So the announcement by the BBC’s director of radio, Bob Shennan, that the corporation’s long promised switch-off of FM in favour of DAB was off the table represents a remarkable reverse in policy.
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Coverage out of DAB off MT Wellington has (in my option) been very disappointing.
Reasonably large pockets of poor coverage in Hobart Metro area and basically forget coverage out of the metro area.
Cheers
Chris.
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The ABC’s coverage estimator certainly doesn’t paint a strong picture. That said, I find their coverage maps significantly underestimate the quality of their coverage - I’m in an area that is red for DAB+ coverage in Melbourne, but I get perfect reception.
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Yes, I imagine that the coverage is deliberately understated so that listeners are less likely to complain of if they are being told they should be covered, but find they are not getting reception.
I am way beyond the coverage for Sydney, yet I still get reception, though I am on a hill (red pin) which helps 
(see below).
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I’ll be doing a thorough survey in a week’s time. I’ll be going as far south as Ida Bay. I’m also staying in Bicheno next week but I expect reception there would be a bit of a stretch.
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I’ve had pretty decent coverage of DAB+ from Mt Wellington in my car. Very close to blanket coverage around Hobart even in hilly areas with the exception being around Taroona.
I’ve managed to get a signal (though patchy in places) as far away as Dunalley. I do have a proper roof antenna for DAB fitted for my car which makes a huge difference. The glass antennas they sell with some DAB+ head units seem to perform quite poorly.
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Hi Cranky,
A while back you were going to test a suite of Sony radios in a DAB+ fringe location.
Wonder how it went?
On ZOO Digital in Sydney, the sound is predominantly left channel, very little sound is coming out of the right speaker.
I’ve never come across this before on DAB. I didn’t think that would ever happen with digital radio, that it was a fault that could only occur with analogue FM stereo radio due to its processing?
The fault’s probably in the playout at 2SM. Garbage in, garbage out.
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Bicheno is within the edge of the Hobart RA 1 boundary? I remember trying to receive Triple T there in the early 90’s but to no avail. I forget where it rises above the noise floor,
Coming!
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Hobart DAB in strong at the Great Lake Hotel Miena. Are there only ABC and SBS services at the moment? That’s all it could scan in.
Yes, only ABC & SBS are transmitting on DAB+ in Hobart at present.
It would be very interesting when commercial stations start broadcasting on DAB+, particularly the SCA ones, such as MMM Classic Rock Digital, OldSkool Hits, Easy Hits etc, in which it would really improve the radio listening choices in Hobart, which at the moment, is only barely better than that of Launceston (which only has 1 less commercial station than Hobart).
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What’s that place like to stay at? I’m currently planning a trip to Tasmania - and that’s one of my options to break up the trip between the west coast and Hobart.
Hopefully they don’t just send the metro digital stations down as is - there’s a lot of missing formats in regional areas that would still be missing with the default set of SCA stations.
Ideally, look at the particular stations on offer in a regional area, and look to fill the gaps. That could even mean SCA starting up a talk station in some markets - so they could carry stuff from 2GB/3AW - in many cases letting them get rid of it from a Triple M station.
Other markets are missing oldies stations, or something like the 2day format - depending on if it’s a 2 station market, or one with AM/FM competitors.
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SCA or Grant are unlikely to create niche stations on DAB just for Hobart.
I daresay any additional stations will be the mainland ones piped in.
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Sure - though the general idea seems to be that once digital radio starts rolling out into regional areas, a lot of markets should start not all that long after eachother - eventually making it viable to do so.
Maybe the solution for Hobart is to just do a deal to get Coles Radio. There’s a reason it rates well.
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I only popped in for lunch- the parmy is quite good but expensive given that they’re the only eatery for miles around. I did see a rather spartan looking motel out the back. There are plenty of other BNB type establishments around by the looks of things. Unless you’re a cold weather fanatic or keen trout angler there’s not a lot up that way; it’s a nice drive though.
I used this as the scenic route from Ulverstone to St Helens- luckily avoiding the Launceston ‘Agfest’ traffic jams. Hobart FM gets into places like Fingal surprisingly well, though probably below the threshold for DAB. Unfortunately, it’s westerly dog-off-chain weather down here so no chance at tropo to NSW.
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Why not? They can create Easy Hits For Both Heads. Or Your Sister. 
There was an issue in Brisbane on Friday when all 3 multiplexes went down during the day, around 9am. My car radio was getting no signal on any of them. when we finished shopping an hour later they were all back.
Gave me a heart attack - even started pricing a new DAB+ antenna for the car hoping the issue was that (I’ve had some issues with previous head units - one stopped picking up DAB+ full stop (fortunately under warranty so it was replaced) and another that would not pick up 9C so as you can image my first thought was “not again”)
There’s probably very few people who would hear that, considering DAB+ listenership isn’t huge, despite what some would have you believe & that 99% of DAB+ radios use a mono speaker & 95% of the listeners wouldn’t be using headphones to even hear stereo.
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Which probably explains the crappy bit rates.
The sound quality of those mono speakers is generally pretty awful - anything more than 32 kbps would be wasted in those situations.