of audio quality as 128
kbps MP2 according to blind listening tests).


--
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

Do you actually use Google?

Look up hd radio and see what I mean. Also Digital Radio Mondi'l, ( cant
spell it) but it it existed as drm befor Microsoftw hijacked the term.

I actually heard it back years ago at an exhibition.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd ask
here, why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any chance of
these coming to us?

I thought "DRM" stood for "Digital Rights Management". What has that to do
with radio? And I've never heard of "HD" radio, the term is essentially
meaningless, it sounds like someone trying to jump on the HDTV bandwagon.

Why did we go DAB? Well "DAB" simply stands for "Digital Audio
Broadcasting" so the term applies to *any* form of digital "radio". Why
did we go for the system we have? At the time it was adopted it was felt
to be a good compromise between quality and cost that's why.

David.

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Brian Gaff" wrote in message
news
So, after asking a simple question in the tv group, I thought i'd
ask here, why did we go dab, and what of DRM and HD Radio, any
chance of these coming to us?

I thought "DRM" stood for "Digital Rights Management". What has that
to do with radio? And I've never heard of "HD" radio, the term is
essentially meaningless, it sounds like someone trying to jump on
the HDTV bandwagon.

Why did we go DAB? Well "DAB" simply stands for "Digital Audio
Broadcasting" so the term applies to *any* form of digital "radio".
Why did we go for the system we have? At the time it was adopted it
was felt to be a good compromise between quality and cost that's
why.


Rubbish. The engineers thought the broadcasters would use the high bit
rate levels needed to provide high audio quality, but they completely
ignore the cost aspects, because DAB is extraordinarily expensive to
transmit, which is one of the main reasons why such low bit rates are
used in the UK.


--
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

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote

Rubbish. The engineers thought the broadcasters would use the high bit
rate levels needed to provide high audio quality, but they completely
ignore the cost aspects, because DAB is extraordinarily expensive to
transmit, which is one of the main reasons why such low bit rates are used
in the UK.


"Rubbish" yourself!

It's only "extraordinarily expensive to transmit" because Arquiva has an
effective monopoly on transmission, so it makes bugger-all difference what
system is used, and indeed whether it's digital or analogue, to these high
costs of transmission.

David.

"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote

Rubbish. The engineers thought the broadcasters would use the high
bit rate levels needed to provide high audio quality, but they
completely ignore the cost aspects, because DAB is extraordinarily
expensive to transmit, which is one of the main reasons why such
low bit rates are used in the UK.


"Rubbish" yourself!

It's only "extraordinarily expensive to transmit" because Arquiva
has an effective monopoly on transmission, so it makes bugger-all
difference what system is used, and indeed whether it's digital or
analogue, to these high costs of transmission.


DAB was extraordinarily expensive to transmit long before Arqiva
became the monopoly transmission provider, so you'll need to find a
new theory to explain why it is so expensive.

The cost of transmitting a 128 kbps stereo station on the Digital One
multiplex was over £1m per annum the last time I saw any figures. The
cost is proportional to the bit rate, so if we say that DAB needs to
use 192 kbps MP2 to provide "good" audio quality than it would
obviously cost £1.5m per annum to broadcast nationally at "good" audio
quality. It's no wonder that we get teh **** audio quality we do given
such ridiculously high costs.

The main problem is that DAB is simply a ridiculously inefficient
system, so that only a very low number of stations can be carried at
"good" audio quality on each multiplex. If they'd have made the system
more efficient prior to properly launching it (which was possible,
because teh AAC audio codec was standardised in 1997) then we
basically wouldn't have had the issue with the audio quality, because
for example the BBC could have delivered its stations at high quality
at 128 kbps AAC.

The fact of the matter is that the BBC was grossly incompetent when it
decided to go ahead with using DAB in the late 1990s without first
upgrading it. End of story.



--
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

"DAB sounds worse than FM" wrote in message
...

The main problem is that DAB is simply a ridiculously inefficient
system


Just to give you an idea of how inefficient DAB is, the new DVB-T2
system is TEN TIMES as efficient as DAB - i.e. DVB-T2 can carry 10
times as many radio statinos at the same level of audio quality as DAB
in the same amount of bandwidth.

And transmission costs are inversely proportional to efficiency, so
the cost of transmitting a station on DVB-T2 would be TEN TIMES lower
than the cost of transmitting at the same level of audio quality on
DAB.

Because the cost is so much lower, if we had used DVB-T2 instead of
the ridiculously inefficient DAB system then there's no chance that
we'd have a problem with audio quality. We have a problem with the
audio quality BECAUSE we use DAB.


--
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