Switzerland to end 2024 with an analog FM broadcast-killing bang Swiss radio listeners will soon have to toss out their old sets, as the country plans to end analog FM broadcasting on December 31, 2024, in favor of a total conversion to digital. The move has been a long time coming in Switzerland, which has largely already transitioned to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB+, an evolution of …
or indeed any digital broadcast system, is that it doesn't know how to fail gracefully.
When the signal level is low, FM is still audible, if noisy, but digital systems either stop completely once the error correction can't get enough bits, or turn into bubbling soup, like DAB.
Which is a shame, because DAB was never built out and funded as originally designed, which would have hidden most of the signal strength issues. It didn't help that it was sold as permanently positioned domestic receivers, when it was designed as and often relies on a receiver moving between varying signal strength transmitters - lots of them, short range. Oh well.
Despite the limited audio bandwidth of FM (15kHz at the top end), the quality is very significantly better than the highly compressed, limited bit-rate rubbish being foisted upon us by the greedy broadcasters. The previous poster was (mostly) right - DAB is capable of reasonable quality, but as implemented, it's usually unlistenable.
In my recent experience, the vast majority of in-car listening is to internet audio streaming stations, rather than DAB. The problems inherent with mobile reception of DAB aren't shared by internet radio streams - and these are usually received on mobile phones, and played through the car's speakers by Bluetooth connection. The reliability of a mobile phone connection far exceeds that of DAB!
> In my recent experience, the vast majority of in-car listening is to internet audio streaming stations
I really have no idea how anyone manages to do that. Even now in 2025, trying to get enough bandwidth to use a streaming service is entirely based on luck.
There is nothing beyong 2G between Buckingham and Bristol along main roads. Calls and SMS can be made, when stoped you can get data, but when moving data is nearly impossible.
DAB/DAB+ however had no problem. Plus, when driving you shouldnt be using a mobile anyway. Even if you have a modern car where it tries to link with the car screen, the UI is too dangerous and non-standard and can change wildly between app versions. Not the thing you want when driving.
"IMHO the main issue is the amount of power the receivers use. 4xD cells in DAB radios they last days, in FM radios they last weeks."
Yes, the power saving the Swiss claim. I wonder how much of that will be negated by the millions of more power hungry DAB+ radios? Whether battery, mains powered or fitted to your electric car, they still use more power and therefore increase battery usage, increase the house power draw or reduce the range of the car by a small amount, multiplied by millions of users. I wonder if anyone has actually done those calculations? Do FM transmitters use significantly more power than DAB+ multiplexes? Many UK DAB stations are barely better quality than FM, often worse, and quite some number of "music" stations are only transmitting in mono so another channel can be fitted in.
Indeed. A couple of years ago I won (!) a nice Sony DAB portable. I used to listen to BBC radio for an hour or so before I got up, and at the end of the first week the radio went off. I thought it was faulty, but it turned out it had ground its way through the 4xAA cells in just 6 hours of listening. And this was at a volume level carefully adjusted so it wouldn't wake the family. I replaced the batteries (genuine Duracell) and tried again and got the same result. Batteries weren't cheap even then, so I put the radio away and went back to my analogue FM radio which runs for several months on the same type of battery.
It's the same story with the bathroom radio, a cheap AM/FM radio from Amazon. I can't remember the last time I put new batteries in!
> ...nations with broader mobile data network coverage.
And corner-cases within "more sophisticated nations". My neck of the Maine coast can lose mobile data (if it even has it most days) with a single fault at several places. Tho frankly I prefer AM for public safety--- one AM rig can cover a lot of area and will cut behind mountains and some ways into tunnels.
> When the signal level is low, FM is still audible, if noisy, but digital systems either.....
Yeah well FM does that too. FM will generally start to degrade before digital, because there are few really good FM radios, but also broadcast designers fiddle bandwidth and datarates to give the numbers market leaders want to pay for.
And as Tron implies: an FM demodulator can be almost zero power, digital gotta suck digi-bits. I suspect it is "possible* to do millipower DAB, good hearing aids run complex algorithms in 0.002 Watts, but the market may not be driving that.
> 'broadcasted'? Isn't the verb broadcast, or is this an Americanism?
It is an old word, and good, in US and UK. More common before you were born? ngram for broadcasted
> "Analog" is definitely a yankism.
Apparently so. ngram for analog. Use the pulldown to pick a country.
> my cellphone will receive FM.
This was common but is fading on newer models.
