Definitely not the Go variant. It’s only the base model. As I said, I’m not missing anything being in a rural area.
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Last night daylight saving ended in the south-eastern states at 3:00 am daylight saving time which became 2:00 am standard time.
However, in Melbourne, one of the commercial DAB+ multiplexes and possibly both, changed the timezone around one hour later (i.e. 4:00 am DST became 3:00 am DST).
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Currently on the Gold Coast, just did a bandscan on my Panasonic DAB Radio, with ABC GC DAB mux now on air, gives me a total of 119 stations.
But there are a lot of duplicates across BNE and GC, with most ABC and SBS and some SCA stations appearing twice.
Would be good if there was a setting which allowed the radio to auto remove duplicates based on signal quality or bit rate.
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From Radioinfo:
It is vexing when all the equipment is set up ready to go, testing has been done and funding is in place and yet six years after DAB+ was switched on in Hobart, Launceston, Tasmania‘s second largest city, still is waiting for the ACMA to give the go ahead.
In part the delay is due to the local commercial stations LAFM, Chilli FM and SEN Track deciding not to obtaining their own digital licences which has meant community stations City Park Radio, WayFM 105.3 and Print Radio Tasmania have joined forces to appeal directly to the candidates hoping to win the seat of Bass in this weekend’s Federal election to get them the ACMA tick of approval.
More: https://radioinfo.com.au/news/launceston-community-call-for-permanent-digital-radio-services/
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SEN Track “deciding” not to obtain a licence it isn’t eligible for…
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My Wintal DAB24C is picking up a similar amount of stations from Brisbane and Gold Coast.
There is an option to delete stations on the Wintal DAB24C.
It can also play radio streams and display a picture of the station. All you need is the URL of the stream and one for the photo.
I’ve been finding the URLs for the stations by getting the URL of each station’s webpage on Listnr, adding it to a site that provides the source code, then I use the “Find” function to pull up the section where the URL is listed. Most of the streams are broadcast in AAC at 128 Kbps. That’s a significant improvement over the 32 Kbps of the DAB+ stations. Rock 101 is only streamed at 64 Kbps.
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I found that the stream count has now gone up to 122.
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Mine is picking 102 stations. My LPDA antenna is pointed towards Mt Coot-tha.
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Hmm, that’s interesting that yours looks to be missing some? Are you missing the Gold Coast ABC mux maybe, might need a rescan to get that?
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Yes there are 20 more stations on the ABC Gold Coast mux - reception is at a lower level so may not be received.
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I don’t have the ABC stations from the Gold Coast.
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In Brisbane, the VHF Band III spectrum is allocated to DVB-T and DAB+ in the following way:
- Seven Network 174-181 (177.5)Mhz
- SBS 181-188 (184.5)Mhz
- Nine Network 188-195 (191.5Mhz
- Ten Network 216-223 (219.5)Mhz
- ABC 223-230 (226.5)Mhz
- DAB+ 9A 202.160-203.696 (202.928)Mhz
- DAB+ 9B 203.872-205.408 (204.640)Mhz
- DAB+ 9C 205.584-207.120 (206.352)Mhz
That leaves the following blocks sitting empty.
- 8A 195.168-196.704 (195.936)Mhz
- 8B 196.880-198.416 (197.648)Mhz
- 8C 198.592-200.128 (199.360)Mhz
- 8D 200.304-201.840 (201.072)Mhz
- 9D 207.296-208.832 (208.064)Mhz
That’s roughly 5,760 Kbps of data not being used.
If blocks 8A, 8B, 8C, 8D and 9D were used alongside 9A, 9B and 9C then the 74 DAB+ stations in Brisbane would have a total of 9,216 Kbps at their disposal.
That would equate to an average of 124.54Kbps per station!
Imagine how great all of the music stations would sound if they were broadcasting at LC-AAC 128 Kbps?
Talkback radio could broadcast at HE-AAC V2 96Kbps or 72Kbps. It could even drop down to HE-AAC V2 64Kbps to free up space for the music stations.
