[BBC News] Digital radio available on island

[Cambon]

However if all you use is a small portable in a noisy environment then you may not notice much difference

 

Nope, it's a fairly expensive hifi setup, and whilst I'd love to see a lot of 'hifi snobs' do some blindfold tests to show up the level of overpriced nonsense in that industry, I do appreciate good sound quality.

 

Does surprise me though as I had always assumed DAb would provide a considerable increase in audio quality.

Bah.

 

Cret - I am what you would consider an audio snob. However, this is not about audio snobbery. This is about simple fact. DAB is a digital signal broadcast over a frequency in a method almost identical to FM. In other words it is basically an FM signal. When the DAB (FM) reception is poor the sound will drop out if the minimum amount of data is not received. The main reason DAB is poor is due to them trying to cram so many stations into such a small bandwidth. Many DAB stations are actually mono but purport to be stereo.

 

FM is different. When the signal is poor you can generally still receive and hear the station. However,FM is only as good as three things. Firstly the broadcast (BBC have lowered the output to try and encourage people onto DAB). Secondly, the antenna (an omni-directional loop is ok, vertical di-pole about the same, horizontal, aligned di-pole is best, especially when it is good quality with a good quality coax cable leading to your receiver. Lastly the receiver itself (a 1970s Marantz or Pioneer off ebay for £30-£50 will see of virtually anything - £30-£50 is hardly audio snobbery, it is knowing what to buy and what is best for the money).

 

edit to add link to top of the line 70s Pioneer tuner

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PIONEER-TX-9800-TUNE...1QQcmdZViewItem

[Cret]

Lots of stuff

 

Thanks for the details - that makes it a bit clearer (no pun intended).

 

 

Cambon - from your comments you sound anything but the sort of person I would consider a hifi snob as it appears you do your homework and don't rush out to buy something expensive purely because the functions quoted for a product make it sound better, or because a dealer has insisted that it sounds better than a cheaper alternative.

 

A hifi snob to me is potentially the kind of person who will buy top price gear because of purely the name or 'kudos' of bragging about how much they've spent, then insist the money was well spent because of difference in sound quality when in reality, in a blindfold test they would probably not be able to tell.

 

To a point obviously you get what you pay for as with most products, but obviously the more you spend there is a law of 'diminishing returns' in terms of cost vs sound quality and I think a lot of people spend a vast amount more than they need to based on a perceived improvement. That's their decision of course, but to me that's what borders on snobbery if that makes sense.

 

For the record, the amp I have is a Pioneer VSX2016 thx AV receiver (through Mission 753 front speakers). It's more for home cinema use than radio but I do like a reasonable sound from the radio too.

 

The other setup I have is with a Yamaha DSP-AX620 AV receiver with an old (Pre RDS!) Kenwood tuner - not cutting edge (via Cerwin Vega VS10 speakers) but I like the sound from it.

 

Anyway - the snobbery type comment was by the by and was just really after someone else mentioned it. Not aimed at anyone at all, just a generalisation.

[ballaughbiker]

Cambon , amen to that. Some receivers from the 70s sound far better than the modern stuff. My 30 year old Quad FM3 is still going strong and has great retro looks (I think). None on ebay today but its predecessor the FM2 is there for £20.

[ai_Droid]

Cret - I am what you would consider an audio snob.

 

From most of the discussions here you've had on the subject, I'd classify you an audio nob!

 

DAB is a digital signal broadcast over a frequency in a method almost identical to FM. In other words it is basically an FM signal.

 

What on earth are you on about?

 

When the DAB (FM) reception is poor the sound will drop out if the minimum amount of data is not received. The main reason DAB is poor is due to them trying to cram so many stations into such a small bandwidth. Many DAB stations are actually mono but purport to be stereo.

 

Which is largely due to the continuing broadcast of FM. DAB's actually around 20 times more efficient in the use of the spectrum than analog, most of the problems you see with dab is because it has to coexist with analog. Your explanation above also ignores error correction in DAB.

