They’ve put the redirect service on the same service ID as the former NTS. So the “Radio 3AW” is the same service ID - 0x10CC - as NTS was.
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Other than concentrating on their core talk stations in each market, I’d say not much else.
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But they can “sell” their spectrum to non-competing, especially narrowcast, stations (why we now have Niche Radio)?
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Possibly yes, they could sell off more spectrum if the ACE arrangement works out.
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Talk about a waste of spectrum!
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This would be logical. ACE could have up to 128kbs and add the Magic log in Sydney and Brisbane and add the Coast/Edge/TRFM log in Melbourne.
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And I’ve noticed listening in mono, it’s like there’s an ‘out of phase’ effect whenever they run station promos. The voice overs somehow seem to be pushed back in the mix. Too much processing and no thought to check on mono radios perhaps? But hey, it’s day one!
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Absurdly high data rates ( ie 128k for a talk station) happen overseas because they are feeding transmitters (off DAB+ or HD radio) as either the primary or backup program source. What is apparently even more common is the web stream being used as a backup program source at the transmitter site -I wouldn’t be surprised if backup program at some Aussie transmitter sites is a 4G modem and PC listening to the stations web stream too.
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Which is more than good enough if the primary link is reliable. Some stations (think BOG and Resonate) don’t even have a backup. 4LG has had periods off air recently due to scheduled power outages at the transmitter site. Apparently they don’t even have a backup generator. God help them in an emergency.
Hell, some regional stations use the web stream to feed their repeaters. (Usually when they have an FM repeater for an AM licence).
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Yes regional broadcasters are not known for their big spend on plant and equipment or staff to maintain it: single program source, no genset, no standby Tx, no standby antenna, no routine maintenance visits, no first-ins near site, no techs in region and no spares for Tx or studio. Despite all this its amazing how few outages they seem to have. The Great Resignation is unlikely to affect them as they hardly employ anyone anyway. I have struck a few ex-broadcast techs in the mobiles industry, so that’s were some of the younger techs seem to have migrated.
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OMG you’re right. It sounds bad. Been listening this morning on the car radio. Audio is thin sounding with excessive top end. And the stereo imaging is all over the place. Heard Sweet Caroline and every time Neil sang, or there was too much instrumentation in one channel or the other, the image would wander.
More Than a Feeling that followed had absolutely zero dynamic range. The intro that fades up was the equivalent of 100% mod the whole time.
Way too much processing of the audio. Please fix! Thank you.
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What more efficient codecs are there that would improve the listening experience beyond HE-AAC v2?
Noticeably better than v1, however; is better out there and possible on DAB+ here?
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And importantly, that are compatible with current receivers.
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On what you can do with DAB+ the only real very low bit rate choices are HE-AAC v2 or doing mono HE-AAC v1. Mono could sound to some better than the reconstructed stereo.
But the simple stuff is just to maximise audio rates. I suspect that ACE aren’t fully in control of that, sending SEN and Nine their source audio and then it’s being crunched down again, based on seemingly getting worse results at the same bit rate as other stations. To my ears they sound worse than a lot of the 32k stations.
It’s weird that it sounds so bad when they are centring DAB heavily in their promotion. Even if Nine radio were limiting things, 3MP should ditch 2A and go to 64k 3A. Then they could use true stereo.
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Recompressing audio is NEVER a good idea.
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This. More bandwidth pure and simple. Smarter compression just means better ways to fool human hearing.
Off topic but related: Why on FM can’t broadcasters be allowed to squeeze more radio stations into the available bandwidth using narrowband FM? After all they can do that with DAB+.
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I would prefer to not see this happen.
It’s our haven for reasonably high quality free to air audio, given DAB compression and AM mono.
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That was my point. Old school analogue is quite inflexible which in this case is a good thing. Digital is very flexible. Too bad the allowable codecs don’t have enforced fixed bit rates (narrowband 32 kbps for speech/audio and wideband 96 kbps for music).
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Geelong is most of what the Cameron’s have left, given they’ve mostly sold out to ARN. So I dare say they’ll defend the territory.
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Those 16CU have been now allocated to Magic, so it’s now a far more sensible:
3AW - 128kbps/128CU - 2A
Magic 1278 - 64kbps/64CU - 2A
Sounds so much for it, just listening to them playing Underneath the Radar - can’t imagine how bad that would have sounded a few weeks back. 3MP is still at 48kbps, but always sounded a lot better regardless.
Though on the very narrow chance they are reading - please drop the PAD rate - it’s 8kbps just to do song titles and weather (showing a “Friday” forecast of 27 degrees, which isn’t right for either last or this Friday).
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