DRM is a much better platform that is still supported and being improved. DAB+ has no roadmap forward… to compare… If TV didnt have a roadmap for DVB-T we would still be watching SD in Mpeg2!
just remember AAC+ is a 22 year old codec!!
The use of Opus codec in DRM gives it a big advantage that you can loss 30% of your audio without any notice to the listener.
It makes no sense to have DAB+ muxs up in places like Ipswich for example that will have 128kbits used with the rest of the ensemble being empty.
DAB+ for country areas wont cut the mustard either and I personally doubt many country broadcasters will invest the money.
As far as listener is concerned, I dont think they care or would even know what system they are listening to… as new radios today are basically all software defined radios and could easily be both DAB+ and DRM
I don’t think there is an evolution to DAB, at least not one that would maintain any form of backwards compatibility, in the same way that DAB and DAB+ can co-exist on the same multiplex.
The same happened with ATSC - they went as far as they could with a compatible standard, but to get the efficiency needed for viable OTA 4K, they had to break compatibility for ATSC 3.0.
DVB-T2 Lite is therefore the obvious “DAB replacement” tech - it has a lot of DAB’s flaws, but it is significantly more spectrum efficient - roughly 3x the data rate at similar coverage. Problem is that it would be very disruptive to migrate, and you’d need to identify spectrum that could be used for it - and if you did that, they would probably just use that for more DAB.
I only skimmed a few of them, but the ABC’s submission did highlight DRM - but also the major weakness with all of this - you would need government action to mandate or encourage receivers, something extremely unlikely.
Disagree… Opus could be brought into the mix with existing DAB+… the same way Mpeg4 and Mpeg2 channels are used on the same platform in TV land
This would require the industry to drive the change to the radio manufacturers in the same way TV drove set top box and TV makers to implement Mpeg4.
As far as DRM and regional/country… I believe that DRM on 60 MHz regional and DRM on MW for country and remote would be the way to go. However with 4G/5G broadcast and low orbiting satellite constellations coming it all may be a complete waste of time!
I don’t think the HE-AACv2 to Opus jump is as significant of one compared to MP2 to AAC was to justify such a transition though.
The broadcasters have already shown they are quite happy to deliver poor audio quality, and the UK experience of a codec transition has shown a very strong preference for terrible audio quality to the masses, over better quality to a smaller subset of receivers.
DAB+ brought a lot more in terms of the error correction enhancements, over just swapping out the codec - I’ve not seen anything showing there’s plans to try and make further such enhancements to DAB, so I don’t think there’s a reason to go through a transition for such a small gain.
That said, if you encourage multi-standard receivers - and you get Opus for the DRM side, then Opus on DAB might become viable - but I can’t see many broadcasters opting for it.
This would have absolutely no hope I’m sorry to say. What radio manufacturers would make a receiver for a small population country like Australia on frequencies that nowhere else in the world uses? Can you imagine the cost to purchase such a device? And there’s no way car manufacturers would stump up to put such a device in their dashboards.
Remember what happened when a government inquiry into FM broadcasting in the 1970s suggested Australia go it alone and have FM on UHF? And that was when we still had a local manufacturing industry. Needless to say sensible heads prevailed and we got FM on the internationally recognised band instead
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying re the concentration of population, and as I said I agree DAB+ works fine to serve those areas (assuming you can find room for it all in Newcastle/CC/Sydney/Wollongong and SEQ etc). But the question is, is digital radio the way forward for radio broadcasts in this country, and will it replace all analogue radio one day? If the answer to that is yes, then there are question marks around whether DAB+ is really the answer, as experience to date has proven. If the answer is no, then we must ask what purpose digital radio exists for, other than providing a bit of extra choice in the major markets?
I think that’s what the heart of this paper goes to - how should radio look in 20+ years time in this country? On the path we are currently on, save for a few more markets having DAB+ activated it’s not likely to be much different to today
From a consumer prospective there’s no way I’ll be replacing a house full of DAB+ receivers if the manufacturer didn’t offer a firmware upgrade (which I doubt they will) and even then how many consumers would be willing to or have the technical confidence to apply such an update.
Frankly digital radio has been a hard sell for CRA and consumers will be unwilling to replace existing digital radios especially when smart speakers can be had so cheaply.
i’m in sydney at the moment having driven my new i30 down. I was listening to DAB until i hit movieworld and it dropped out, than i was streaming. because i was on the pacific highway i had mobile coverage probably 90% Of the way and than it was music stored locally on my phone.
I do this run frequently, and it seems the majority of what you pick up is ABC or Vision and whilst i don’t mind either, even with steering wheel controls there is only so much dicking about you can do trying to find a frequency and you might only have it for 30 mins. just not worth it
"a DAB+ DRM receiver is a reality and even for cars this is not a big issue any longer. According to the largest chipset manufacturer for cars NXP, carmakers already offer radios with DAB support for Europe and also have radios which are supporting DRM for India. Both are based on the NXP’s SAF360x family (Saturn) - the market leading chip for digital radio in cars. And as a software defined radio solution this can be programmed to multiple standards, including DAB+, DRM, as well as others."
Perfect example of why the ABC should have RDS AF set up on their transmitters. Taking Triple J as an example, with their existing broadcasts, you’d be able to drive from around Rockhampton or Bundaberg all the way down to Sydney, through to Melbourne and then over Adelaide via Mildura and not have to retune the radio manually once and have coverage pretty much the whole way.
I’m not a massive fan myself but I find by a certain point music becomes background noise anyway - especially if I wasn’t changing channels every 100 km
Well it was either Triple J or ABC Classic FM as the example, since they’re the only two wide-coverage FM-only networks in Australia. RN wouldn’t work, as, for example, you’d lose FM reception around Sydney and DAB-FM link doesn’t work in Australia (where tuners automatically switch between DAB/FM).
I mean, it’s not actually set up properly with the codes matching between the corresponding FM/DAB+ stations though, right? For example, if you were listening to Triple J on DAB+ in Sydney, it wouldn’t switch to 105.7 MHz automatically when the signal got weak? I haven’t actually tested it, even though my car radio supports it.
