DAB Gets Dafter

Interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Feedback, BBC boss Tim Davie said, "It's really straightforward that the quality of your audio is related to how close you are to a transmitter. So DAB currently has less transmitters, so those people who are farther away from a transmitter aren't getting as good sound." Just a little misleading as poor sound goes with low bitrates. We could do with better coverage as the interview was marred by DAB's bubbly reception. It was cloudy, you see...

BBC iPlayer Sounding Better In A Flash

A move to FLASH technology and the AAC codec means much better sound all round. The BBC Internet Blog reports, "We've concentrated hard on getting the audio right, too - ensuring that we take a digital feed directly out of the transmission chain, rather than a previous rather roundabout route involving satellites. The processing of our audio quality is now tailored for listening at your desk or in your living room; and carefully optimised for online listening." And it shows. All we need now is something similar to rescue DAB...

The Latest DAB News

As we get news of the Great FM Switch Off in the UK, catch up on what could replace it from WorldDMB...

The Lowe Electronics Hall Of Fame

Did you ever "Look To Lowe" up at the Matlock Emporium? Read the comments and leave us your memories of the great Bandit Bill and his take on radio retailing...

What Are The Wild Waves Saying?

We pour out our hearts or at least the list of stations stored in our trusty AR7030's memory bank. Captain, it's the Listener's Log...

Less Quiet On The Western Front

We still take an hour on a Saturday morning to hear AM live in the form of the VMARS Net on 3615 KHz. But now it is almost impossible to hear them. A wideband hiss sometimes referred to by we hams as "sharsh" covers the whole of 80m at about S9 and then some...

73s as ever, Bob Ellis – G8YQL