Switzerland is adopting DAB+

27th November 2006

According to the Wohnort site, the Swiss regulator BAKOM has changed an advert for capacity on one of the DAB multiplexes from offering 3 x 128 kbps radio station slots using the old MP2 codec to 8 slots using the new AAC+ codec that has been adopted for the new DAB standard, which has been dubbed 'DAB+'.

And not only has using AAC+ allowed an almost tripling of the number of stations being advertised, in the same amount of capacity taken up by 3 x 128 kbps MP2 stations originally advertised, with 8 AAC+ stations the bit rate per station can be 64 kbps, and at this bit rate level AAC+ provides audio quality equivalent to 192 kbps MP2, which is a bit rate level that only one radio station in the UK – Radio 3 – manages to use on DAB, so these new AAC+ stations will be at a higher audio quality than 99% of all the stereo stations on DAB in the UK.

Now is the optimum time for countries to switch to DAB+

As the Wohnort site suggests, now is the optimum time for Switzerland to switch to using AAC+. And the UK and Denmark are the only countries where DAB has sold in reasonable quantities, and DAB ownership in all of the other countries that use DAB is absolutely minuscule. Therefore, now is the optimum time for all countries to switch to using AAC+ apart from the UK and Denmark. As DAB has sold in reasonable quantities in the UK and Denmark, due to the saturation advertising, these countries are a special case, and I'll address the issue of the UK switching to using AAC+ in a separate article.

In the countries where DAB hasn't been selling well It will only be the earliest of adopters and the biggest radio fans that will own DAB, and these are exactly the kind of people who would actually welcome the change most, so as long as it is explained to these people what the benefits will be to them then very few will complain.

And adding AAC+ stations to DAB wouldn't mean that MP2 has to be switched off immediately anyway, because in the countries where DAB hasn't been selling there is plenty of capacity available to add new AAC+ stations.

And the regulators in these other countries should consider that the switch to AAC+ in the UK is going to be very messy indeed, with MP2 and AAC+ stations having to be transmitted in parallel for a number of years. This will mean that the audio quality will necessarily have to be compromised on both the MP2 and AAC+ streams, and it will severely limit the number of radio stations that will be able to transmit.

The best course of action for countries where DAB hasn't sold well is to introduce AAC+ as soon as possible. This will encourage the early adopters to buy new DAB+ receivers early on so that the total number of legacy DAB receivers can begin reducing from an early stage so that in say 2-3 years' time they can switch off the MP2 services altogether and take advantage of AAC+'s ability to allow higher audio quality and far more stations..