> * at a range of ~700km.
I can frequently, on a good radio, despite our ragged rural overhead power lines, pull in WBZ-AM, 50KW on 1030kHz, from 330 km away. They have three transmitters, not impossible one of the standbys is valves; anyway two of my radios are tubes.
> Good 'ol WBZ - Radio 103 --- At least that was the catchphrase 50 years ago...
Yes. Boston is not my hometown (I grew up with WFIL) but WBZ has been well known for near a century (first air date- Sept 19, 1921, @100 Watts). It blankets New England with semi-local strength up to Bangor ME. It has heavy coverage of Boston's heavy traffic. If you need to drive *past* Boston, WBZ tells how far out you want to be. They do their own weather which can be better than the govt weather.
But nobody else seems to remember that specific jingle/catchphrase? It's too appropriate to doubt.
I also live on the far Down East Coast of Maine 60 miles from the Canadian border. I also like AM for emergencies. I can also pick up WBZ 1030AM from Boston as most of their signal goes over the Atlantic. We can lose cells service in our area if there are bad storms. Places that were hit hard by Hurricane Helene lost cell service for many days. FM still has its place along with AM. Both are a proven technology that work despite problems. AM can cover large distances and is a good source of information. FM can also cover large distances and has a good sound quality. FM signals fade and AM is subject to electrical interference. DAB I have limited experience with but what I my understanding of it it has many problems. If it is bad as American Digital TV signals that pixelate if too far from the transmitter or if you can't get the signal, it is worthless. I too like to stream radio but still would like to see AM and FM exist.
> > "Analog" is definitely a yankism.
> Apparently so. ngram for analog. Use the pulldown to pick a country.
Actually yes. You made the mistake of using Google Ngram, which has a small and circumstantial datasete, that being google books. Basically, you were seeing how many times a book between 1900 - 2019 used the term analog, but as American English books books are not translated into British English when they are published here, you cant use this to determine the popularity of a spelling.
Instead you need to use dictionaries, particually the Oxford English dictionary (when looking at comparing British English vs American English).
Here you will find this:
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/analogue_1?q=analogue
"(of an electronic process) using a continuously changing range of physical quantities to measure or store data"
Which shows that "analogue" is the correct British term for analogue electonics, transmissions. That page says that American English uses "analog".
Then if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary (remember, this is the definitive source for what words are "official" in British English) for "analog" you find it does actually exist ion British English but, it has a different meaning as it is a noun:
"a thing that is similar to another thing"
So searching that ngram thing prove nothing, as you are not searching based on the use of analog as a noun or an american english adjective.
" an improvement for listeners"
Not on this bit of the planet. I've given up with DAB. Bubbling Soup sound, signal drops, signal drops followed by a second or so of repeat, are the main gripes.
ClassicFM made a lot of steam and frothy water about launching themselves on DAB+, touting "better quality sound". It'd have been better if they'd just concentrated on getting DAB pure and simple to - you know - actually work properly.
What would be the point? Almost nobody who listens to Classic FM cares about audio quality. Or music for that matter. I doubt the Classic FM audience would be able to tell the difference between the sound quality of a decent FM or DAB broadcast and something coming out of an Edison-era phonograph.
BBC Radio 3, on the other hand... when I worked at the Beeb, years ago now, it was strongly rumoured that the BBC really wanted to drop Radio 3 - it had the lowest number of listeners and obviously cost the most per listener. But apparently all the listeners knew the Prime Minister's phone number...
(When I was there, I think R3 on DAB was getting the full 320kb.)
Radio 3 isn't just classical music (although I do enjoy classical music, I am definitely more at the "popular classics" end of the dial, and some of Radio 3's stuff is a bit too highbrow or obscure for me - although that's nevertheless exactly the sort of thing that a public service broadcaster should also be including), it also does all sorts of quirky, experimental and world music stuff, such as Late Junction, which is a real gem!
Yes the Radio3 snobs sit in their anechoic chambers with their armchair carefully located between a multitude of high end speakers and sneer at classic fm for the poor fools who don't even notice the sparrow farting 34 seconds onto the second movement...
I was fine with classic FM until the mobile app required a sign-in, presumably so they can sell the data and then they went DAB+ so my old DAB radio wasn't good enough. So no more classic FM for me.
I live in a large city with hills. Even at home radio signals are patchy and in the car dropouts are frequent. Longer wavelengths and older technology was simpler and more reliable - yes, in my youth I built one transistor radios and even a crystal set. Any signal is better than none.
