15th December 2006

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.  more

12th December 2006

Ofcom is currently holding a public consultation that ends on Thursday 14th December, in which they're basically touting that FM could be switched off in 10 years' time – by the way, there seems to be a widely held belief that FM will be switched off at the same time that analogue TV is switched off. This is not true, and FM will still be transmitting for probably another 10 - 12 years.

Before I say what the consultation does say, I think what's more important is what isn't mentioned, which is as follows:

• They don't even mention audio quality, so they're presumably sticking to their laughable view that the audio quality on DAB is fine.
• They don't even mention that DAB has just adopted the AAC+ audio codec and that all existing DAB receivers will be made obsolete in future

30th November 2006

With DAB adopting the new AAC+ audio codec, all DAB receivers being sold in the shops will be obsolete in a few years' time, so if you want a DAB receiver that is future-proof you would be better off waiting until spring 2007 when receivers come out that will be software upgradeable to support the new DAB+ standard.

We will likely see new stations launch on DAB using AAC+ in as little as 3 years, so if you don't want to miss out on receiving these stations, you would be best advised to hold off from purchasing a DAB receiver. more

27th November 2006

Once the UK has switched over to using the new DAB+ system (the unofficial name for the upgraded version of DAB), it will bring the following main improvements:

1. Far more radio stations will be able to transmit
2. The audio quality will be far better overall than it is today, especially on the BBC's radio stations
3. Reception will be a lot more robust than it is today
4. MPEG Surround has been adopted to allow radio stations to use surround sound

27th November 2006

The Swiss communications regulator BAKOM has changed an advertisement for 3 new DAB stations using the old MP2 audio codec to 8 stations using AAC+. And as well as almost tripling the number of stations being advertised, the audio quality using AAC+ will be far higher than if MP2 had been used. 

BAKOM is merely demonstrating something that is true in general: all countries where DAB hasn't sold well – which is everywhere apart from the UK and Denmark – these countries should look at adding stations using AAC+ as soon as possible, because this action will minimise the time before the stations using the old MP2 format can be switched off so that the country can take advantage of the audio quality and number of stations advantages that using AAC+ allows.  more

27th November 2006

The incoming culture minister in Sweden's new government, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth, has said in an interview with Swedish Radio that Sweden will not use the old DAB system, which is similar to but further than what the previous government said last year when they froze Swedish Radio's plans to expand their DAB transmitter network.

It seems likely that Sweden will now adopt either the new DAB+ or DMB systems for digital radio instead. more

27th November 2006

The main technologies used in DAB, such as the audio codec and error correction coding, had already been chosen by 1990, and yet the technologies chosen are still used today.

The sad thing is that even using technology that was available at the time they chose the main technologies to use on DAB, the system could have been unrecognisably better than the current system actually is.

And if that wasn't bad enough, work began on developing the AAC codec (the hint about whether this is a good codec is in its name: Advanced Audio Coding) in 1993, and yet the engineers working on DAB ignored AAC until the upgrade announced at the end of October this year.

You can forgive them for not choosing the right technologies in 1990, because it was so early on, but sticking with technologies that were blatantly unsuited to being used on a digital radio system for the following 16 years is just totally unforgiveable. more

10th November 2006

Ofcom has already started trying to deny that there will be any change on DAB due to the adoption of the new AAC+ audio codec. The reality is that what Ofcom is saying is just spin, and we will see stations using AAC+, probably in as short as 2 - 3 years' time.

The reason they're denying that anything will happen is simply that the broadcasters are terrified that if the public finds out that all DAB receivers on sale will not be able to receive the new stations that will launch in 2 - 3 years' time then that will hit DAB sales and consumer confidence in DAB. 

Don't fall for their nonsense, and make sure your BS detector is in good working order for the next 12 months or so, because you're going to need it. more

31st October 2006

WorldDAB has finally announced at its annual General Assembly in South Korea that DAB is adopting the AAC+ audio codec.

This means that the old DAB system is now effectively dead, and not a second too soon. 

Of course, WorldDAB hasn't bothered to issue a press release, and it's been left to Coding Technologies — the inventors of AAC+ — to break the news. Quoting from Coding Technologies' website:

" Coding Technologies' aacPlus Adopted by WorldDAB as the New Audio Codec in DAB

Broadcasters now empowered to provide the best possible listening experience at the lowest possible bit rates

Seoul, Korea October 31, 2006 — Coding Technologies, the leading provider of audio compression for digital broadcasting, mobile media, and the Internet, today announced at the 12th WorldDAB General Assembly held in Seoul, Korea, that the company's flagship product, aacPlus™, was adopted by WorldDAB as the new audio codec in Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) according to the Eureka 147 standard. The highly-efficient aacPlus audio codec provides broadcasters with an opportunity to deploy a state-of-the-art audio technology."

24th October 2006

AAC+ test transmissions started on the Stoke local DAB multiplex last Friday. The AAC+ bit rates being tested are 96 kbps, 64 kbps and 40 kbps, and the EEP3A and EEP4A error protection levels are being tested in order to compare the coverage levels between standard MP2 radio stations and the AAC+ transmissions. more

24th October 2006

Commercial Radio Australia has said on its website that it is conducting trials of AAC+ on DAB (i.e. DAB+) in parallel with those being conducted in the UK.

