DAB + Radio operation

[gasgas]

I have posted this after several hours of presearch, as nowadays if you buy any piece of electronic equipment, you don't get an instruction book. If you haven't got a teenager to show you how to use your phone, you are lost. It's the same with a new TV or a new radio. So here is how a DAB + radio works:

I bought a DAB + car radio. You have to understand, and you soon will if you are still awake after reading this, that the + after the DAB makes an incredible difference between an ordinary DAB radio and a DAB + radio.
You will be familiar with the fact that you can get, and probably have a radio that does FM and AM. (Frequency Modulated and Amplitude Modulated signals). Sticking with FM which is what you would normally use, you probably have something like six pre-set push buttons on the front of the radio. You store your favourite five or six stations using these push buttons. In fact, with FM you can probably only get about 20 stations anyway, however many buttons you have. You might have another button, a sort of 'shift' button where you can store another five or six stations.
DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting) is very much like FM, and in theory it gives better fidelity. You tune in to your favourite five or six stations and store them using the buttons on the front of the radio.
Imagine if you had not just AM and FM. That's two modes of radio. Imagine if you had 54 modes of radio. This is what you get with DAB+. With each mode you get a host of different radio stations. I'll let you know how many I can get, and I live in a relatively dead spot. I can get 102 different radio stations. That's one hundred and two different radio stations, on my driveway. Woopee doo. Why do I want 102 radio stations? I don't. I only have 6 push buttons to store my 6 favourite stations. Surely that's enough, and yes indeed it is. But if it isn't, I can always do a scan and choose between the remaining 98.
This is how it works, and I'll be as brief as I can:
When I 'long press' a scan up or scan down button, the radio goes into 'scan' mode. It will, for the sake of argument start with 'Scan 5A'. Then it will switch to 'Scan 5B'. Then it will switch to Scan 5C and so on until Scan 5F when it will stop scanning and play one of the stations. If I then 'long press' the scan button it will start on 'Scan 6A' and so on till Scan 6F and play a station. Then if I long press a scan button it will repeat with Scan 7A and scan till it gets to the end of 7F.
Are you getting the drift? Each Scan has a number of radio stations behind it. It turns out that Scan 11A has no less than 30 different radio stations to choose from. Some Scans have less nd some have more. Some scans have no stations at all, so I wonder if they do have stations in a different part of the country.
To save listing all the stations on all the scans I will give just one example, the one Scan - 12B - where it seems most of the BBC stations are:
BBC Asian
BBC Radio1
BBC Radio Anthems
BBC Radio Dance
BBC Radio Xtra
BBC Radio2
BBC Radio3
BBC Radio3 Unwind
BBC Radio4
BBC Radio4 Xtra
BBC Radio5 live
BBC Radio5 X
BBC Radio 6
BBC Radio 6 Music
BBC Radio World Service

Do you get the idea? You could say that Scan 12B broadcasts the same number of radio stations as the whole of the FM 'waveband'. Then remember that there are 54 Scans and each scan has multiple radio stations within it.
If you and I are like minded, you might just be wondering why it is that the BBC bosses cannot find ways of saving money in order to keep the cost of the TV licence down. Why exactly do they need (i.e. can they justify) 15 different radio stations, with all the associated staff?

So after two hours of scanning and storing stations, my favourites are:
Button 1 Boom Radio / Scan 11A (1960's music for 'Boomers' which is what we on the forum are. Mostly.)
Button 2 BBC Radio 2 / Scan 12B
Button 3 BBC Radio 3 / Scan 12B
Button 4 BBC Radio 4 / Scan 12B
Button 5 BBC Radio 4 Extra (that's the one where they play repeats of things like The Navy Lark, old comedy shows)
Button 6 Classic FM / Scan11D

You can't get some stations, such as Boom Radio on ordinary DAB, it has to be DAB+.

So now I will be ebaying all my DAB radios while they are still worth something.

