I can’t imagine listening to 4KQ or even RN on AM rather than DAB. AM isn’t even receivable in the CBD anyway.
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Where?
They should be at a better site, more elevated. I doubt many listen to worry.
The benefit of DAB+ being active is that for a struggling station such as 1197 Brisbane who don’t fix their AM TX, they still remain on air in Brisbane.
Indeed, I don’t who the taxi drivers are, but they’re not too clever. DAB+ wins in the CBDs of Aus.
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Though Adelaide and Brisbane CBDs don’t have DAB infills unlike the other 3 mainland state capitals.
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I haven’t tested DAB+ in the new work car extensively yet, but has anyone driven around the Sydney CBD listening to DAB in the car (I know some have walked around using pocket radios) & how good is it?
Given the CBD translator is vertical polarisation, low power & so high up (around 300m above the road level) most of your reception in the centre of the city would be bouncing it’s self around from Artarmon or the Redfern translator, you wouldn’t be getting much from the Centerpoint translator & it’s lucky multi-path doesn’t matter with DAB+ (but only to a point, too much multi-path & it’ll drop out).
Most of you would be unaware that translators (for radio & TV) are generally not located in the centre of the area, they’re designed to cover, they are located out of the area & beam back in. The Sydney Centerpoint DAB+ translator is more to cover the North Shore areas around Cremorne, Mossman, Waverton, into Woolstoncraft, & around Surry Hills, Paddington, Moore Park areas. The Redfern DAB+ translator is to cover back into the Southern edge of the city & cover Ultimo sort of areas, plus around Eveleigh shadowed by big buildings around the UTS area, also being lower it will cover more local around Redfern too.
At some stage I’ll do further DAB+ tests when I go down to the Woronora, & the Kings Cross DTV site, though most of the Kings Cross trip is though tunnels where DAB+ doesn’t exist.
Will be interesting on the trip down to the Razorback & Picton sites also.
I’ll be going to the Kurrajong Heights site later in the week & I will be driving the work car home to Newcastle most of the week, so will report back on reception there later.
I did drive it home one day last week & DAB+ dropped out briefly at St Ives (I took the Eastern arterial road), it started dropping out a lot going down the hill to the Hawskbury River bridge & up the other side, it stabilised around the speed cameras near Jolls Bridge, but still dropped out often.
I gave up on DAB+ coming along at Karriong near the FM transmitters as it was getting way too annoying with the dropouts, but I flicked back on & off & still had patchy DAB+ reception along the Hwy near Catherine Hill Bay, through Blacksmiths/Belmont South & into Belmont North, I lost DAB+ reception on my driveway as the house was blocking the signal (driveway/garage is on North side of the house).
The biggest issue I’ve found so far driving with DAB+ is the 5-10 seconds of silence due to signal drops. I can quite easily listen to & put up with FM multi-path, AM electrical interference & fade, but the DAB+ dropouts frustrate & annoy me so much, I want to rip the radio out & throw it out the window.
Being a broadcast tech it also plays on my psyche, that if there’s silence there’s an issue, as Radio & even TV to a point, has throughout history always been on, unless there’s a transmission issue, with DAB+ everything could be working fine, but it’s just shit reception in your location giving you nothing at all.
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Their city centres are very close to the TX site, you can see them from streets within each centre.
There’s a lovely view in Grenfell St, Adel where you can almost reach out and touch the Adel Foothills from there, the view has them appearing very close.
Too much of it on the Gold Coast drops it out. Different circumstances, much more distant.
Exactly, it’s why Sydney’s within the urban sprawl is unique and why those elsewhere out near TX sites often have difficulty with their terrain and proximity.
We await with interest your observations from there and Woronora. Is your engineering standard equipment able to discern from metadata which site it’s receiving a signal from?
I agree with this, the ridge that the four lane section of the old highway picks its way along does provide reception - of sorts as you write. There is also patchy reception in The Entrance and Terrigal to Killcare down to Woy Woy.
I love that there’s reception of Sydney DAB+ around Lake Mac and all the way to elevated points in Newcastle itself, down at Newcastle Beach, The Hill, Bar Beach, Merewether and up to elevated sections of the Port Stephens suburb cluster.