 

(BBC have lowered the output to try and encourage people onto DAB).

 

What's your source for that?

 

Secondly, the antenna (an omni-directional loop is ok, vertical di-pole about the same, horizontal, aligned di-pole is best, especially when it is good quality with a good quality coax cable leading to your receiver.

 

No, you've gotten this wrong, once again. BBC FM and DAB are vertically polarised, so why would a horizontally alligned di-pole be better? If you were putting a new arial in now, you'd always use vertical for good FM and DAB performance.

 

Lastly the receiver itself (a 1970s Marantz or Pioneer off ebay for £30-£50 will see of virtually anything - £30-£50 is hardly audio snobbery, it is knowing what to buy and what is best for the money).

 

Disagree again unsurprisingly. Buy a modern tuner, get dab AND fm, get your digital presets and remote control and fuck off that old stinky 1970's tat. But personally, I'd fuck it all off and either drive radio from Astra where you've got 100's of channels at a high bitrate, or get an internet reciever, they're cheap now and good bitrate stations will outperform dab.

 

edit to add link to top of the line 70s Pioneer tuner

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PIONEER-TX-9800-TUNE...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Jesus, deliver us from audiophile idiots.

 

Cret: Want a kick ass setup? Get a squeezebox and a pair of audioengine A2 active speakers. Takes no space, easy to operate, no fucking around with dials and sounds the business.

[Cret]

Cret: Want a kick ass setup? Get a squeezebox and a pair of audioengine A2 active speakers. Takes no space, easy to operate, no fucking around with dials and sounds the business.

 

Cheers for the tip, although to be honest I'm already pleased as punch with the setup I have at the moment. The only issue really being the FM reception, and I've just ordered an FM aerial to stick on the roof to hopefully resolve that. The only regret I have is that I sold my Eltax Liberty 5+ speakers as they sounded fantastic for cheap speakers. Am still very pleased with the Mission ones though.

Must admit that I like the idea of a squeezebox for streaming my MP3s though.

 

My mrs likes to listen to the radio via sky sometimes, but we only have Sky digital, so there's no decent audio outputs from the receiver, and I don't know if the electronics in an old, bog standard sky receiver would be up to the same quality as you'd at least expect them to be in my receiver. That's not to say I've done a listening comparison but if I had to guess which sounded better (excluding the current FM signal issue) I'd guess the AV amp would provide a nicer sound than the sky box.

 

As I say, I've not tested that theory but sky boxes are generally focused around getting a picture on your telly rather than decent audio quality as such.

[Frances]

Most of the problems with DAB are due to the choice of audio coding system - the DAB signal is an approx 2Mb/s bit stream which is then demultiplexed into a number of seperate channels (some bits are lost in the overheads) - the number and coding used for each of these channels is upto the broadcaster but the original standard specified mp2 as the audio coding standard ,which was originally designed to work at around 256kb/.s to provide a signal which was higher quality than most FM broadcasts (ie CD standard or better). The catch with this from the BBC's viewpoint is that only a few high quality channels could be broadcast so a political decision was taken to provide more channels but necessarily at a lower bit rate - the coder was tweaked somewhat to make it provide acceptable signals at lower rates but modern coders could do a significantly better job and there is a new standard (incompatible with existing) that will probably see service in Europe in next year or so - meanwhile the BBC is stuck with the old system and at 64k/bs it sounds fairly dire (especially for music) - it provides a speech channel at only slighly better quality than the old AM broadcasts. Commercial companies use an even lower bitrate than BBC R3 160kb/s (the minimum thought acceptable for classical music); coupled to this is the use of compression of the audio signal by most commercial stations (ie reduced range of volume which for classical and some non-classical music can be quite wide) to make their station sound louder (same problem apparently plagues many CD recording of pop music) - the BBC has now introduced compression on R3 for its drive-time slots though not to the degree that CFm exploits it - this might well be the reduction in quality mentioned..