I find that DAB reception has got worse in my area of the UK (West Somerset).
I even upgraded to DAB+ radios to replace the most used old DAB receivers to try to continue using it, but surprisingly, they're not really any better. I think it's definitely failing in the UK.
It is telling that several years back, the UK penetration target for digital radio to trigger the turning off of analogue radio was changed from just counting DAB/DAB+, to including all forms of digital radio including radio on DVB and internet radio. The PTB are rolling back on DAB, and I expect that they will propose re-using the spectrum at some point in the near future.
yep its piss poor in the UK. We get ZERO dab at home, we live near the coast so are in the shadow sector for the main TV (and DAB) transmitter, at Caradon Hill on Bodmin moor. Even our terrestrial digital TV is transmitted (as most are around the coast) via a relay on the top of a hill above our village. The relays have never been upgraded to relay DAB and I doubt they ever will be.
It's a cunning plot to eventually switch off all broadcast radio and sell the entire spectrum to $someone for $reasons and therefore $profit. Move everyone to DAB(+) then degrade the quality and convenience so listener numbers drop below some threshold so that they can claim "no one uses it any more". It's all bait and switch. Promise the world then renage on the promises and even provide a worse, but more importantly, cheaper "service". Sat and cable TV was going to provide "just pay for the channels you watch". That never happened, buy a bundle of stuff you don't want or do without. Digital cable and Sat TV? It's be better with sharp, crisp pictures and CD quality sound. Yeah...naaaa. It's compressed up the wazoo such that many so called HD channels or full of compression artifacts and worse by far than analogue in some case.
Regarding degrading the FM signal so people switch over, that is actually what happened when digi TV was being rolled out
The analogue TV signal source was changed so it was actually a decoded version of the digital signal rather than being direct from the prime source. By doing that, it made the analogue picture look no better than the digital picture
These days, with HD and better compression etc the digital picture is much better then would be possible in the analogue world (without using heaps of bandwidth) so it could be argued that the end result justified the means. It was still very sneaky and dishonest though
> with HD and better compression etc the digital picture is much better then would be possible in the analogue world (without using heaps of bandwidth)
Shame about the digital artifacts being so much more bleeping distracting than the analogue; even on the HD channels (although it is better than the standard channels) there is pixel banding, moves and eyes moving left and right whilst foreheads stay in the same place...
And I way prefer ghosting or losing the colour to half the frame covered in incredibly garish squares.
@Rich 2:
Not in the UK. I've had it confirmed by colleagues who were involved that BBC analogue distribution (itself a 155Mb/s digital signal unrelated to DTT) continued to the transmitters (except to the Channel Islands) and to other BBC sites for a number of reasons; not least that DTT did not contain teletext used for subtitles.
ITV used similar methods at 140/155Mb/s; C4 distributed a compressed signal at 34Mb/s. Channel 5 used satellite feeds.
The Bubbling Soup is a consequence of the way DAB does error correction. Digital transmission systems tend to degrade in a "cliff edge" fashion - you either get a signal or you don't. It was originally thought that it would be more acceptable (and more akin to analogue) if the audio quality degraded gradually as the signal became weaker and so DAB uses more error correction bits for sounds that are critical to intelligibility and fewer for the rest: the consequence is the burbling sound as some bits of the audio signal are preserved at the expense of others. DAB+ adds more error-correction so that a signal can be recovered in more marginal conditions, but brings back the "cliff edge".
So, the only way Classic FM could "improve" the quality of its audio (short of getting rid of the weird compression) was to ditch DAB altogether.
The way the US does digital radio is great.
HD Radio - sits alongside the FM band for extra channels
SiriusXM offering a plethora of channels and seems to be mostly ultra reliable.
DAB in the UK by comparison is pretty awful.
Also: “also eliminate maintenance costs of aging FM infrastructure”. Really? FM transmission is far easier than digital. Power argument; yes. Maintenance? I’m not buying it.
Power argument?
For a few transmitters, yes I agree power reduction with DAB compared to FM will be significant.
For receivers, replacing mW of basic power requirement with several watts of power requirement across tens or hundreds of thousands of sets ... how does that compare to the transmitter savings apart from the listener pays so is cheaper for the broadcaster?
Out kitchen stereo died a few years back so we replaced it with a nice JVC one with fancy DAB, thinking it would be nice not having the FM occasional static.
