Re: Dab cheap as chips

Silk wrote:
On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 10:26:19 +0000, Richard Evans wrote:

Don wrote:

DAB is NOT higher quality than a good MW reception

Wow, yet another person who seem to agree with me on this point.

Wow, indeed. I don't think you really believe it to be the case.

I could understand you saying that, except that I have already explained several times why I find DAB worse than good MW reception. I suppose I'll have one last try at explaining it to you.

Ignoring interference problems (as I'm only talking about good MW signals) the only real problems with MW are the mono sound and the lack of frequencies above about 4 Khz.

On DAB they transmit frequencies up to about 15 khz, which is not even 2 Octaves above 4Khz. So although DAB has an advantage in the high frequencies, it is not a huge advantage, significant none the less. Oh and of course if you are talking about DAB using LSF, then the difference is even less.

DAB also transmits in stereo, however it is not proper stereo. All the high frequencies usually use intensity stereo, which sounds horrible. In fact I find it worse than mono, because it it makes you think you are hearing proper stereo for a moment, and then you notice how flat it sounds. So the fact that it is 'stereo', sort of, draws your attention to the fact that it is not proper stereo. I find that so irritating that think I would rather listen in mono.

So so far DAB only wins on having better high frequencies, and that is after considering all the good points of DAB. I suppose I'd better remind you that I'm not discussing reception issues here, as I'm only talking about good MW reception.

Now the down side of DAB is the compression artefacts, which do not occur on MW.

So as far as I'm concerned DAB wins on high frequencies, but not by a great deal, and MW wins on lack of artefacts and lack of that horrible intensity stereo they use on DAB.

As it happens I find the problems of DAB worse than the drawbacks of a good MW signal. That is probably why I listened to MW for may years through my childhood and into my early teens, and never had any serious problem with it. When I tried DAB however I found that after a few months it was becoming tiring to listen to and after 18 months I simply can not listen to it without wanting to switch it off.

Oh and one point to clarify here, I'm talking mostly about listening to music on the radio. For speech I don't have any serious problem with DAB, however thinking about it, I would probably have even less of a problem listening to speech on a good MW signal.

Richard E.
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