Also, it looks likely that WorldDAB will announce DAB's adoption of the AAC+ audio codec next week at its annual General Assembly. more

17th October 2006

There was a problem with the test AAC+ audio streams on DAB last week, which was assumed to be caused by the services being flagged as audio services, so the receivers assumed they were MP2 streams and tried but failed to decode them. The tests have been postponed until this week. more

17th October 2006

The Digital One national commercial DAB multiplex has been reconfigured to allow the DAB-IP mobile TV channels to use a higher bit rate — they were using 64 kbps, which is a low bit rate considering it has to encode both video and audio. The channels are now using 96 kbps.

Interestingly, the change that has allowed the mobile TV channels to increase their bit rate is the change from using the stronger PL3A to the weaker PL4A error protection levels — a change made possible because mobile TV using DAB-IP and DMB have an additional 'outer layer' of Reed-Solomon error correction coding, which is not available for the MP2 radio stations to use.

The use of the higher-capacity PL4A error protection level for video transmission implies that PL4A will be feasible for AAC+ audio services, which is something I've maintained for a long time on this website. The reason why this is so is because video transmissions are much more fragile than audio transmissions, so if video can be protected by the weaker PL4A protection level then audio services will be even more robust, especially as radio stations using AAC+ on DAB+ will undoubtedly also use the MPEG-4 Audio Version 2 Error Resilience tools. more

17th October 2006

Last week saw the first ever article on BBC Radio about the sound quality on DAB that was actually balanced — production of all previous articles about DAB's sound quality on BBC Radio seem to have been outsourced to the North Korean PR department. 

In the article — on the You & Yours programme on Radio 4 — Jack Schofield from The Guardian echoed much of what has been said on this website, i.e. that the MP2 audio codec is out-of-date; that other countries have decided against using the old DAB system; and that it's time to look towards using AAC+ instead.

You can listen to a recording of the interview here:

Recording of the article on You & Yours   (2.9 MB)

The person from the DAB industry sticking up for the awful DAB system was Ian Dickens from the DRDB (Digital Radio Development Bureau), and he provided the usual spin and lies that we've come to expect from members of the UK DAB industry. more

9th October 2006

The Guardian newspaper has run an article that severely criticises DAB's sound quality, and it is therefore one of only two articles in national newspapers I've seen to date that have accurately reflected the sound quality of DAB in the UK – the other article that was very critical of the audio quality on DAB was in the Sunday Times Doors section. 

In the print version of the paper, it was the featured article on the front page of the main paper, and the article was on the front page of the Media section of the paper. more

9th October 2006

I've been informed that streams using the AAC+ audio codec are to be tested on the Stoke local DAB multiplex this week. AAC+ streams also being tested on DAB in Australia.

It is not known what bit rate levels are being tested. more

5th October 2006

Unfortunately, WorldDAB has delayed issuing the press release that's likely to announce DAB's adoption of the AAC+ codec until the end of this month — at the end of the day, DAB should have adopted a new audio codec over 10 years ago, so another few weeks' wait is nothing... more

5th October 2006

Two subscription-based satellite digital radio systems are to launch in Europe in 2009/2010. The two systems are to be operated by Ondas Media, that's based in Spain, and WorldSpace, which is a US-based company.

There's little information about what WorldSpace is intending, but Ondas intends to replicate the success of the XM and Sirius satellite digital radio systems in the US by offering 100+ advert-free radio stations.

Another advantage of subscription radio is that it allows niche genres to be covered that wouldn't be covered by commercial radio, and are too small a genre for the BBC to dedicate a station to. more

5th October 2006

The French communications regulator, the CSA, has launched a public consultation on the launch of digital radio.

The French Ministry for Culture and Communications has also launched a public consultation on digital radio, which contains the first "official" reference to the new DAB+ system, which is the upgraded version of the old DAB system that WorldDAB is likely to announce at the end of this month.

All the main French radio broadcasters have agreed that it is necessary to use the new DAB+ system (rather than the ancient DAB system that was designed in the 1980s) in order to allow them to provide good audio quality and launch new services.

It was also the French radio broadcasters' opposition to using the old DAB system in a public consultation from last year (the said that the MP2 audio codec was out-of-date and it was time to look to using new MPEG-4 technology) that will have been one of the main reasons why we're about to see the DAB system upgraded, because France is a lage and important market, so WorldDAB must have had the fright of their lives when virtually all of the French radio broadcasters expressed so much opposition to using it. more

5th October 2006

The BBC has climbed down over its decision to reduce the bit rate of Radio 3 and use the freed-up 32 kbps for a looping trail for Radio 5 Sports Extra, and has reverted to the original situation where Radio 3 uses 192 kbps.

Radio 3 also now uses joint stereo mode instead of discrete stereo, which it used before the bit rate reduction in July.

However, Radio 3 on FM still sounds a lot better than Radio 3 on DAB.

A negative consequence of reverting back to the original situation is that Radio 4 will have to be reduced to mono in the evenings and Radio 3 will have to be reduced to 160 kbps in the daytime when Radio 5 Sports Extra is carrying commentary. more