We get home set it up and start to try to find stations... Nothing not a scratch, we though maybe it needed an Ariel moving or something, tried quite a lot more than reasonable before looking it up online.
Turns out, DAB had a short life in Ireland and was shut down for some reason I can't remember.
Back to FM, and everything is great.
Not sure about DAB+ but it would seem we just gave up in general, no body bothered to set it up and stations didn't see the use, by the time it was reasonably available in home systems online streaming was already way ahead and no one on the street is likely to even know what DAB is at all, probably laugh thinking you are talking about drugs.
According to the viamux.com site they are running a small scale DAB+ pilot in Dublin but the site might be pre the RTE DAB shutdown.
In AU we have DAB+ in the capitals and some larger regional centres and works quite nicely if you live in these. The receivers themselves normally also have FM which covers most of the rest of the population.
The national broadcasters (ABC, SBS) also broadcasts some of their radio stations ever digital tv channels which extends their coverage.
The DAB+ receivers were originally more expensive (> 4 times the price eg AUD120 v. AUD 20) of comparable AM/FM receivers which meant a slow uptake. Living in Sydney when the rollout started I managed to purchase a cheap (AUD100) Grundig receiver which is still going strong and was a decent FM radio for the decade I was in the countryside.
Unfortunately my not being blessed with golden ears, I cannot really detect the difference between identical FM and DAB+ broadcasts although the slight time delay between the two is a little eerie.
> we though maybe it needed an Ariel moving ... DAB had a short life in Ireland and was shut down for some reason I can't remember.
It was Calibanned[1]
[1] would have worked better if you were on the west coast of the US instead of Ireland, could even have worked in a line about DAB being read it's Miranda Rights as it was hauled away: "Book him, Sergeant Prospero".
I was going to say that. DAB is fing annoying. Driving round and hit dead spots so it just goes silent. At least with FM you can make a crystal radio set, never going to happen with DAB or DAB+.
I thought they were turning off FM in the UK but hopefully that's out the window considering DAB signal wise ain't great.
The spectrum licence runs until 2034, but there is a break point that Everyone TV (BBC, ITV, C4, C5) can trigger at 2030. The licence is costing Everyone TV a fortune which is why they have started pushing people towards their new streaming service "Freely", for the BBC streaming also has the benefit that they can enforce that you have an account with a licence in order to stream, this is especially important given that the BBC charter expires in 2027.
There are technically 4 licences, 2 were due to expire in 2022 and 2 in 2026, in 2021 Everyone TV asked for them to be extended until 2030 but the Conservatives under pressure from lobby groups for older voters told Ofcom to extent them to 2034.
Freesat/Sky is going in 2029 as that is when the current satellites will be decommissioned and nobody is talking about launching any more.
This is fascinating. As far as I can tell, in a world where there are existing TVs and other media devices already capable of receiving streaming content (both live and on-demand), they're proposing people buy new TVs so receive their proprietary IP-based broadcast service. Have I understood that correctly?
The reason I ask is that if you look at the Together TV website, it talks pretty much exclusively about its hardware partners building the technology into their TV sets.
Although digital swtichover started the same year as the first version of BBC iPlayer, streaming at that point was not a viable option for replacing analogue TV so people were generally prepared to buy a box (and, indeed, new aerials in some cases).
Streaming now is pretty much ubiquitous and the number of people watching off-air, linear TV has dwindled dramatically, particularly amongst young people. I'm wondering how they're going to be persuaded to buy new hardware to watch the same on-demand streaming services they're already watching online and linear TV services they clearly don't want.
> Streaming now is pretty much ubiquitous
Says who?
I know plenty of people who dont have the cash for streaming, they can just about have internet and wifi for (most) of the year.
I see no reason to gatekeep poorer families into watching TV or not watching TV depending on if they have enough money to pay the internet bill and the bills for the streaing services.
Even when looking into so-called "social" tariffs, the prices vary wildly, the tariff can be uppoed to a standard tariff at a moment’s notice due to any admin error or confusion surrounding your universal credit status, not all ISP's offer social tariffs, the speeds are kept artificially low for no good reason other than to punish you for being poor, perhaps for the rest of you natural life.
Consider that you say "streaming is ubiquitous" yet totally ignore the fact of the previous ubiquity, that of multiple TV's per household is the case for poor families who simply need to front up the yearly licence fee, and all TV's in the house can tune in independently.
