DAB Tuners

The aerial requirement will depend entirely on your location. I think most of us on this forum have a problem with the limited bandwidth of dab broadcasts, and Barry Fox's articles in HFN have steered me well clear of it for now.
If you do decide to buy a dab tuner, it'll probably be a matter of suck it and see. I think at least some tuners come with a display of signal strength.
Tony

Steve

I ‘am so disappointed with DAB not only with poor reception, ridiculous as I live in a 2nd floor flat in London and at work 4th floor of a office block and can literally pick good fm on a wet piece of string, but now as the bit rates have fallen so far nearly everything expect R3 is 128 bit or so and MP2 format, I am glad I hadn’t sold my tuner to fund the purchase of the DAB radios, one is pc based the other stand alone, I would if I had invested in a expensive dab tuner be very disappointed now for sure, to advertise these as CD quality I would have thought were a matter for trading standards, as far as aerials go I have found that unlike analogue signals, digital amplifies quite well and is what I currently use.

StuartBit rates

[This message was edited by john rubberneck on FRIDAY 20 December 2002 at 20:25.]

Apparently the BBC is to make available BBC 1 -4 radio channels, Feb. 03, on the DTT format. Think that would do, never mind DAB ! - except perhaps for one of the nice portables, upcoming.
Uhmmmmm.Ummy.

But is DAB really better than analogue radio??

I have often played radio on sky through my Naim system and it doesn't sound as good as my old Technic's tuner.

Regards

NB

We have a Videologic DAB tuner the advantage being that here in a ground floor flat in London (with no chance of a decent aerial)we can get decent reception. Quality wise it is pretty marginal. If the bit rate is reasonable (ie 160kbps on Radio 3) then the sound is pretty good. Below that not so good. I wrote to the BBC about the quality and they said that the lowering of the bit rate had not reduced quality...

Personally, the Tivoli Model 1 in the kitchen does a better job at keeping my interest despite having to sit on an uncomfortable chair.

From being a DAB evengelist, I have found myself being reduced to 'Grumpy of Fulham' The BBC has chosen to gradually reduce the bitrate of broadcasts to unacceptable levels, except for R3. I have to say that as far as it goes, reception for me in a built up area is excellent with the bit of string supplied with my Videologic tuner, but the compression etc applied by commercial stations, & R1 & 2 is unlistenably appalling. This is especially outrageous as a specification of the system is that this compression can be applied by the tuner at a local level. It seems the BBC has chosen to ignore this. To think that the originators of the system should provide the worst sound quality in the world is beyond belief. If anyone would like to buy my Videologic tuner at a cheeky price, then contact me privately [but I wouldn't advise it].

However - all is not lost. Sky+ provides an optical link, with full programmable recording facilities for all radio, at a higher bitrate that conventional DAB. At £250, and in spite of a £10 monthly subscripton, this is [believe it or not] good value [well, compared to a TAG £1500 DAB jobbie, it is]and that's not counting the TV facilities, which believe me, once you've experienced them will make your current arrangements, whatever they may be, redundant.

It would be nice to think that all this digital malarkey is somehow irrelevant, but the quality of the programming on digital radio is starting to look so good that some sort of compromise is becoming inevitable. The Sky option is not ideal, but I believe that they are about to offer some free to view thingie which will also include radio channels at a one off price to undermine Freeview [apart from ALL BBC radio channels, it is to inculde Sky1 and UK Gold etc.]

Currently, the only reciever to offer a digital output apart from Sky+ is a Sony box. This may change, but currently, a Sky+ box, or a Sony, coupled with a cheapish DAC is the only way forward if you want to hear DAB at its dubious best.

throb

Thanks for the input. You've done a good job of convincing me to stick with analogue for the moment!

Regards
Steve

Further to my last post here was the BBC's response to my concerns over DAB quality...

"Dear Sir,

Thank you for your enquiry.

Let us explain the general policy under which we operate the DAB multiplex.

Given the fixed overall capacity available to us, our policy is to allocate capacity to each service based on its content, balanced across all our digital radio services. As a public service broadcaster, the BBC attempts to provide services which meet a wide range of tastes and interests. Connecting with the UK's increasingly diverse audiences is a major objective for the Corporation.

We have taken considerable care over the technical arrangements needed to allocate suitable capacity for the digital radio services. This does mean the capacity individually allocated to some services has had to be reduced at certain times in order to bring Five Live Sports Extra to listeners. Radio 3 has broadcast at 160kbps from time to time. This will continue to be the case on occasions when we consider the balance across our digital radio services demands it. We firmly believe that reducing the bit rate on certain services does NOT hinder the sound quality of DAB digital radio. The BBC is deeply committed to ensure that digital radio represents an extremely attractive medium to all its listeners when judged by the rich diversity of stations it offers, its robustness of reception, and the overall technical quality it is able to provide.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

With best wishes.
BBC DIGITAL RADIO"

I've been predicting lowering of bitrates for some time, since DAB is an inherently flawed infrastructure unable to cope with the variety in local demographic for radio broadcast.

Start complaining now, or we're all destined to have it forced upon us, I suspect though that the economics will far outweigh the small amount of pressure from the few that notice or even care about good radio.

Bear in mind though that most of the benefits are to the mobile radio (in-car) market, there never has been any signficant benefit of DAB to fixed installations.

At least take-up is such that analogue will be around for some time to come.

Andy.

quote:

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Robustness of reception

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Did make me laugh, in a recent reply from the bbc I was assured they had no plans to stop current FM transmisitions, and what’s more neither to change the DAB transmisition frequencies, yeh right but that’s ok with me.

Stuart