[[email protected]]

Don Pearce wrote:
On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 16:02:02 -0700, SFTV_troy
wrote:


Don Pearce wrote:

DAB has proved worse then FM (I am talking here about reception of
either under ideal conditions, you understand) and quality has been
replaced by quantity, with immense numbers of so-called channels
running 80kb/sec mono and producing music that is quite impossible to
listen to.


True, but I've read the DRB+ standard (already implemented in store
radios) will fix that problem by using MPEG4 HE-AAC+SBR, thus erasing
any compression artifacts. (HE-AAC can achieve FM quality as low as
64 kbps)(CD quality at 96 kbps). Don't you think that's a positive
development?


But it won't be happening here any time soon.

2010 is when DRM will end and DRM+ start (probably) (according to the
UK committee). I've read that some stations are already offering DRM+
starting in 2008.


Oh yes. I bought the first DAB radio from Arcam - the Alpha 10. It has
a selection of - I think - four different compression levels. I was
involved in the BBC trials a few years ago, and much was being made of
the option to compress hard in a car, or not at all for home
listening. That was alongside the CD quality, you understand.


That still doesn't make sense. The broadcaster controls the encoding
rate, not the buttons on the radio. Unless they were using multiple
streams (like 64, 128, 256). But that would be horribly inefficient
of limited bandwidth to broadcast the same station three times.