Ah, a different model to mine then. Mine is a portable with just a single speaker. One tip I might offer is that if it follows the same design principle as mine, the telescopic aerial can be unscrewed to reveal a standard F-type 50 Ohm aerial connector into which you could screw an external aerial lead from, say, a roof mounted dipole. That should give much lower error correction levels, with consequent better sound.
-
-
I read this on another Forum a few weeks ago. The writer was one of our most respected hi-fi writers. Does this thread suggest that his information was wrong?
"Good News for a change
FM Switch off indefinitely postponed !
the progress of the Nanny State interrupted .............."
Comment
-
Bryn - Thank you very much for your advice - Lat.
Comment
-
Nowadays, the DAB signal is better than the FM one round here, and I agree with Bryn (this is becoming a habit
) that the dynamic range is superior, butvthat the middle range is rather deficient. I would only support a switchover to a digital system better than DAB. It's already dated. The rest of Europe has moved on. (Oops. That was tactless. 
)
Comment
-
But you are right! Here we have the BBC / govt / industry mountain labouring to produce a ridiculous 'mus', when there are better beasts in the jungle. Is this anything to do with many of the major producers being either American or Japanese based and thus unaware of European usage?Comment
-
I'm afraid not. That article came from last year. Before the election, they Conservatives said that they were going to look 'long and hard' at the proposed FM switch-off. Vaizey looked for all of 10 seconds and got snowballed into saying what a wonderful idea. Actually what really happened was that the BBC said to him that the FM transmitters had reached the end of their working life but that when the BBC signed the contract with Arqiva to take over the running and management of the FM transmitters they (the BBC) assumed that by now everyone would have been conned into thinking that DAB was the best thing since sliced bread and so no backup position was negotiated. Well done, BBC Management. As short-sighted as ever. So Vaizey would have been told that there was no money in the pot to renovate the FM transmitters and isn't digital wonderful and the way forward. Because Vaizey has as much technical know-how as a lethargic wombat on a sabbatical, he just went along with it.Originally posted by VodkaDilc View PostComment
-
I'm a little confused about what your first sentence refers to. The quote from Martin Colloms was that the Mirror article suggested that the FM switch-off was indefinitely postponed. Are you saying you are afraid that he is right - or wrong?Originally posted by BetweenTheStaves View PostComment
-
Thanks for the clarification, Betweenthestaves. My listening is done on my Primare FM tuner for serious concentration and either on my car radio or my bedside radio (both FM) for casual listening. I occasionally listen on my Sky TV, which I suppose counts as digital, but I have no intention of buying a DAB radio. I am currently looking into buying a new car; none of the models I'm considering seem to mention DAB!Comment
-
For some info on car DAB radios see below:Originally posted by VodkaDilc View Post
At a recent conference in London Minister Vaizey said “it’s not IF but WHEN”
. So, it is “official” that DAB switchover will happen and FM switched off sometime after 2015 -probably nearer 2020 - when listening has reached the 50% target, including all digital platforms [DAB, Satellite, Terrestrial Freeview, Cable and On Line]. Likelihood is that 35% might be reached by end 2013, it’s in the mid 20s at present. And FM isn’t going away so don’t junk your old FM receiver, the plan is to give the Band II spectrum to more local radio.
Currently the plan is that from beginning 2013 [probably, undecided yet] all radios will be made to meet certain technical standards, especially sensitivity, and there will be provision for DAB+ in all receivers as a future proofing measure. The fact that no-one in the UK has plans for any DAB+ services is neither here nor there. If there were there would need to be more spectrum allocated [not much left in Band III] OR we’d have to find the room by squeezing the bit rates a bit more. Another option is to reduce the error protection level a notch or too at the expense of a bit of coverage. Turning off the old DAB service is not feasible for many years yet because of the 14 million DAB receivers already out there. That is a difference between UK and some other European countries – we have a lot of DAB receivers in the field and so not so easy to drop it.
From 2013 all cars will be mandated [by EU] to have all of DAB/DAB+/DMB installed as well as service following and traffic information for a Europe wide market. Car manufacturers are not interested in a single national market so it’s all or nothing. For these to work fully there will need to be good coverage on the roads. If switchover is to happen then the greatest challenge might be retrofitting the 30+ million existing cars that have no DAB receiver installed! To do it by end 2015 starting now needs to have 7.5 million a year – that’s 20,500 a day for 4 years solid. Some with old cars - that are possibly worth less than the DAB receiver + installation cost - will not bother of course and just take the kitchen portable with them in the car and hope for the best.
Recent sensitivity measurements of a batch of currently available DAB radios showed some dire performance – many of them are more than 20dB worse [that means they need 10 times more aerial input signal to work] than the best which are up to the required standard. So some of you with bad reception should start blaming poor receiver performance and not the transmissions. No portable DAB receiver I know [excepting high quality HiFi units that use external aerials anyway] quotes its sensitivity and one can now see why. It is true that coverage is still not complete enough particularly on the commercial national and local multiplexes. All down to cost.
OfCom consulted on DAB coverage in September and the plans were to boost coverage substantially both nationally and locally. The BBC will have similar national coverage to FM by end 2011 but using current planning rules where the field strengths are still on the light side.
Where I live portable FM in the house is dire but DAB is fine. My HiFi runs off an FM receiver with a 6 element Yagi on the roof and this brings in oodles of signal. Comparisons of R3 sound tell my ears that they are much the same when DAB is at 192 discrete with a better dynamic range on DAB. I’m not sure that I’d agree with others here that the mid range is better with FM, I suspect that is down to the audio stages of the receiver rather than digital vs analogue.
There is a lot of nonsense in the press and in both the Pro and Anti lobbies where vested interests hold sway. It reminds me of the hype and controversy over CDs when they first came out. Truth is that the extra channels on DAB don’t seem to appeal to listeners the way that it did for TV. More people buy new portable FM receivers than DAB and many of those don’t know of the option despite the DAB publicity. DAB will need to do something more than it does now – notwithstanding coverage issues – if it is going to change its appeal dramatically.
Oh, and that delay difference really is annoying!!
A few more random thoughts: The spectrum saving of DAB over FM for BBC national networks is significant [about 5:1] as is the transmission power saved. BBC national FM takes just about 4 MegaWatts of grid power to cover the country with 4 services. Currently BBC DAB nearly gets there with lots more services with only 150KiloWatts, about 4%. By turning off the FM network the BBC saves quite a lot of money year on year in electricity costs alone.
However when receiver consumption is taken into account the situation changes significantly. My newest DAB radio consumes 25 watts, about twice that of the 10 watt kitchen FM radio [the audio level determines a good part of this, not just the processing]. There is an estimated 100 million or more FM receivers out there consuming about a GigaWatt. They tend to be on for hours at a time and so the energy consumed accumulates. There are 14 million DABs currently say consuming 25 watts apiece, a total of 350 Megawatts. If DAB replaced all the 100 million FMs then they would consume 2.5 GigaWatts at these rates. If left on for 10 hours a day they would need 25GigaWattHours of energy per day or 9TeraWH annually. Current annual UK generation is at 380 TeraWattHours so all these radios would consume about 2% of that energy. There are more glaring targets for energy saving than this, but this is not trivial. By the way, current domestic photo voltaic electricity generation now accounts for more than 73GWH annually, 0.02% of the total.Comment
Comment