Digital Radio

That’s a shame. I was hoping for a Forever Classic station!

All stations are currently running in 48kbps AAC.

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Hobart 9A Stations (Short/Long Titles, as transmitted):

7HO (7HO) - 48kbps
Kix (Kix Country) - 48kbps
HIT (HIT HOBART) - 48kbps
EASYHITS (EASY HITS) - 48kbps
Triple M (Triple M) - 48kbps
MMMCLASS (MMM CLASSIC ROCK) - 48kbps

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Not great bitrates considering that there are only six commercial stations on the multiplex - was hoping for at least 64kbps! :confused:

Any of them doing slideshow images or additional text (eg, “Now Playing” song info) at the very least?

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Yes, about to post the images.

I’ll look closer tomorrow, and grab some actual copies of the images, see what FEC codes etc.

My thoughts so far: All sound very compressed. The SCA stations sound the best though, KIX and 7HO are alright, KIX sounds very underprocessed (I know KIX is being played off of an Audiovault server on Mt Wellington, so…) and 7HO sounds the same as FM, but with lots of compression. The slideshow images on the Grant stations look very compressed. SCA are alright.

Then again, it’s only been on for half an hour :slight_smile:. A great job getting it on the air!

Yes, I was hoping for some higher bitrates and some more stations. I guess we’ll see that once the excess capacity is allocated.

The community stations are on their way (by the end of April, I think).
I know the switch and fiber NTD have been installed by Telstra for DAB at Ultra106Five, but not the encoder as of yet.

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Hobart 9A PAD Images

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Well, from comparing the Hobart DAB feed and the web feed of Easy Hits, Hobart is around 2-3 minutes in front of the other cities, and currently has no commercials. They went straight from the in to break promo into the OFB and back in to the music. I could be wrong though.

Oh, and the KIX DAB feed (played straight off of Mt Wellington) is completely different to the KIX web feed (out of Bundaberg).

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Web feeds are usually behind DAB time wise but not by that much… so that’s interesting.

Easy Hits and Triple M Classic Rock Hobart both running Tasmanian news bulletins this morning.

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I’m trying to get DAB Player running to capture the full details of the Hobart mux. I’ve gotten as far as getting it to recognize the SDR and scan, but it can’t pick up any stations. The antenna alignment tool shows the SNR as 0DB, so I assume the software is just not interfacing with the SDR properly. Is anyone here able to lend a hand, please? :slight_smile:

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Hi Josh.

I haven’t used ‘DABPlayer’ software yet. I have used 3 other DAB+ software programs with an SDR.
What brand/kind of SDR device are you using?

With RTL-SDR dongles you need Zadig file to get the software to interface with RTL-SDR, often a trap for new players (users).

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I have the RTL-SDR.com dongles I use for trunking but one of them is throwing up a excess 5V fault which seems to have wiped out both even with only the non-faulty one plugged in.

Will try DABPlayer on another laptop I think before reformatting.

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Another thought given a similar experience I had with QIRX last night is to tinker with the gain/AGC controls manually. Bit errors from multipath or poor signal could be a factor with poor alignments. Look at the frequency alignment of the SDR. Investigate phase & freq alignment settings in software, DAB+ can be a bit picky & most software will try to compensate automatically. Sorry I’m not familiar with your software.
Sometimes doing to many changes too quickly can upset DAB+ software.

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The issue seems to be with the software not connecting with the SDR correctly rather than poor signal.

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DAB Player require’s the official Realtek driver. I replaced the Zadig WinUSB drivers with it.

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From DAB Player:

Ensemble 0x1380, Label: 'DAB+ HOBART', ShortLabel: 'DAB+ HB', LTO: +660 min, ECC: 0xF0, NumServices: 6
   
 Audio-Service 0x1380, Label: '7HO', ShortLabel: '7HO', PTY: Pop Music (dynamic), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 1, StartCU: 192, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 0
   
 Audio-Service 0x1381, Label: 'Kix Country', ShortLabel: 'Kix', PTY: Country Music (dynamic), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 2, StartCU: 228, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 0
   
 Audio-Service 0x1390, Label: 'Triple M HOBART', ShortLabel: 'Triple M', PTY: Other Music (static), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 17, StartCU: 0, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 1
            User App 1 / 1, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', UaType: 0x2 (Slideshow), DataLen: 0 []
    
Audio-Service 0x1391, Label: 'HIT HOBART', ShortLabel: 'HIT', PTY: Pop Music (static), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 18, StartCU: 96, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 1
            User App 1 / 1, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', UaType: 0x2 (Slideshow), DataLen: 0 []
   
 Audio-Service 0x1393, Label: 'MMM CLASSIC ROCK', ShortLabel: 'MMMCLASS', PTY: Rock Music (static), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 20, StartCU: 36, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 1
            User App 1 / 1, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', UaType: 0x2 (Slideshow), DataLen: 0 []
   
 Audio-Service 0x1397, Label: 'EASY HITS', ShortLabel: 'EASYHITS', PTY: Easy Listening Music (static), NumComponents: 1 (Audio: 1, Data: 0)
        AudioComponent, SCIdS: 0, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', ASCTy: 0x3F (AAC), SubChId: 24, StartCU: 132, NumCU: 36, ErrorProt: EEP 3-A (FEC: 1/2), Datarate: 48 kbit/s, NumUserApps: 1
            User App 1 / 1, Label: '', ShortLabel: '', UaType: 0x2 (Slideshow), DataLen: 0 []
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Thanks!

Would you mind giving me a hand to get DAB Player working, please? I can’t get it to pick up any channels (It’s an SDR issue, not a signal strength issue). Did you have that issue at all?

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I’d love to help but I’m afraid I’m not sure how.

I never struck the issue you are having as my device is a Realtek 2832U, blue outer casing with 820T2 on it. I am using the Realtek driver, version 64.1.521.2012 as reported by device manager.

Edit: device ID is USB\VID_0BDA&PID_2838&REV_0100&MI_00 - Hmm… well this says 2838. Maybe its the combination of driver and the version of DAB Player that work in my case.
DLL versions as reported by DAB Player:
RTKDAB.dll: 1.1.520.2012 (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\RTKDAB.dll) - this one looks driver related
RTKDABSOURCE.dll: 0.1.831.2011 (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\RTKDABSOURCE.dll)

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The 7HO logo is a shocker. So 1990 and just ugly IMO. It’s probably my least favourite of all Australian ones.

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