Norway - FM Switch Off

If I was a Radio 3 listener, I would have a sense of foreboding about this: a real shame that it's the end of an era, and nothing better has come along to replace it. But I'm a Brit, and I rarely listen to R3, so it doesn't worry me personally all that much.

I have a Nat 05 which is superb for R3.  Similarly FM sounds to me more enjoyable in the car than DAB.   I guess one day it's inevitable   

Regards,

Lindsay

Yeah but,  none of you guys are Norsk !!!    I too have a sense of foreboding & resigned to the inevitable,  but thank goodness we have iRadio as R3 on 339 HLS is superb & IMO nearly as good as FM.  What I like about iRadio is extended high frequency (no FM pilot filter) more body in the bass & low/no compression.

However getting back to Norway,  I'm hoping the powers that be in UK are watching & listening to the reaction in Norway.  I hadn't realised how anti this is over there.  The government accused of rushing the move, mismanaging the process & misleading the public with a string of dubious facts & untruths.  Numbers of polls show the majority of the [population don't want it,  one newspaper has 66% opposition.    A recent report shows an estimated 2 million vehicles are not equipped with DAB  (the population is just over 5 million)   Cost of FM-DAB adapters is 1500kr (£140).   Its estimated 15 million home radio sets will become obsolete.

Mike-B posted:

....a sense of foreboding & resigned to the inevitable.....

Less so for me, Mike, because of the differing topographys of Norway and the UK, as has been mentioned hereabouts before. But I have enough of the steel spine of a realist to know that it's inevitable, even in the UK.

Chris

The Strat (Fender) posted:

I have a Nat 05 which is superb for R3.  Similarly FM sounds to me more enjoyable in the car than DAB.   I guess one day it's inevitable   

Regards,

Lindsay

I agree FM musically is streets ahead of DAB and certainly more enjoyable with a good tuner than the lossy HLS feeds you can get online - talk about sounding sterile... :-(

On DAB in the car I still get too many dropouts in Suffolk despite the new coverage to make it comfortable to listen to in many places ... and Mrs SinS has reverted back to FM in her car - and as a community nurse is about in the back and beyond in east Suffolk and DAB just can't cut it...

I think the the higher frequencies used by DAB just don't work for marginal coverage with forests and dips.. in fact the only advantage of DAB is when there is a nice bit of Sporadic E propagation we get the Dutch and Belgium multiplexes and they have some good stations 

Recently got a [company] car with DAB and that's good enough for beetling up & down the motorway network tuned in to R2, R3, R4, 5L, 6M. Planet Rock and even Mellow Magic sometimes. It's a noisy environment for background listening and DAB is fine for that, if a bit disappointing some of the time.

Where FM wins big time is Pick Of The Pops on Saturday lunchtimes, and Johnie Walker's Sounds of the 70s on Sunday afternoons, both on R2. Both are brilliant for listening to stuff that we [or me anyway] grew up years ago hearing on Radio 1 on MW, and suddenly here it is in full glory on a proper tuner (Thorens TRT2000 anyone?) into a Naim amp and out through a pair of PMC 20.23s. It's amazing sometimes, even Bucks Fizz doing Now Those Days Are Gone which stops being a mushed up chorus and becomes a close tight harmony of distinct voices, with the piano & then the strings filling it all out. Cheesy sugary pop? Yeah - bring it on. Brill, R3 has its place, but so does that, and The Rubettes, The Sweet, BCRs, Osmonds, Moments & Whatnauts, Sailor, and a shedload more. I was 13 then - this is a door to the past, in full colour.

When FM goes in the UK I'll have a 20 year old tuner that serves as a door stop, but DAB in the car will be good enough most of the time, and for serious listening the BBC radio HD streams will do, as will Tidal's full-on service. Things change, life moves on. My great-grandad was the village blacksmith once...

Mike-B posted:

The government accused of rushing the move, mismanaging the process & misleading the public with a string of dubious facts & untruths. 

Sounds very familiar, Mike.

i guess we'll suffer more of the same when our government decides to enforce the FM switch off.

Long live BBC R3 FM!

"The government accused of rushing the move, mismanaging the process & misleading the public with a string of dubious facts & untruths."

Nice to know that there are somethings in the universe you can count on, regardless of where you live or the topic at hand.