But in the "new world" or Freely, they will still have to front up the license fee, plus the fee for the internet, and any other streaming costs they are/will be required to pay. Including: a NEW TV! So no more getting a second-hand TV, they all are fit for the tip. So the so called "free" TV that Freely is end up being quite expensive every year.
So, assuming they have a social tariff, and have managed to score a new TV, just so they can enjoy EastEnders etc, they find they need NEW TV's for each room they already have an old TV in. I mean who sits round the same TV like the Royale Family these days? Everyone has too much choice and all want to watch different things, which they can do with old fashioned broadcast TV and free second-hand TV's literally given to them by more affluent relatives.
But not anymore. New TV's for you all. Only, the social broadband they must fork out £12-£25 a month for (which represents a large portion of essential costs, like food, or nappies for example) but it turns out that they only have the bandwidth to support one TV...
In 2025. Huddled around the TV like the Simpsons, and paying through the nose for what feels like a downgrade.
Now, I can afford the downgrade of IPTV/Freely, currently. But what of me in the future, when I'm at pension age. Will I be getting free broadband? I hope so, I think every household should get a free tier of broadband simply to get Freely and other "essential" services such as free bandwidth to access council websites etc. Anything above that, like streaming Netflix or gaming will need a proper broadband package.
Sounds reasonable no? It could be paid via taxes. Simply the moment you move into your new house, you should be able to plug in a router and get that free tier.
But, that don’t make money. And the affluent majority will simply ignore the issue as always. Well, you'll be in that boat eventually and you will see the kids and young adults all screaming about the latest method of doing X Y or Z and you are stuck hoping the last radio station isn’t switched off as you have to rely on Free To Access systems now, unlike in your youth.
You know the thing that really pisses me off about the blatant and arrogant threat of dismantling Free To Access systems like terrestrial radio TV and satellite? That in the IP network focused world, they have solved it. 5G Broadcast brings terrestrial 5G IP broadcasting to the public. No fees, no SIMS. Just a new TV (or a box perhaps). Mobile phones can be made to get it as well!
Free To Access IP TV and streaming services, no need to have a contract, no data costs. THAT I would get behind, but this brain dead Government never seems to be able to think clearly about the real issues like this, so have rejected 5G Broadcast, just to be different for some stupid reason, probably so they can boast about successfully rolling out unaffordable and non-free broadband to the whole country. Sure, can get broadband in the middle of the Yorkshire moors eventually, but can’t get enough of it to watch TV.
Stick to what works, replace it like for like. Nothing replaces FM/AM or Freeview/Freesat as yet.
"I thought they were turning off FM in the UK but hopefully that's out the window considering DAB signal wise ain't great."
It's better than it used to be, but still not great. There's an entire stretch of the M6 through the Lake District where there's no DAB whatsoever. Mind you, if you do a scan on FM, it'll go through the entire band and eventually settle on ClassicFM 'cos that's all there is. MW/AM works ok though. Not sure if there's any phone signal, I'm just passing through so am not using the phone while driving anyway, but I'd assume it's poor at best and unlikely to work with streaming on mobile data :-)
When DAB was first conceived it was back in the days when 'broadcasting' meant 'central site transmitting a unidirectional stream of data to numerous receive only stations'. This type of broadcast still has a place but not the kind of digital based multichannel service that DAB provides. That's now more than adequately covered by streaming, streaming being available in one form or another for 25 years or more and is now practical to use while mobile. This has left DAB as a technology that's obsolete before it became fully developed, enduring because of institutional inertia by the broadcasters and vested interest by the equipment manufacturers.
Broadcasting still has a place, though. Not DAB but old school broadcast technology. FM and even AM. Its not very sexy but its cheap, simple and easy to set up and maintain, the sort of technology that's going to be available after the infrastructure fails due to a natural (or man-made) disaster. This is at the core of an ongoing argument here in the US about the AM (medium wave) band in cars. Manufacturers of modern cars, especially EVs, would like to dump AM radio because the electronic packages make isolating the receiver from spurious emissions from the vehicle electronics difficult. The argument for keeping it is that this is a vital lifeline in case of a disaster, anything from a bridge out due to local flooding to a major earthquake. Building your entire communications infrastructure on complex components that are not easy to service (they have to be replaced) and, worst case, are susceptible to EMP is asking for trouble.
The problem with DAB and DAB+ is that at home makes no sense, given the alternatives, streaming and satellite broadcasting, both have more bandwidth available, so there's more choice and better audio quality compared to DAB.