Most of the music stations broadcast in HE-AAC V2 32-48Kbps.
Why is DAB+ allocated a fraction of the bandwidth that’s available?
Are there any plans to increase bandwidth?
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The other channels are used in or reserved for neighbouring areas.
- 8A is reserved for Nambour & the Sunshine Coast
- 8B is used in the Gold Coast for ABC & SBS stations and reserved for ABC & SBS in other areas along with 9C (ABC&SBS decide which of these is used in any particular area)
- 8C is reserved for for
- Murwillumbah including parts of the Gold coast
- Ipswich
- 8D is reserved for
- Beaudesert & Mount Tamborine, including parts of the Gold Coast
- Some other areas near Brisbane where Rebel FM &/or The Breeze operate
- 9D is used in the Gold Coast for commercial & community stations
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Brisbane have done pretty well, the only real spot for metro being allocated more is Adelaide/Perth should just be given use of 9A. There’s sufficient blocks left once you account for all overlaps into those cities, even if miraculously regional rollouts occurred.
In Perth you could use the gift of extra space to the FM licenses as a payoff for allowing the AM conversions to go ahead.
Otherwise, a further gift to capital city incumbents would just add more low bitrate streaming stations, not higher bitrates. The only expansion of DAB in metro areas should be through an open auction for new entrants.
The UK has more or less done a DAB to DAB+ migration in the past few years. Classic FM (their commercial radio Classical station) which for years held on to “ok” bitrates for DAB music, switched to DAB+ and went to 64kbps, down from the 128kbps MP2 they were previously broadcasting, so they could add in another two 32kbps stations.
When given a choice between quality and quantity, commercial radio always pick quantity. There’s no point giving them more.
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Thought I’d do a Canberra list whilst I’m here.
41 stations in total
8D
1RPH - 32 kbits
1WaY - 48 kbits
2CA - 96 kbits
2CC - 96 kbits
2XX - 48 kbits
ArtSound - 48 kbps
BLENDER - 32 kbps
CADA - 32 kbps
Club Lime Radio - 64 kbps (dead air when i tuned in)
CMS Digital - 48 kbps
Coles Radio - 32 kbps
FOREVER 60s - 96 kbps
FOREVER 70s - 64 kbps
HiT104.7 - 96 kbps
iHeart Australia - 32 kbps
iHeart Country - 32 kbps
MIX106.3 - 32 kbps
MMM 90s - 32 kbps
MMM Country - 32 kbps
NiGE! - 32 kbps
Snow DAB+ - 64 kbps
TikTok - 32 kbps
9C
ABC Canberra - 64 kbits
ABC Classic - 120 kbits
ABC Country - 72 kbits
ABC Jazz - 88 kbits
ABC KIDS listen - 64 kbps
ABC NewsRadio - 40 kbps
ABC Sport - 40 kbps
ABCRadioNational - 64 kbps
Double J - 72 kbps
SBS Arabic - 48 kbps
SBS Chill - 72 kbps
SBS Euro Pop - 48 kbps
SBS Pop Asia - 48 kbps
SBS Radio 1 - 40 kbps
SBS Radio 2 - 40 kbps
SBS Radio 3 - 40 kbps
SBS South Asian - 48 kbps
triple j - 72 kbps
triplejunearthed - 72 kbps
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Which is why streaming is my preferred choice.
An FM broadcast of a commercial radio station provides better sound quality than a HE-AAC V2 32Kbps.
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Streaming CAN be 32 k/bits too, but (thankfully) usually better than that.
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Which is why I go to View Source Code to find the highest quality stream and add it to my Wintal DAB24C.
Nova provide 320 Kbps LC-AAC streams of their stations.
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Which quietly didn’t happen in 2014 when the five year moratorium of new entrants expired.
As @moe rightly mentioned, more spectrum to incumbents will only spawn more 32kbps streams.
Until the loophole is closed of royalty assessment and experimental classification, the majors will keep dumping online stations on DAB+ to “save money” and rip off those shouldering the biggest risk, creatives.
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