 

Old FM receivers are not really suitable for today's crowded FM band - their selectivity was not good being designed for the days of just a few widely spaced channels - however their audio sections were generally of higher quality than today's bottom end receivers - I ditched my FM3 some years ago - pay about £120 at Richer sounds across (shop in Liverpool) and you will get a good quality FM/DAB receiver.

 

HiFi is a strange and very subjective subject with much nonsense thrown about - no-one accuses a musician who wants a good grand piano or violin and is prepared to pay a good sum for it of being snobbish - likewise those who enjoy recorded music might well be willing to pay for equipment that does justice to the recordings available - for my own tastes in classical chamber music the Quad speakers are unbeatable but they are most unsuitable for heavy rock.

[ai_Droid]

Cheers for the tip, although to be honest I'm already pleased as punch with the setup I have at the moment. The only issue really being the FM reception, and I've just ordered an FM aerial to stick on the roof to hopefully resolve that. The only regret I have is that I sold my Eltax Liberty 5+ speakers as they sounded fantastic for cheap speakers. Am still very pleased with the Mission ones though.

Must admit that I like the idea of a squeezebox for streaming my MP3s though.

 

Or the Pinnacle soundbridge, stream all your mp3's and get 6,000 radio stations too and forget about FM.

 

My mrs likes to listen to the radio via sky sometimes, but we only have Sky digital, so there's no decent audio outputs from the receiver, and I don't know if the electronics in an old, bog standard sky receiver would be up to the same quality as you'd at least expect them to be in my receiver. That's not to say I've done a listening comparison but if I had to guess which sounded better (excluding the current FM signal issue) I'd guess the AV amp would provide a nicer sound than the sky box.

 

Well you're heading a bit far into audiophile nonsense for me The sky+ box has optical out, not sure what you'd want that's better. Your reciever is analog, totally different beast, and I'm pretty certain sky's high bitrates will sound better than poor FM on a good reciever.. I don't believe it makes that much difference, certainly nothing compared to the sound quality impact of your amp and speakers.

 

As I say, I've not tested that theory but sky boxes are generally focused around getting a picture on your telly rather than decent audio quality as such.

 

Get away with you

[Cambon]

Droid - rather than clutter the board with your crap I will simply answer your point

 

1 - no point in answering

 

2 - you know exactly what I am on about.

 

3 - Error correction = distortion. 20 times more efficient if you want the current range limited codecs. It becomes a lot more even if you want to use aan high quality codec

 

4 - Hifi World several months ago

 

5 - The polarisation of a dipole works like this; if it is horizontal it is receives signals from all vertical directions, since transmissions are basically only made from land that means it picks up signals from two directions (at + and - 90 degrees across the horizontal axis). Therefore it cuts out unwanted signals from virtually all other directions. Vertical polarisation receives signals from all horizontal directions. The problem with this is that strong stations bleed over/wipe out weak ones. The reason some FM and DAB is vertical is to be omnidirectional is in order to make use of RDS. For straight forward FM reception, or a fixed DAB antenna picking up signals from one transmitting mast an aligned horizontal dipole IS the best.

 

6 - The equipment made a generation ago generally pisses all over the equipment you can buy these days. That is because it was designed and built with the best possible parts by craftsmen and not to a budget. Few companies these days do this. And especially not in the budget of mere mortals.

 

7 - You really have no idea do you? Cret has a set of Mission 753s. They cost the best part of a grand nearly 20 years ago. They won awards for their ability. Do you think that likes the Audioengine A2s will really appeal? Do you think there tiny bass cones can actually deliver bass? They are a computer nerds toy and nothing more.

 

Cret - ignore him. The squeezebox does nothing more than you can already do with a laptop (but it does a lot less. Connect your lap top to your Pioneer/Missions and enjoy.

[Cret]

Or the Pinnacle soundbridge, stream all your mp3's and get 6,000 radio stations too and forget about FM.

Already have a Pinnacle Showcentre which will stream stuff. It's ok but a touch fiddly.