And now mobile streaming is available, and because DAB channels are transmitted at low bandwidth, the quality isn't a factor for DAB, and in mobile DAB requires more power compared wit FM and comparable with power used for streaming on mobile.
At the same time FM radio it's good enough to be listened in mobile, has low power requirement on reception and a receiver it's quite easy to build: An FM receiver could be made using eight transistors and two diodes, while for DAB a quite powerful microcontroller it's required.
"That's now more than adequately covered by streaming, streaming being available in one form or another for 25 years or more and is now practical to use while mobile."
Practical? Maybe. Economic? Not so much. Data costs money. Over the air broadcast is "free at the point of use". Is it an improvement if I have to pay for extra mobile data just so I can listen to the "radio" while in the car?
> This type of broadcast still has a place but not the kind of digital based multichannel service that DAB provides
It's called 5G broadcast, coming SIM free to a TV or phone near you, if yuo live in a country that bother with it, which doesnt look like the UK will.
I thought the BBC only kept Long Wave and The Archers going to fallstall a premature ejaculation by our Trident subs.
A beer for the idea that The Archers have been preventing WW3 all these years.
Omitting an early childhood in NZ, where, at that time the program was broadcast, I don't remember much other than nothing whatsoever seemed to happen and everyone talked like the residents of Invercargill (NZ.)
Not broadcast in AU I think but (chief) inspector Morse* religiously listened to the program (often the Sunday morning omnibus session) so I assume it must have had its merits apart from preventing (delaying?) nuclear conflict.
* who was also partial to an ale or three.
> (chief) inspector Morse* religiously listened to the program (often the Sunday morning omnibus session) so I assume it must have had its merits apart from preventing (delaying?) nuclear conflict.
Back when Morse listened, "The Archers" still gave out useful information about farming matters, such as Peggy worrying about the cost to the nation if ramblers refused to obey the Foot and Mouth restrictions.
Recently, the most educational it has been is when "More Or Less" calculated the height of the manor roof by the length of Nigel's scream.
What's on LW tho? Last time I tried to listen to anything on that band on an old Telefunken I only got static.
SW, on the other hand. that's where all the good stuff are. Get funky things like weird robotic voices announcing random numbers or loud Chinese music all the time.
And MW/AM is great if you fancy some Thai/Tibetian/Burmese/Vietnamese/Laotian radio alongside Voice Of America after dark, too bad it goes silent the moment daylight breaks.
> SW, on the other hand. that's where all the good stuff are.
At the top of Maine sits WBCQ SW, a very funky shortwave currently broadcasting flat-earth theory (and other topics) all around the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WBCQ_(SW) https://www.radioworld.com/global/wbcq-relies-on-high-power-shortwave-antenna
We found out about it because they are jacking our electric rates (again!) and the proprietor Allan Weiner came to a hearing as a Very Big Customer. He literally has coverage at his antipodes. I doubt he can actually be throwing 500,000 Watts (he is so far out in the woods and fields) but obviously could be a big electric bill.
It eats batteries. My Sony Walkman lasts for ages with a single AAA receiving FM. The resilience of the DAB signal is also rubbish compared to FM.
Take away FM in the UK and I won't be listening to radio any more. All those retro radios stretching back nearly a century will become paperweights. And a major route into electronics for youngsters vanishes into a surface mount black box.
Damaging peoples lives has a cost to it. Check out the next election in the UK, and see what happens to those who are hated by the general public for damaging our lives and taking things from us.
Leave FM alone.
Likely by the time the WiFi & BT chip used by Apple included FM radio for "free" there was no headphone socket. The earphone cable is the VHF aerial. I had a Lenovo 10" tablet big enough for an internal aerial, but still needed the external cable for VHF radio to work.
Receiver power is a big issue with DAB.
All the RTE stations that were on DAB are on DTT (and satellite, but that's not portable), which works nationwide with a €15 USB TV stick, even on some phones and tablets.
I've given up on DAB and gone back to FM and for long car trips I stream. The original DAB standard was barely half-arsed with a very crap codec. Anyone who was an early adopter like me now has a pile of kit that can't receive anything.
There wasn't even a very good selection of stations anyway. Most non-beeb stations are now run by Bauer Media, all the local stations are being turned into Greatest Hits. Anything else is Nation radio.
The FM band in the US is positively crammed compared to UK radio.
"The FM band in the US is positively crammed compared to UK radio."