Clive B posted:

Mike-B posted:

The government accused of rushing the move, mismanaging the process & misleading the public with a string of dubious facts & untruths. 

Sounds very familiar, Mike.

i guess we'll suffer more of the same when our government decides to enforce the FM switch off.

Long live BBC R3 FM!

What is in our favour is that the radio spectrum that would be released by FM switch off isn't going to be worth much in an auction or useful for anything else, except lots of low power local FM stations that would probably just play mainly pop music, so the only real advantage of switch off is that it would save some running costs for the BBC. Hopefully they will think they gave their hands full with the other issues they are dealing with......

best

David

You`re correct about the switch down. It starts in the Northern part of the country in two days. Then, they will continue to switch down areas, until the last area is off, december 13th 2017. People are urged to enjoy radio listening from TV, internet and DAB+ radios. . I`m not very into the debate,  but have registered there have been some heated dicussions wether it`s a smart move or not or if it`s to early.

Until now there are installed 726 DAB transmitter around the country and more will come. There`s two DAB nets or blocks, depending on the "coverage" demands, 90 % and 99,5 %, splitted into several blocks again, making a kind of coverage redundance. (most of this quoted from Norwegian Broadcasting Company info site).

I use internet radio only from Naim streamer at home. In the car it`s quite frustrating the Classical channel already shut down for FM and DAB (1th gen) so I have to use my cell phone. It cost a bit to upgrade from DAB to DAB+ in the car (about 700 GBP in my case)

S

Its not just the BBC David,  as I understand it the commercial sector & especially the transmitter & network providers such as Arqiva that need to drop FM.   

Hei, endelig vi-ha et svar fra Norge, velkommen Stover.     I can only guess at the potential reception difficulties,  when I was travelling in Norway FM was not great along the roads far out in the country,  but was especially bad in the mountains & fjords.  The shorter wavelength of DAB will make the problem worse.  But good to see you do have a lot of transmitters installed,  I will look to see if you have some example area maps & to me thats a real interest.    Keep posting,  I am interested on how it progresses.

Mike-B posted:

Its not just the BBC David,  as I understand it the commercial sector & especially the transmitter & network providers such as Arqiva that need to drop FM.   

Yes, I was using shorthand so to speak. The BBC and the commercial broadcasters pay Arqiva to simulcast. I guess Arqiva would be happy to continue to be paid to do it (!)  But anyway my main point is that since the spectrum isn't all that useful, the big driver of potential revenue for the Treasury isn't strong.

best

David

There was talk of using band-II for other digital broadcasting,  DRM+ has been penciled in on band-II.     But I'm not holding my breath on that one

Mike-B posted:

There was talk of using band-II for other digital broadcasting,  DRM+ has been penciled in on band-II.     But I'm not holding my breath on that one

I agree, holding your breath would be unwise. Although somewhat on the inside in these issues, I am not hearing anything about DRM+. At all.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

Mike-B posted:

There was talk of using band-II for other digital broadcasting,  DRM+ has been penciled in on band-II.     But I'm not holding my breath on that one

I agree, holding your breath would be unwise. Although somewhat on the inside in these issues, I am not hearing anything about DRM+. At all.

For a horrible moment I thought this might be a special channel for all music streaming so they could charge us money for listening to stuff with MQA that we already paid for once. Then I realised that DRM+ is not quite the same as DRM. Phew! 

Heard the guy in charge of "transitioning" the UK to digital radio, live from northern Norway at 7.45am on the Today "Show". It sounded like we've got five years, maybe more. In this country, unlike Norway, FM switch off is "listener led", he said.

Chris

Norway has DAB+ whereas apart from small scale trials ours is DAB, so low bit rates and even mono are standard for us. Also Norway has a small population so paying for simulcasting is much more of an issue. And I believe FM coverage is a problem for them too, whereas it isn't for us.

best

David

David Hendon posted:

And I believe FM coverage is a problem for them too, whereas it isn't for us.

I said as much in my earlier differing topography post, David   ;-)

C.

Christopher_M posted:

Heard the guy in charge of "transitioning" the UK to digital radio, live from northern Norway at 7.45am on the Today "Show". It sounded like we've got five years, maybe more. In this country, unlike Norway, FM switch off is "listener led", he said.

Chris

Yes, I heard that too. Be assured that FM switch off will only ever be resisted by this listener!