 

My mrs likes to listen to the radio via sky sometimes, but we only have Sky digital, so there's no decent audio outputs from the receiver, and I don't know if the electronics in an old, bog standard sky receiver would be up to the same quality as you'd at least expect them to be in my receiver. That's not to say I've done a listening comparison but if I had to guess which sounded better (excluding the current FM signal issue) I'd guess the AV amp would provide a nicer sound than the sky box.

 

Well you're heading a bit far into audiophile nonsense for me The sky+ box has optical out, not sure what you'd want that's better. Your reciever is analog, totally different beast, and I'm pretty certain sky's high bitrates will sound better than poor FM on a good reciever.. I don't believe it makes that much difference, certainly nothing compared to the sound quality impact of your amp and speakers.

 

Ahh now you can't accuse me of audiophile nonsense when you haven't read what I said properly.

I don't have Sky+, I have Sky digital which has no optical out. I'd be happy with that as an output certainly but it doesn't have it!

And I did say twice that I haven't actually tested the quality of Sky audio against good FM signal (specially seeing as I can't at the moment), so that's hardly a case of snootiness doing some idle speculation is it.

[Cambon]

Cret - a useful link on antennae set up.

 

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/fmanddabradio.html

[ai_Droid]

Droid - rather than clutter the board with your crap I will simply answer your point

2 - you know exactly what I am on about.

 

Nope, No idea. You said: "DAB is a digital signal broadcast over a frequency in a method almost identical to FM. In other words it is basically an FM signal". What does that mean?

 

Dab is a digital stream, 'it is basically an FM signal', huh? I don't get the point.

 

3 - Error correction = distortion. 20 times more efficient if you want the current range limited codecs. It becomes a lot more even if you want to use aan high quality codec

 

The point was, you claimed DAB was either working or not. That's not true due to error correction, one of the reasons dabs come in for a lot of flak is because it's layer ii error correction being rather crap, and it will degrade the sound rather than simply cut out.

 

4 - Hifi World several months ago

 

Na, it's bullshit surely

 

5 - The polarisation of a dipole works like this; if it is horizontal it is receives signals from all vertical directions, since transmissions are basically only made from land that means it picks up signals from two directions (at + and - 90 degrees across the horizontal axis). Therefore it cuts out unwanted signals from virtually all other directions. Vertical polarisation receives signals from all horizontal directions. The problem with this is that strong stations bleed over/wipe out weak ones. The reason some FM and DAB is vertical is to be omnidirectional is in order to make use of RDS. For straight forward FM reception, or a fixed DAB antenna picking up signals from one transmitting mast an aligned horizontal dipole IS the best.

 

Nope, that's just wrong, sorry. Horizontal will perform pretty well for FM, but vertical will always be better and lots better for DAB, so your best going vertical if you're putting something new up. Quick google backs me up:

 

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/fmanddabradio.html <- this ones got some test results comparing the two.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=691496

http://www.radiowaves.fm/articles/OutdoorAerials.shtml

 

Good explanation on that last link from an article on the history of radio broadcast:

 

Polarisation Horizontal or Vertical?

A topic which still causes lot of confusion when discussing aerials is polarisation - whether aerials should be mounted horizontally or vertically.

In the early days (1950s) of FM radio it was found that when the signal was transmitted with horizontal polarisation it seemed to be much less severely affected by vehicle ignition interference. Those were the days when there were very few portable, or in-car, receivers so nobody ever bothered dealing with the problem of ignition interference at source.

However by the 1970s, with transistors having almost completely replaced valves and radios appearing in cars, vehicle manufacturers started paying attention to the problem of engine interference (no point having a car radio if all you can hear is the noise off the spark plugs) and most radio listening was now being done on portable radios with small telescopic aerials which 'pointed up the way' (i.e. vertically).

Suddenly Horizontal polarisation didn’t make much sense anymore and broadcasters started reverting to either mixed (Horizontal and Vertical), or pure vertically, polarised signals. Nevertheless, old habits die hard and many aerial installers and even manufacturers still insist that FM aerials should be mounted horizontally (the fact that most TV transmitters use horizontal polorisation adds to the confusion).