US radio has always been better and with much more choice than UK, mainly because they don't pay royalties on every track they play. That's a significant reduction in running costs meaning it's much cheaper to set up a station. And broadcast licencing aside, quite a few US stations are almost if not completely automated, especially the music stations and have almost zero running costs.
> US radio has always been better and with much more choice than UK, mainly because they don't pay royalties on every track they play.
I don’t think that is what is being referred to. US radio stations are heavily talk based, many with no music at all, just the sort of thing I wanted when growing up here in the UK.
My local BBC radio station was all talk for most of my youth luckily, but even they went and started playing music generally throughout (not just during music focused programmes) which was a nightmare.
Almost all music is unlistenable to me. It is not a stylistic choice, just like not liking the smell of coffee isn’t. I literally cannot abide being around music that I don’t like, and my tastes for which I do like are extremely narrow, limited to very specific bands or only certain songs. As far as genres are concerned, only the styles you find in the 80's and early 90's generally work for me. Everything before the 80's stands out as, horrid. And quite soon after the mid 90's almost all music I would hear thought the day was simply distasteful, and continues to be.
However, some things have gotten better as in recent years a resurgence in the styles used in 80's electronic, 80's new wave etc have surfaced and its starting to sound a little better.
Music with lyrics is the worst offender. It seems without lyrics many more tunes work fine in my head. Probably this is why I only like certain songs and bands. For example, anything by ABBA makes my skin crawl. Everyone loves ABBA, even the other 90's teens in school would all sing ABBA songs from time to time. I was totally shocked that anyone from my generation could even stand to hear a single not of such 70's "eeeewww". But somehow, they loved the stuff.
It wasn’t a choice, or snobbery. I literally felt the need to run from a room if music that wasn’t compatible with my brain was in earshot. I wasn’t trying to show off my dislike, it was like having mental pain, not physical pain, more "in my head". Over the years I learnt that most people just "get pleasure" from music because it happens to be music. I have no idea what that is all about as I have never felt "pleasure" from music, unlike when eating chocolate. Music is noise. But, I do get pleasure from music I somehow like and I can form a "bond" with that song over time, like getting used to a smell, it slowly gains value.
It may also explain why I was never able to dance. I can move like I'm dancing etc, but movement and music being linked was like saying the moon and flower petals are linked. I couldn’t see it. At most, I may tap a finger, just a finger to a beat, and if I really liked that song and it had started to feel pleasurable, I'd tap more fingers, as if I was playing the instrument.
But 90% ov everything I would hear all over UK FM was total useless musical shitty hell. I was surrounded by people who were obsessed with it, still am, and it felt like they were all on some drug.
FM had NOTHING for me. AM had NOTHING for me. Till I discovered talk radio, BBC R4 was too old and stuffy for me as a kid, now I lap it up but my local BBC station was exciting! I actually was getting excited over radio, where it was ALL TALK and PHONE IN'S. Talk Sport had a general talk/phone in segment relegated to around midnight. James Whale, Mike Dickin and others were voices that soothed me to sleep in a world awash with terrible sound pollution called modern music. No, I didn’t like sport either, BBC 5 Live and Talk Sport during the day were avoided.
Classic FM. I remember when that was opening. They played birdsong as a test transmission. I still have a recording of that wonderful sound, it was on DAB later so I recorded it. Classic FM was tolerable, I'm not a classical music swat or anything, but that music is generally way better than ABBA and I can happily exist in the same environment as it.
So, I love radio, as a technology, as a way to communicate. I love AM and FM broadcast, but they still offer nothing to me at all. DAB however does, several talk radio stations are there, plus stations that play only 80's music which frankly is a godsend.
When I read about US radio I'm jealous. Sure they play music there too, royalty free as you say, but there they also have loads and loads of talk!
> Take away FM in the UK and I won't be listening to radio any more. All those retro radios stretching back nearly a century will become paperweights. And a major route into electronics for youngsters vanishes into a surface mount black box.
Same sentiment here, although I use DAB as FM never serviced me growing up with any decent stations apart from BBC 3CR before it corrupted itself and started playing music mixed in with the talk. I listen to talk radio formats, barely like music enough to survive listening to it on the radio. Classic FM has a decent chance of doing that but I barely listen to that either. I use CD’s, have all I ever need.
So I use DAB, it has several stations I wished I always had as a kid but FM/AM never offered to someone like me, but if anyone tries to shutdown radio/tv broadcasting in favour of non-Free To Access IP networks (make it free, and we can talk happily) I'm just doing without. Stuff it. I'll literally "cut the cord" and "pull down the antenna". No, I actually will! I'll take it out of the attic.
