I don’t know about floodgates, but I expect once Gold Coast is sorted out there’ll be about half a dozen areas that might get moving on DAB soon after. I think Newcastle and Sunshine Coast will happen. Also I suspect Townsville will happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if Murwillumbah goes ahead too.
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I was wanting to visualise the allocations and bitrates of the DAB+ multiplexes in Sydney, so I made the diagram below. Posting it here in case anyone else finds it useful as well:
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For heaven’s sake (literally), do we need all those Christmas stations!
Great work, @tvcl. A nerd’s delight!
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You have to wonder why ABC doesn’t shave 8kbps/6CU off ABC News, bringing it in line with the speech-only ABC Sport, and reallocate that capacity to Triple J Unearthed thus bringing that station in line with the other music stations.
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Are MMM104.9 and Triple M the same?
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Content wise, yes
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They’re two separate streams, broadcasting the same content.
Edit: I was mistaken. Refer to post 130 below.
Looking at the chart, could SCA swap 48 CUs from 9B to 9A with the community block so that everything is together in one block?
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Seems like a waste of bandwidth, when the 32kbps used on a duplicate of Triple M on the same multiplex would be better spent on increasing the bitrate of 2DayFM/Triple M or moving one of the stations on 9B to 9A!
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Are you sure? SCA have 448kbps/336CUs on 9A, so my maths suggests they would both have to point to the same stream. It is possible to have multiple names point to the same audio stream.
No, the community stations are entitled to 2/9ths of the capacity of each multiplex.
Looking at that chart, both SEN and Sky own 96 CUs, so it looks like Niche Radio is on Sky’s allocation.
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You’re right. I thought they were different audio streams as they had different ‘audio service IDs’, but it’s the same audio stream. I’ve updated the image accordingly.
Yes, I was just wondering if they could do the swap to make things easier if they could come to an arrangement, or whether it’s specified that the 2/9ths x2 has to be split over the two equally.
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Late response, but if you are comfortable with GNU/Linux (or using a Mac?), there’s a project called OpenDigitalRadio that has some free software tools that can do this sort of thing.
- dabtools - outputs pure eti data from an rtl-sdr stick
- dablin - can play back eti streams from file or piped from dabtools in real time
It does require a little bit of experimentation and some knowledge with Unix-like environments, but it certainly is doable. If you pipe the eti data into something like xz, you can also get a reasonable reduction in file size.
Also a really neat project in general, if you are patient enough you can use their other tools to generate your own eti streams and use software defined transmitters to broadcast DAB (although I never had the hardware for that).
P.S. Just saw that Jan van Katwijk has something similar too if that ends up being helpful.
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It’d be nice if there was a way to record all the AAC+ output streams over the three multiplexes at once and/or rebroadcast it over LAN/WAN as is possible with DVB-T using VLC. All this is technologically possible with an SDR - it’s just a matter of having the software to do it.
The next must have DX accessory. Though it should come with a vertical mounting kit.
I’m surprised by the image - it looks similar to an FM antenna.
Close up
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They usually have holes on all 4 sides of the antenna so you can unscrew the clamp and put it though the adjacent side to mount it vertically.
But I agree the image isn’t very well done.
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But ideally, you should use a stand off bracket for vertical mounting so that the mast doesn’t interfere with the reception.
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I did some new motorway driving whilst in Sydney today, and am happy to report faultless reception down the tunnels - NorthConnex (Wahroonga to Carlingford) , WestConnex (Concord to Ashfield), M8 (St Peters to Bardwell Park). I think the Harbour Tunnel has DAB repeaters now too.
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2SM DAB audio has a lot of “clicking” noises underneath… every few seconds… very annoying… anyone else noticing the same thing?
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Yeah I hear it! It is not happening on the online stream.
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No new stations or changes to others yet - but Niche Radio in Melbourne is now down to 24kbps mono in EEP4A mode, with the previously used capacity becoming spare. I suppose it now matches the AM audio quality from their previous incarnation - really awful especially as they play music content.
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Hopefully SEN squeeze in a Christmas music station. We don’t have enough of those already.
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