Re: Is DAB worth saving?

Bill O'Really wrote:
On 29 Feb, 15:27, "DAB sounds worse than FM" <dab.is@dead> wrote:

broadcasting:http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm-
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Any comments?

Yeah - youre a obsessed fuckwit.

Wooooowoooooowoooo, get her.

I had nothing to do with internet
streams

Didn't say you did, but your mate, sorry, the person you worked for
when you
were at the BBC, Simon Nelson, was in control of them, which was why
I
asked.

- Simon Nelson isnt my mate

Good.

- and my name isnt Gregory

Gregorius?

--
Steve -www.digitalradiotech.co.uk- Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK
broadcasting:http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm-
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If you are seriously suggesting that lower codecs were left in place
on webstreams to drive listeners onto DAB then you are even more of a
foolish, deluded conspiracy theorist than I already thought you
were..- So well done - youve excelled yourself


Simon Nelson refused to increase the bit rates on Freeview and satellite
despite it being easy to do so without having any knock-on effect on the
other services, and it would have cost either nothing or almost nothing to
make the change.

Simon Nelson admitted on Feedback that "Of course the BBC would prefer it if
everybody listened to digital radio via DAB".

It is a fact that the audio is received off-air via digital satellite prior
to being encoded for the webstreams, which is the biggest sin possible in
the engineering of compressed audio - after using insufficient bit rate
levels, obviously.

The audio quality of Radios 1-4 on Freeview went from being good to pretty
awful and then to fucking awful for a few months when it was distorted to
***, and it turned out that old Simon matey boy had decided to transcode
the audio en route to the encoders there as well.

The AAC+ audio codec was available in Real Player 10 from January 2004,
because I've found a press release that says so, so it was available for the
BBC to use from that day forward.

The BBC has broadcast 20 TV advertising campaigns for DAB, and none for its
Internet radio streams, and 2 very recent ad campaigns saying that 1Xtra and
the Asian Network can be received via digital TV. No bias there then.

I'm afraid that the evidence does point to the BBC being very biased in
favour of DAB above all other platforms, so taking no action to improve the
audio quality of the Internet radio streams would be a simple way of
stopping more people listening via that method, which is what I'm saying
here, albeit that I'm saying it in a more accusatory way.


Your suggestion is ridiculous and tells me all I need to know about
your 2 dimensional thought process


The fact that the Internet radio streams are transcoded when that is really
bad audio engineering practice, and it should never be done, and it would be
really cheap to sort it out, that alone shows that the BBC couldn't care
less about teh audio quality of the streams, and what I'm asking is why they
cared so little?

And read this classic:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/02/i_love_digital_radio_1.html

That is amazingly biased in favour of DAB by the supposed champion of all
things Internet. WTF is all that about?

He uses some random 56 kbps stream based in Monaco that is conveniently
highly unreliable - even though when I tried it it was perfectly stable.

Why didn't he use HIS OWN BBC radio streams as an example?? Couldn't he slag
off his own Internet radio streams or something? Of course not, because
they're crap, and why is that?

If you can find a reason why the AAC+ audio codec has not been used in the 4
years that it's been available, then come out with it, or else I feel
PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED to ask why the *** is hans't been used in FOUR YEARS?


- only an audio obsessive like you
could even come up with such a whacko idea: that the BBC used low
audio quality on one platform to drive people onto another.


Come on then, why hasn't the AAC+ audio codec been used by now?

It's a dead simple question, and you need to be able to provide a plausible
reason why it hasn't been used, because it provides far higher audio quality
EVEN AT LOWER BIT RATES, but old Simon couldn't be having that now, could
he?

You don't actually know what AAC+ is or how it performs, do you? You
therefore don't realise that if the BBC used AAC+ now at the bit rate levels
they're using now on their Internet streams, their Internet streams will
provide higher audio quality than they're providing on DAB. Don't try to
tell me they want to do that voluntarily, because they're as biased in
favour of DAB as you can possibly get.

This isn't conspiracy theory, this is fucking fact. See above for details.


Steve - when someone tells you a fact that you dont 'like' - you
refuse to accept its reality!


Don't try to change the subject here. Provide a plausible reason for why the
AAC+ audio codec hasn't been used in the 4 years it's been available. If you
can't do that, then the assertion that they've been deliberately or
incompetently limiting the audio quality definitely stands, because that
CANNOT be denied, and they've definitely been employing incompetent audio
engineering by transcoding.

But why am I bothering to tell you any of this? You don't understand a
fucking word of it, do you? I'm a "techy twerp" I think your words were.
Unfortunately though, I'm a techy twerp who knows his *** and you don't, so
your only response to what I'm saying is to attack me on the basis of some
"conspiracy theory".

Provide a plausible explanation, or STFU.


Its the newsgroup equivalent of when my
little neice coves her ears up and sings "Lalalala - I cant hear you -
lalalalal" when she's told its time for bed. Its quite cute on a 5
years old girl - but on a grown adult its a pathestic sight.

And the fact is that the BBC got 3 times as many complaints about FM/


How is this in the slightest bit relevant to my assertion that the BBC's
Internet radio streams have been deliberately degraded, or at the very least
deliberately limited in quality, so that it helps DAB?


DAB latency than it got about bit rates on DAB...you can deny it all
you want - but doesnt make it not true...it was my job to go through
all the complaints/responses one by bloody one - then total it all up
and tell those further up the food chain what people liked and
disliked about DAB - and latency prompted THREE TIMES the negative
comments bit rates did.


It doesn't become any more relevant to the Internet radio streams the more
you repeat it you know.


Although in your honour I may change my nickname to 'DAB is about 1.7
seconds slower Than FM'


Internet, Greg, Internet, not DAB, Internet. Plausible explanation please.

BTW, it can't be denied that they've either been limiting the quality or
grossly incompetent, because it's a known fact that they're transcoding
prior to the streams being distributed. I realise you don't understand that,
but that is an indisputable fact, so bear it in mind the next time you
reply.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/incompetent_adoption_of_dab.htm


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