 

[TeamRienza]

In my post code area in N. Ireland at the foot of the Mourne mountains, with the sea to the East and 30 miles south of Belfast, I can receive according to a post code checker the following.

DAB+
3 BBC stations, radio 1 dance, radio 1 anthems, and radio 3 unwind.

With basic DAB,
25 stations total. 16 of these are BBC stations and some of the others are local commercial outlets some with lots of distortion from the set in the kitchen on the window ledge.

Not looking good, considering the government want to phase out FM.

Davy

 

[gasgas]

Does that mean you can only get those stations Davy - you don't actually have a DAB+ radio? It would be interesting to know what you could get if you had one.

 

[Boris7]

In my van I have DAB+

But don’t use it, I connect my phone to the radio and play the radio via WiFi, that way I don’t get the adds etc and can listen to my local station anywhere.

 

[Okta]

DAB+ uses an improved codec compared to DAB but it remains severely limited by the very low bitrates used for transmissions. The decision to cram large numbers of stations on to a limited bandwidth means audio quality has been sacrificed in favour of multiple stations. OK for voice on news and sports programmes but not music where file compression removes the quality.

Streaming from the internet provides far better quality, some streams are lossless giving you the full 1,411kbps of a CD. Try looking up the bitrates of your favourite DAB+ station, most of them don’t even make it out of double figures with 64kbps being typical.

 

[HTF]

Unfortunately we don't have DAB over here and rely on regular FM RDS. I have a Android radio so, I usually use with my favourite Internet radio station. Here in Portugal mobile Internet works very well that we even use it for TV on our tablets.

 

[TimSands]

I have DAB + in the moho. Super disappointing: reception incredibly variable and not many channels accessible. I now play my phone through a very handy excellent sound quality FM transmitter plugged into the 12V cigarette lighter. (my phone does not connect well through its USB charger port). I download my favourite shows on BBC sounds so if phone signal is iffy I have stuff I want to listen to. However my experience is that phone coverage is much better than DAB signals.

 

[merl]

DAB+ uses an improved codec compared to DAB but it remains severely limited by the very low bitrates used for transmissions. The decision to cram large numbers of stations on to a limited bandwidth means audio quality has been sacrificed in favour of multiple stations. OK for voice on news and sports programmes but not music where file compression removes the quality.

Streaming from the internet provides far better quality, some streams are lossless giving you the full 1,411kbps of a CD. Try looking up the bitrates of your favourite DAB+ station, most of them don’t even make it out of double figures with 64kbps being typical.

Indeed. There was a court case shortly after the launch of DAB, the upshot was they had to cease promoting DAB on the grounds of its 'superior sound quality '. The launch of DAB was about squeezing more stations into a limited bandwidth, this results in a sound quality that's inferior to FM.

 

[TeamRienza]

Does that mean you can only get those stations Davy - you don't actually have a DAB+ radio? It would be interesting to know what you could get if you had one.

I am still in France. I will do a check next week.
Because of location our terrestrial Ariel only gets a handful of tv channels, a sort of minimum public service provision. I forget the technical name. At least this was the case 10 years back. We have always needed to use Freesat or a Roku box.
The joys of life in a small coastal town with a range of mountains at the end of the garden.

Davy

 

[HTF]

One of the reasons we stopped using aerial for regular TV was the extinction of analog signal. Because of 5G mobile communications, analog was replaced by digital TDT and the frequencies sold to the highest bidder. With only 5 or 6 TV channels, TDT does't reach everyone so, to reach remote villages, a satellite decoder was supplied to the people who do not want or afford cable. People who have cable can also view the same channels they pay for over the Internet and that is what we use. Radio stations are also available and these, at least the ones over here, are free of charge. My campervan's electrics use some industrial PLC from Siemens that I can access over the internet so, I installed a 4G router with external antenna that all the systems use. When we're on the van, even our phones connect to this router.