Mono is the new stereo on national DAB

The new national jazz station, called theJazz, began testing yesterday on the Digital One national DAB multiplex in glorious 1960s-style MONO. And in order to fit theJazz onto the Digital One multiplex, they have reduced the Capital Life and Core music stations to mono as well.

This clearly highlights that the Diabolical Audio Broadcasting system that we adopted in the UK is nowhere near fit-for-purpose in the 21st century, and the sooner we switch to using the new AAC+ audio codec — which the DAB system has recently adopted — the better. 

And I have to say that it is somewhat ironic that these three stations began transmitting in mono on the same day that Ofcom's consultation titled "The Future of Radio" closed, in which they touted the idea that it might be possible to switch FM off in 10 or so years' time and yet studiously ignored the fact that DAB sounds worse than FM, and they didn't even mention the AAC+ audio codec once, which is the only hope we have of improving the audio quality and the audacious suggestion that music stations be transmitted in stereo on DAB.

This episode also highlights the danger of allowing the big commercial radio groups to own the multiplex operating companies — the vast majority of UK commercial multiplexes are wholly-owned by the big commercial radio groups themselves — because the Primetime radio station was forced off the Digital One multiplex earlier this year, which Primetime blamed on Digital One asking for extortionate carriage fees. And now we see that GCap, which owns 67% of Digital One, has replaced Primetime with its own theJazz station. But with Ofcom being "biased towards non-intervention" and "promoting self-regulation wherever possible", we're not going to see any changes in this respect, and the big commercial radio groups can and will do effectively as they please.

It also shouldn't be forgotten that Tessa Jowell specifically sanctioned that these stations should transmit in mono, because the DCMS held a public consultation last year about increasing the percentage of multiplex capacity used for non-audio services to 30% (in order to allow Digital One to transmit more mobile TV channels on its multiplex); and in a statement following the consultation, the DCMS said that they were opposed to any stations being removed, and were in favour of stations being reduced to mono! In fact, the government usually gets off far too lightly when apportioning blame for the Diabolical Audio Broadcasting system being in the state it's in, because we shouldn't forget that it was their laughable notion that it is somehow desirable that the UK should be the most advanced nation in Europe in terms of digital broadcasting that has landed the UK with the worst digital broadcasting systems for both digital TV and digital radio. The UK is the only country that is using the 2K DVB-T mode, which rules out using SFNs, which allow the spectrum to be used more efficiently, and of course on DAB there's only the UK and Denmark that are stuck with the old DAB system, and all other countries are free to adopt the upgraded version — and undoubtedly they virtually all will.

Mono stations on DAB that should be in stereo

And these music stations being transmitted in mono are far from being isolated cases, and they highlight just how spectacularly ridiculous Ofcom's regulation of DAB has been, because it should be remembered that mono music stations on DAB only started to appear once Ofcom took over the regulation of radio from the Radio Authority.

Below is a list of radio stations transmitting in mono that should be transmitting in stereo (information from the Wohnort website).

Also, bear in mind that because there are no capacity problems on the digital TV platforms, this mono music stations problem on DAB doesn't exist, so if you want to listen to stations that are in mono on DAB, they are very likely to be available on at least one of the digital TV platforms (satellite carries nearly all of the stations owned by the bigger broadcasters), and the bit rates, and hence the audio quality, of the stereo stations are usually higher on the digital TV platforms as well. To see which stations are available on which platforms and what bit rates they're using, see the Digital Radio Bit Rates page.

BBC DAB mono stations that should be stereo:

• Radio 4 (mono whenever Radio 5 Sports Extra is transmitting after 5 p.m.)
• BBC7 (mono but carries lots of stereo content)
• Asian Network (mono yet over 30% of its content is music)

National DAB mono music stations:

• theJazz
• Core
• Capital Life

Regional DAB mono music stations*:

• Choice
• Kerrang
• Smash Hits

Local DAB mono music stations*:

• Capital Disney
• Century
• Chill
• Classic Gold
• Day One Radio
• Easy Radio
• Gaydar Radio
• Heat
• Kerrang
• NECR
• Passion
• Passion Radio
• Punjabi Radio
• Smash Hits
• Spectrum Radio
• The Beach
• The Hits
• The Storm
• UCA Radio, Ayr
• Virgin Groove
• Waves
• Yarr Radio

* these stations are not necessarily mono on all the regional or local DAB multiplexes that they are carried on, although but some stations, such as Kerrang, are only available on DAB in mono and Kerrang is a pseudo-national station which is carried on a large number of regional and local DAB multiplexes.