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Is there a DAB infill at Woronora? There is a DTV self help site, a legacy from the analogue days, but I haven’t heard of anything for DAB.
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Metadata is identical from every site, they are all on channel repeaters, fed from the same encoder at the main site, most translators are fed “off air” from the main site, in Sydney the Winmalee site is microwave fed from Artarmon.
If metadata was different at different sites, it wouldn’t work, every packet has to be identical & timed correctly within the guard band parameters, otherwise the SFN will fail.
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No there is no Woronora DAB+ infill, I’ll be going to the DTV site (now owned & operated by TXA).
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Thanks. There was a Como (NSW) site mentioned a couple of years ago but I’m assuming this has been canned. Sutherland would be a better site anyway, to cover the lower areas around the Georges River and Woronora River valleys.
Sydney’s is very close as well, but still needs repeaters in and near the CBD.
So do I 
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Coincidentally I drove yesterday to the cbd listening to abc grandstand, zero drop outs. I have a kia carnival. I dont get a lot of dropouts in Sydney Metro. I forgot the last time it did, but it does happen. The kia does pick up the reception faster than the Mazda did. I agree on the M1, its annoying the dropouts.
On the analog vs digital, in my view FM wins most of the time. Overall when on the go its better on dab, when stationary am is better, however on Kia on the AM radio I dont rate the sound quality compare to other cars I had.
When I purchased my grandma a radio, I elected an am mono radio. It was the right buy from battery view point too and warm sound. So I support @RFBurns here.
On pocket radio front, I am annoyed , my pocket sangean am/fm with the best reception has too much engine noise esp at low volume (lack of better term). My sony pocket radio am/fm has no engine noise, it has great am reception but horrible fm reception (great sound though).
So overall I used my sangean dab radio more often when out and about, but its more related to the receiver. If the sony am/fm radio had great fm reception it might be a tie.
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Great to know how it works, forgot they are OCRs.
Is it right that their output needs to be limited to reduce the effect of the mush zone?
Is there not a good signal there? Winmalee is quite elevated?
Not really, the mush zone is mathematically calculated to a spot using the timing at each site.
Off topic a bit, but the Razorback DTV site is in SFN with the Central Coast, not because it needs to be, or that the signals from either area cover one another, but there’s a small area around the Terry Hills/Ingleside area, that can receive signals from both Razorback & the CC, & some people use the Bouddi translator around there, due to less than ideal reception from Artarmon. As a result the SFN timings are done to keep this area out of the mush zone.
Not good enough, that’s why it’s microwave fed.
Even the microwave path is not ideal, as it’s very long, & more or less at the microwave signal horizon.
CRA have looked at other options as they have had trouble with the link on occasion. However getting an option with a justifiable cost is difficult. Cost vs listener numbers & return on investment.
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Many Sony radios are a let down for FM. I have a world band one that’s great for weak AM and SW for a handheld but on FM, very poor selectivity, swamped by local signals and it’s a digital tuner, PLL.
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Exactly my issue.
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Great to know. I had read in the botched discussion paper for Brisbane/Gold Coast DAB+ of the Mt Mee OCR creating signal problems as far away as Mt Cotton/Burbank, locations with poor LOS to Mt Coot-tha but with Mt Mee further away but better LOS.
Great to read about Razorback/CC SFN. Good to know broadcasters and TXA went into fine detail.
That’s fascinating, very interesting to know. I guess the receive antenna is as elevated and of as high gain as practically possible?
Decades of the same problem, come on SONY!!!
They did, however, make the stellar XDR-F1HD and XDR-S3HD tuners. Selectivity on these receivers is best in class, probably due to the need to separate HD (IBOC) channels (IBOC washes ±200 kHz).
The Sony XDR-S10HDiP is just as good and is still widely available.
None of these are DAB compatible, mind.
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Its great to hear digital radio ads on star fm on the central coast.
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Is anyone home at Gorilla Dance Radio in Sydney? Not that I listen regularly but I’ve twice in the last half hour heard “Now here’s a fresh cut on Gorilla” proceeded by a 10+ year old song . Do they still have syndicated programs (ABGT, ASOT etc.)?
Their Facebook page is gone, their website is under renovation and the last tweet on their Twitter handle was in 2015!
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