Yes. The Grant Broadcasters stations in Hobart use 2A.
I can’t find any benefits to it from listening tbh. Even up the East Coast and the Northern Midlands, it’s basically the same as the 3A stations.
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Oh, that’s odd. It also means they are significantly exceeding their licensed capacity. I’d assume SCA wouldn’t be using such low rates and might have an extra station or two if there’d been the capacity auction like finally seems to have happened in Canberra.
I wonder if it’s just a misconfiguration rather than a deliberate strategy?
As an aside - now the ownership’s changed, they’ve missed a trick to not be running 7HOt Tomato.
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No, they’re in capacity, they have extra bandwidth allocated. CRA are the technical intermediary for DAB, and so they don’t allow stations to encode out of their allocated bandwidth.
They have 7HO River, running the log from River 94.9. The Hot Tomato brand doesn’t really have any significance in Hobart, but ‘River’ I suppose can be attributed to the Derwent River.
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Weird then - do you know why SCA aren’t using more if more has been made available? Even if they didn’t want more channels, at least to improve bitrates like happened in Canberra.
For Grant, if it’s not that effective, wonder why they are doing it instead of higher rates - or indeed selling space (SEN or Coles perhaps)? I’m surprised if it isn’t improving coverage much though - as it’s quite notable in the other direction.
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It is, but then again, maybe they like the sound of parametric stereo compared to regular… I don’t blame them, 48kbps can be better than 64k in some instances.
Re coverage, well there’s only so much of the reception you can attribute to the FEC. Lowering the rate (eg from 3A to 3B or 4A) will reduce coverage stability because the signal there’s less room for error. But you can’t really gain ‘extra’ coverage from hardening your FEC, because the carrier coverage is the carrier coverage. I would assume a FEC of 2A over 3A would only really be of benefit (with Tasmania’s terrain) when you go past small objects (like buildings) than can intefere with the signal.
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Exactly where it’s needed and improving in building reception on the fringes. This would be helpful in Brisbane where anywhere east of Carina can suffer poor LOS or in Redcliffe where despite seeing Mt Coot-tha, signal can be poor.
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Just fixing up this post!
Just wondering the theory of the 2A/3A/4A if it is all about prevent interferences. I wonder in a perfect world with zero interference, would 2A/3A/4A would all perform the same if you could travel away from the transmitter? Or does 2A actually decode weaker signals better…?
A lower signal would be more susceptible to interference. However if you are in a location with less noise, then you may get a better sound (in reference to analog radio) than a person close or within LOS of the transmitter with a strong signal. So with the example in Tasmania it may not make a huge difference the error correction variables as there might be less noise than say a more built up city. That can somewhat be proven with FM.
I have noted if I climb Sugarloaf the FM sound is not so good (going back at least 10 years now) but if you travel to The Entrance on the central coast it probably has a “better cleaner sound” even though for commercial radio it is outside the licence area (all things being equal with the radio etc). I assume it is because of the interference on Sugarloaf itself (maybe also it isn’t engineered to point downwards). It will be interesting if DAB would have any issue on Sugarloaf (if they ever get it in Newcastle) and if the 2A/3A/4A would make any difference.
This topic could become very nerdy fast.
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Overload.
Ah well, remember BOG’s application to LMCC, within a couple of years, ha.
2A of course would make a difference.
Unlikely to happen if ACMA don’t lift the 5kW ERP which therefore removes the need for a costly string of ridiculously sited OCRs.
It is the technical discussion thread as suggested by @Moe after all, so go for it.
In Sydney where all the towers are, it does not seemed to be as obvious when compared to Sugarloaf and other locations like at Robertson. Perhaps it’s the way it’s engineered. This is in respect to FM although in the vicinity of Jaycar dab can drop.
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From Radioinfo this morning:
Tunnel vision about digital radio could cost lives
Comment from Peter Saxon.It’s been about seven years since Jason Morrison presented his hard-talking Breakfast show on 2UE.
Now the director of 7News, Sydney, Jason emailed radioinfo the other day to say, “ I am just a listener these days - and a frustrated one at that!!”
The cause of his frustration is that after more than 10 years of operation in metro markets, DAB+ reception remains patchy and unreliable - acutely so in Sydney’s extensive tunnel system.
Read more here.
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Radioinfo is on a good run a present, if it’s not Brad Smart uncovering some uncomfortable truths about out of area retransmissions, it’s Jason Morrison mentioning radio’s elephant in the room of digital coverage in Sydney’s tunnel network.
Same applies to Melbourne and Brisbane, many post DAB+ approved tunnel projects opened, the entire tolled tunnel network in Brisbane and Melbourne’s Eastlink approved after DAB+ was legislated.
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ACMA has today released its consultation paper on the proposed Digital Radio Channel Plan (DRCP) for the Gold Coast: https://www.acma.gov.au/consultations/2020-09/proposed-digital-radio-channel-plan-gold-coast-consultation-292020
The paper also consults on changes to the technical arrangements for Brisbane digital radio services.
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50kW for Brisbane and 25kW for the Gold Coast then (8B ABC/SBS and 9D commercial/community) then.
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So some chance of out of area reception. 
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As far as out of area DAB+ reception is concerned, I’m still patiently waiting for the day we get Digital Radio in at least one of Newcastle, the Central Coast or Wollongong. Transmissions for any of those three markets (which are surely populated enough/close enough to Sydney for DAB+ to be chosen?) would probably be Sydney’s best chance of DAB+ DXing, I think.
Not holding my breath anytime soon though!
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Given that the main DAB+ site for Wollongong is slated to be Brokers Nose instead of Knights Hill, I’m afraid the chances of picking them up in much of Sydney would be slim to none, except maybe at around Maroubra.
Not to mention that the channel that DAB+ is allocated to for Wollongong is the same as that allocated for the Central Coast (9D), which won’t help matters either!
That being said, I think you would more likely be receiving DAB+ from the Central Coast than from Wollongong in many parts of Sydney.
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Agree, Brokers Nose FM in Sydney at 2kw probably isn’t strong enough to get FM.
In my experience, you need 25db on FM for DAB to be receivable.
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It will be interesting to also see if community station 94.1 FM is awarded a full-time community licence prior to any Digital Radio roll-out. Currently they are still remaining on a TCBL. Otherwise they potentially may have to lobby for access to the spectrum?
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I noticed that both 2UE, 2SM and 2GB broadcast in AAC-LC while most DAB+ stations broadcast in HE-AAC V1 and in HE-AAC V2 is there any benefit between any of these formats, Eg is one going to perform better than the other?
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