The Pulse was on a temporary community license at the time it was discussed using 94.7 for an ABC Local service, I think the pushback against that helped them finally get a permanent license and some clarity on staying on the frequency.
To steer it back to digital radio - the problem would be that the 9C block can’t really have an on channel repeater alone to improve DAB reception in the Geelong area, because it could interfere with 9A/9B reception within its licensed service area.
The fix would be to shift the ABC/SBS to a different block away from 9A/B - but it would then create the opposite problem - anywhere requiring infills would need unique ABC/SBS only sites repeating just those - where at the moment the commercial stations are more or less forced to give the ABC/SBS a free ride at the retransmission sites because of the same interference issue with adjacent channels.
My general experience is that at home, it’s fine. If I’m staying in basically the same spot that I know has reception, like different parts of my house, I can listen to it and it won’t drop out. It does sound audibly tinny and compressed, and worse than FM, but I’ve found my ears adjust.
But if I’m walking around? Forget it. I’ve learned to spare myself the frustration of trying to listen to DAB+ on my walks. It drops out constantly. The effect is jarring and much worse than analogue static. It’s unusable.
The other morning I was listening to PBS Digital in Melbourne on a pocket DAB+ radio. I live around 10km from the CBD. had to extend the antenna the full length to get it to pick up the signal, and even then it was dropping out so much I couldn’t listen anymore. I switched over to the same station on FM and it sounded totally fine with the aerial all the way down. There was some mild static, but it was not a big deal. It also sounded much better on FM sonically, with a lot less compression.
I just can’t believe that DAB+ is a real thing we are still spending money on. There should be a Royal Commission into why Australia invested in such a bad technology. More stations, yes. I enjoy getting to listen to some of the speciality stations like SBS Pop Asia, without needing to use the internet. But there’s a shocking amount of compression and a completely unreliable signal even in metro areas - and no service at all outside of the cities. Most people don’t even know what DAB+ is. I’ve noticed that the ABC will often say “lots of ways to listen, like on your TV and the app” and they won’t even mention DAB+, I suspect because they’ve given up on it. It’s so bad that it feels Tesla-esque, like a form of broadcasting invented by Elon Musk. How was this allowed to happen?
I am 105 km north of Sydney and I have a Sangean DAB+ pocket radio which gets Sydney DAB in some parts of my apartment just fine, just as long as I have line of sight out through a window… which is to be expected. Fewer dropouts when outside on the balcony again.
DAB works just fine on my car radio in Sydney, I don’t recall getting constant dropouts when there, which is where the majority of DAB listening is probably being done by most users.
From my experience it makes a big difference the brand of the pocket radio. The sangean ones are excellent, some cheaper pocket ones drop out a lot especially when error correction is set differently. I had a radio that glitched with 2ch when it was 128k it was unlistenable. That was an Iriver MP3 player with dab. I wished it worked well as it was a nice looking device but it just glitched too much. Tried to find firmware to fix no luck. I also had experience with a new Mazda 3 with the first gen of the dab radio glitching whilst driving around in 2018. Then also cheaper dab radios on eBay which were not great, like stereo stations were mono.
I just did an audio comparison of 2UE between AM and DAB+ and I think even AM, a 100-year-old technology, gives DAB+ a run for its money.
This is a recording of the 2UE on AM (with the signal bandwidth set to the full 18 kHz):
And this is 2UE on DAB+:
I’m curious as to which version MediaSpy members prefer. The treble doesn’t reach as high on AM, but at the same time, the trebles on DAB+ sound metallic/artifical.
The 9 kHz limitation on AM is also an artificial one though (as we have 9 kHz channel spacing). If we had 15 kHz channels and we brought back the use of AM stereo, AM would probably sound pretty similar to FM (aside from the RF noise issues).
Unfortunately, most AM radios have a pretty narrow bandwidth set by default, limiting the frequency response further – often to around 3 or 4 kHz (out of the 9 kHz available).