In a very small number of cases (where a station one wants to hear is using mixed polorisation and there is interference from one using vertical polorisation) it makes sense to use a horizontally mounted aerial but, 99% of the time, aerials should be mounted vertically.

 

 

6 - The equipment made a generation ago generally pisses all over the equipment you can buy these days. That is because it was designed and built with the best possible parts by craftsmen and not to a budget. Few companies these days do this. And especially not in the budget of mere mortals.

 

Unsubstanciated fuddy-duddy 'I remember when this was all fields' crap. Electronics manufacturing has become cheaper, and has improved in quality dramatically, and extra usability features added to modern devices make the best place for that old stuff is the bin.

 

7 - You really have no idea do you? Cret has a set of Mission 753s. They cost the best part of a grand nearly 20 years ago. They won awards for their ability. Do you think that likes the Audioengine A2s will really appeal? Do you think there tiny bass cones can actually deliver bass? They are a computer nerds toy and nothing more.

 

You heard em then? I've got mission speakers myself, lovely limited edition gold bi-wired jobbies, I'm not talking from anyones experience than my own. The mission 753's are a nice speaker, but they're bloody massive The Audioengines are tiny, but perform superbly. That's progress in my book.

 

Cret - ignore him. The squeezebox does nothing more than you can already do with a laptop (but it does a lot less. Connect your lap top to your Pioneer/Missions and enjoy.

 

Used one have you? You've got no idea unless you have.

[ai_Droid]

Cret - a useful link on antennae set up.

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/fmanddabradio.html

 

Ooh, good link cambon, from this:

 

"It doesn`t take much study of the results table to discover that the best all round aerial is a half wave FM dipole, preferably installed vertically so it will work omni directionally and will also pick up DAB pretty well too"

 

[ai_Droid]

Already have a Pinnacle Showcentre which will stream stuff. It's ok but a touch fiddly.

 

Not really the same beast. The showcentre is a pretty nasty piece of work, awful software and has to run through a telly. The soundbridge is actually a roku device that's been rebadged by pinnacle and is self-contained like a squeezebox.

 

Ahh now you can't accuse me of audiophile nonsense when you haven't read what I said properly.

I don't have Sky+, I have Sky digital which has no optical out. I'd be happy with that as an output certainly but it doesn't have it!

And I did say twice that I haven't actually tested the quality of Sky audio against good FM signal (specially seeing as I can't at the moment), so that's hardly a case of snootiness doing some idle speculation is it.

 

Ahh fair enough, I read that wrong. Still, I recon the phono out's of a sky digital box is pretty good, particularly if you're in a weak FM area.

[Frances]

From discussion on the R3 message board it woulkd appear that Sky (+ Freeview) have similar bit-rates to BBC R3 and sound somewhat similar though there would appear to be slight differences in the transmitter coder set-up - 160kb/s mp2 is approximately equivalent to 148kb/s mp3 - digital lossy codecs (mp2,mp3 etc) introduce different defects into the reproduced sound - for trained ears it is very easy to pick out some of the artefacts eg listen to the initial sounds of plucked strings or even worse zylophones) - my own personal setting (though I once worked for BBC my hearing has declined with age) is that 192kb/s mp3 is an acceptable compromise though I can hear the occasional defect it provides non-tiring listening for classical chamber music whereas the compressed CFm sound I find totally unpleasant on my setup. The audio quality available from mp3 players can range from poor (iPods) through to excellent (eg archos) - the costly item is the digital to analogue converter for which it is difficult to cut corners in cost terms.

[Cambon]

Cret - a useful link on antennae set up.

http://www.aerialsandtv.com/fmanddabradio.html

 

Ooh, good link cambon, from this:

 

"It doesn`t take much study of the results table to discover that the best all round aerial is a half wave FM dipole, preferably installed vertically so it will work omni directionally and will also pick up DAB pretty well too"

 

Actually, sound quality wise it is a 3 segment dipole mounted horizontally - if you studied it properly. Sort of goes in the face of your above history lesson.