Re: DRM - it's a bit crap, isn't it?

DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
Richard Evans wrote:

<SNIP>

With DRM+ they will
loose that control and any station with a 50Khz slot will be able to
provide good sound quality if they choose to do so. And since it will
be cheap to provide good sound quality, why wouldn't somebody provide
it.
If the smaller broadcasters start providing good sound quality, then
the larger broadcasters would have to seriously consider doing the
same.



But it'll be too late, because they won't be able to increase their bit rates because there's no space left.

I'm not sure about that.

As it is there is the occasional station closing down.
SBN,
The Virgin Groove,
and now Primetime.

In the current market the broadcasters simply find ways to use up the capacity that is freed up, and so keep bit rates down at 128k.

If however at some point in the future they need to increase bit rates, to compete with the smaller broadcasters, then perhaps the big boys might decide to grab some of this space to increase bit rates.

There probably won't be enough capacity to broadcast everything with good sound quality, but at least with a bit of competition from some good quality DRM+ broadcasts, a few DAB stations might be able to use higher bit rates.

Also even if there isn't sufficient capacity on DAB, if the big boys had a reason to push for improved sound quality, they might find other ways to achieve it. Obviously this is all rather speculative on my part, but if the big boys pushed for some DRM+ capacity, and Ofcom caved in (that part is quite likely) then some DAB services could be moved to DRM+ hence allowing higher bit rates on DAB. Then again they could push to be allowed to put some services on DAB+. Who knows.

The problem rite now as I see it, is that the big boys don't want any significant improvement sound quality. If some competition can change that, then perhaps things might change.

Richard E.
.

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