While recording this comparison, I also note that 2UE has a ~77 second delay on DAB+ compared to AM. Any ideas why there’s such a huge delay?
On my car radio, DAB+ rarely drops out (I’m about 20 km from the main Sydney transmitters), but I don’t really listen to it much because I really dislike the artifical trebles with the AAC+ codec.
Yeah I don’t like 2UE dab audio. Depending on the AM radio it can sound better than dab. I wish they would get off 2A and have it 3A to make it sound better with more bits.
AM always has great potential - with perfect listening conditions and a high spec radio it can sound amazing though limited by being mono and with a maximum audio frequency of 9Khz. However, I think a fairer comparison would be between DAB+ and a standard AM radio with a 4kHz bandwidth (or less) inside a house not far from some downlights and an LCD TV.
Its easy to bash DAB and other digital mediums, but the real issue is bitrate. If you give the input low bitrate its going to sounds like crap no matter what you do. The opposite is also true, if the transmitter is fed lossless audio but then smooshed it down to 64kbps mono MPEG2, of course it isn’t going to be very nice.
DAB is fine in the car, especially in Sydney, even the BOG stations using EEP-4A, they hardly drop out (except in some of the tunnels even though the other stations can be heard fine).
I have a cheap DAB+ pocket radio that I bought on eBay for about $30, and it’s fine. The reception when walking out and about is patchy at times, worse than FM, but for the most part, better sound quality and choice than FM.
In my experience DAB is fantastic in the car all over the metro area of Brisbane. The sound is great on most stations, on par with FM. The real benefit is it sounds 10 times better than the AM band in my car, and actually travels further. AM sounds awful once you get 50km out of the Brisbane, but DAB hangs in there perfectly until 100km heading north anyway.
My home Marantz tuner also sounds great on DAB stations. As does my Pure alarm clock - which only has FM and DAB anyway.
I haven’t yet experienced a hand-held portable DAB radio that is any good though, but then I’ve only tried a couple of them, and not recently.
It’s a mixed bag - where I am FM reception is much worse, while I can usually position the antenna to pick up all the DAB multiplexes, FM is nowhere near as stable - static filled at best, and inconsistent between the different stations.
I assume it’s multipath issues that make FM unreliable for me, but while I’m sure there’s more places where FM is reliable and DAB isn’t - I’m glad I have the option, as the last time I tried a smart speaker instead I hated it.
State capture. The commercial radio lobby decided the digital radio technology and chose the one that maximised their incumbency.
DAB is incorrect for the Australian landscape and licensing structure, it will never and can never be a replacement technology, and the lack of effort even trying to pretend they are trying to roll out regionally shows it was never about actually shifting listeners to digital radio.
DAB is probably only surviving due to the streaming royalties loophole at this point.
I started out getting into DAB+ with a portable Richter I got from Harvey Norman, it works great at home, I thought I’d be able to take it out with me too but I didn’t realise that the long antenna needs to be fully extended for it to work at all. And I quickly realised that even with the antenna protruding out of my bag, it still dropped out constantly. I then got a generic Chinese brand for the pocket radio and that’s been the same.
I’m surprised to learn that the brand matters that much? Like considering that you can get a reasonably satisfactory FM experience from even the cheapest radio and DAB is a newer technology, I just didn’t think I’d have to invest in some big ticket item to get an even bearable experience. Is there a good brand I should be getting?
I was wondering about this! There are definitely some stations that sound better than others to me, and the bitrate doesn’t necessarily seem to correlate with what I think sounds better. Error correction, is that what it is?
This is fascinating to hear. Is the problem that I live in Melbourne? Is DAB+ particularly bad in Melbourne for some reason?
Yes! I really enjoy the sound of AM. I get that it is objectively “worse” but it’s not bad to my ears, it’s kind of soothing actually. I compare it to watching a black and white movie. It doesn’t sound cheap like DAB+ or a low resolution MP3 compression does.