Error Correction is about resilience to reception problems. The more EC, the easier it is to receive in fringe areas. EC basically means the same thing is transmitted multiple times so momentary reception problems are smoothed over.
Community Radio across the country uses lower EC in order to get more kilobits out of their 2/5 allocation. It doesn’t have anything to do with sound quality per-se.
If you can’t receive PBS reliably but you can receive Fox with no problems, that’s likely EC at play.
The big networks place stations on DAB in random markets so the music royalties are cheaper on their streaming platforms. If a station is on FM/DAB you pay less music royalties than if it’s online-only. It doesn’t matter if that station is only on-air in DAB Hobart, the reduction in fees applies everywhere.
I don’t think this is the reason DAB is still on-air, but it certainly would help justify it to some larger players.
I am assuming you use headphones? I had an issue with the Sony I had (Pocket DAB/DAB+ Radio | XDR-P1DBP | Sony Australia) . When I used headphones it did not revert using the headphone wire exclusively as the aerial. Then I had issues with reception when out and about when compared to the Sangean. My guess it tried to use both as aerials? And then it mess things up. This is the one I use for DAB https://www.betta.com.au/sangean-dab-fm-pocket-radio-white-728423 and have no issues with dab reception when wondering around. Maybe its a Sydney thing, just my experience over the years. The FM on the Sangean is not bad but I find it cuts off stereo a bit too aggressively to my liking but it can get the suburban community radio.
Yeah I found the lower power community stations suffer on these cheaper ones, even when you are in a pretty good spot. It might be due to overload from the blow torches in Sydney. Where a more quality pocket radio has less issue and get the results that one would expect.
Those are absolute crap radios, we have them at work for quick testing of the DAB transmitters, as in, are they on or off when we’re out at the infill sites. They definitely don’t stand up to the high quality Richter name, the rrp is $100 but personally I wouldn’t pay $10 for one.
I’m not sure what the whip antenna length is, but generally for FM I’d have it fully extended & shortened a bit for DAB+ for best reception.
Optimally antenna length (in meters) for best frequency match would be something a kin to:
300/(Frequency in MHz) x 0.5
Maybe tall building & hill RF shadows in those regions for the Artarmon transmitter?
Today I was in Carlton (4km from the CBD) and thought I’d try out DAB+ and see if it was better compared to where I live (10km from the CBD)
In Carlton I got almost no dropouts, and with the antenna all the way down!
Both Carlton and my suburb officially have “very good” reception according to digitalradioplus.com.au. But it is unusable in my area unless you practically stand still, and it works seemingly fine in Carlton. With the same cheap radio. The mystery deepens
Just realized since I have a DAB Radio capable of showing the slide shows (my BYD Seal EV) there is quite a few stations in Brisbane that don’t bother with any images on their DAB stations
I recall many years ago now, finding, IIRC, that some DAB+ stations were transmitting jpg images & others png in Sydney & either one DAB+ software program or was it my DAB+ tabletop (?) wasn’t able to decode one of the image file types.
Don’t know if this is the right thread for it, so mods, if it’s not, you know what to do.
I picked up the $129 digital radio with CD player from Aldi. Basically I got it for the DAB plus Aux-In, as you will see by the attached photo. The tablet is only for Spotify, Audible, YT Music, radio apps and an giant clock.
Sounds alright, I’m no audiophile so everything sounds OK.
DAB reception for everything else bar ABC/SBS multiplex is OK, and much better than the adaptor I got on the cheap from Jaycar. The ABC/SBS multiplex out here doesn’t seem to be that strong.
Will upload more when I get the chance. But here’s a happy little picture for you for now.
