Digital Radio

Presumably Hope 103.2 is using SCA’s spare 64 kbits on Sydney 9B, and they are also using a few other bits of spectrum from the other community broadcasters on 9B?

I’d be very surprised if that’s the case.
The list I had lists the following community stations in 9B in Sydney:

Long Namekbits
2MFM Muslim DR64
Hope 103.232
2SER 107.332
Inspire Digital64
FBi Click32
Table256

All of these easily fit into the 2/9ths for community stations. Has this changed?

If it has, some of the community stations are probably using different levels of error correction to get extra kbits out of their allocated space. I’m aware of this being done in Melbourne on 9B (288kbits) and Perth (336kbits).

Yes, it has.

The following below in Sydney on 9B is now:

Long Name        kbits
2MFM Muslim DR      32
Hope 1032          128
2SER 107.3          64
Inspire Digital     48
FBi Radio           64
Table              336

Does anyone have any thoughts on which regional area might be next for DAB roll-out once they get Gold Coast sorted? I think it’s bound to be a larger city with a competitive radio market (i.e. more than one operator).

I’d have to say Newcastle and Sunshine Coast would have to be front-runners. Based on the players involved I’d almost think Sunshine Coast might be first.

I suspect Wollongong and Townsville might also be in the next bunch but there are likely to be some others.

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Geelong as it’s competing with the Melbourne market, it deserves equal chances to broadcast with them.

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I’d expect they are just messing with different error correction. I wrote a breakdown of what the Melbourne community stations did here, in short though, by sacrificing coverage slightly, you can broadcast more in the same amount of spectrum. A post in the Car Radio thread mentions that Hope/Inspire/2SER use EEP-4A - so that would likely make it:

2MFM Muslim DR      32 - 24CU EEP-3A
Hope 1032          128 - 64CU EEP-4A
2SER 107.3          64 - 32CU EEP-4A
Inspire Digital     48 - 24CU EEP-4A
FBi Radio           64 - 48CU EEP-3A

Table              336 = 192CU = 2/9ths
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Don’t forget Hobart is already in the works.

[quote=“Brianc68, post:1116, topic:231”]
I’d have to say Newcastle
[/quote]I think Newcastle is a good chance too. Bill is a big supporter of DAB and SCA, particularly with their new studios, would be keen.

I’m including Hobart as a capital, not regional :slight_smile:
Yeah Newcastle is the logical choice. I think there might be some left field ones too though.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Grant push for DAB in Ipswich in particular, and also Geelong. Particularly given River 94.9 is not only competing with the Brisbane FM stations but also increasingly the DAB offerings at least in a big chunk of their licence area.

Once they finish their week long Macca marathon, will they have the same playlist/format/songs as the Triple M regional “Greatest Hits” stations (obviously minus Alan Jones and Ray Hadley)?

I’ve noticed just now on my DAB+ radio in Sydney that it has decreased back to 32kbps, whilst The 90s has increased to 48kbps.

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Probably because there’s a new station from (I’m guessing) ARN called “TACO” at 40kbps.

EDIT: Actually, I think that “TACO” is a SCA offering. Currently a simulcast of 104.9 Triple M.

The 80s has dropped to 32 kbps in Melbourne as well. Sounds very ropey even on a 3 inch speaker. Not good!

No sign of Taco or any other new “stations”

What multiplex is it on?

9B - So it seems that SCA might be finally using it’s allocated bandwidth on that multiplex.

It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of “TACO”. A return for The Range? A completely new station?

Its odd that they haven’t seemingly aligned TACO with the Hit or Triple M networks like they recently did with all of the other DAB stations.

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SCA could be leasing it out to a Mexican broadcasting group.

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Doesn’t Bill Caralis already have enough of his own stations on DAB in Sydney?

Given that’s it’s just simulcasting Triple M at the moment, it might just be a temporary station to test their use of that multiplex. TACO night just be an arbitrary name that means nothing to no one other than the engineers.

I doubt we would see another DAB station run by SCA given how soon it is to their most recent relaunch last weekend. I think it’s more likely that they’ll just it to increase the bitrate of their main stations in Sydney or they’ve leased it out to an external operator.

I’d definitely rule the range out. The also have the capacity in Melbourne and Brisbane to have kept it if they wanted to. The Range Facebook also details the switch of the online stream from the national DAB+ stream with no ads and limited programming to the Toowoomba stream which has local ads and also ads the American Country’s Countdown which was not on DAB+. It seems like a lot of effort to go to if they’re planning on bringing it back.

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ARN have launched The Edge and The 80s in Perth.

With only 128kbits available, based on what they’re doing in other cities, I suspect 96FM is 48kbits, The Edge is 48kbits and The 80s in 32kbits.

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Yeah, that sounds plausible. I remember when SCA did a national DAB+ broadcast of 105.1 Triple M Melbourne coded as “M3” for about a month or so in 2012, perhaps “TACO” might be something similar.

I don’t know if it’s already been mentioned, but apparently Coles Radio started broadcasting on Canberra DAB+ yesterday. Do we have anyone in the nation’s capital who can confirm whether or not Coles Radio is indeed now broadcasting on DAB+ locally?