I have plenty of other things the TV can do. DVD/bluray, stuff I’ve recorded and archived. I can give up the news, shows whatever, and just build plastic model kits, program a microcontroller to water the garden and, well, do the gardening. Oh and walk! I’ll walk places. Take photos! Make my own entertainment.
I’m 44 and starting to consider jigsaws as being something to get into now, so that I’m prepped to use them in my 70/80s to keep my mind sharper.
If you want/need to inform me of news etc, put a letter through my door. I am odd that way, I work in IT, are heavily into computers, but I know when I and others are being taken for a ride, intentionally or accidentally. If you can’t replace broadcasting with Free To Access IP systems, well. why will I support that? It's a debasement of decency, I will be a pensioner at some point and god knows what money I will have to fork out for a TV license AND broadband AND streaming. Perhaps I'd prefer to run the heating or cook a meal instead???
So, if they turn it all off, so do I. Bugger off the lot of you and take your streaming, I'll just get used to what I'll have to do when I'm in my 80's. Give me a newspaper, I'll read it, even though I can tell you how TCP/IP works and the difference between TCP and IP and what ARP is and how an Ethernet frame is structured. I know what I need at the simplest lowest and cheapest level, if you deny me and others that, well, shove it. I'll be better off untracked and un-monetised anyway.
But if you finally figure it out and offer Freely FOR FREE, that MEANS FREE INTERNET ACCESS FOR FREELY. Then you can keep me. I’m not a little guy yet, but I know I will be and I know many who are right now reliant on FTA broadcast TV and radio. So, I’m getting ready to fight, which involves me doing he only thing I can do, just ignore you, the internet, everything, leave you all in your own world while I build my blissfully ignorant universe around me.
Perhaps someone decent enough to think about people like me doing that by choice or ending up like it, might see it as some kind of social problem, like we did with pensioners today unable to access internet only services or unable to get anywhere as no busses exist anymore, the post office shut as nobody uses them anymore and the library is shut as we all stopped using those as well.
Ta Ta!
FM (VHF) does not have the frequency or coverage to be useful for emergencies. I doubt that DAB+ would cut the mustard either.
AM (medium wave/MF) can propagate hundreds of kilometres in the right conditions, over hills and down valleys. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) uses this for emergency broadcasts when required, or predominantly talk radio the rest of the time.
If you live in a bushfire or flood prone area it is essential to have a battery powered AM radio. The second service to usually fail is the cellular network and internet, right after the power fails.
The second service to usually fail is the cellular network and internet, right after the power fails.
Very, very true. I would even venture to say that they go before base power fails. But that is a bit difficult to understand for a generation/ society that doesn't dare to leave the house without a mobile glued to their hand. Will be interesting though if somebody in the future strikes that Pompeii-like archeological find from the 21st century: "They met their end apparently, sitting in the corner, staring passively at in their hand. We are not sure about this behaviour, it might be something religious..." Ah well, if it doesn't appear on the screen of your mob, it isn't true any way...
"...sitting in the corner, staring passively at in their hand. We are not sure about this behaviour, it might be something religious..."
Some years ago one evening, when I was walking past a backpackers hostel which had a large refectory table outside in the front courtyard, I spied over a dozen young people seated around the table all apparently deeply engrossed in prayer.
Then I noticed the telltale glow of a led display reflected in all their faces and I could not stop laughing, discretely moving quickly on my way.
I found and watched the reporting on this from one of the big radio/tv groups here, and only about half of currently used cars have DAB+ radio. In a country where the radio is regularly used to warn about traffic hazards, jams, closed tunnels.
This'll go well.
Plus there's a 10% of the population who don't use it yet, especially for local stations, and that's an awful lot of people to shove off their favorite channels.
Such nonsense.
DAB actually needs more transmitter sites closer to the the population than FM.
Also if they want to save money, then turn off DAB. Like Ireland did. DAB in Ireland was only going to benefit the National RTE and they couldn't afford to add enough transmitters for full coverage. Adding the high sites first only gave about 45% coverage.
The UK would need 100s of small DAB fill-in relays to give the existing FM coverage.
Actually some Broadcasters, run by accountants, think the best way to instantly save costs is to turn off all transmitters and only stream on the Internet. The Internet streaming is expensive if it's not niche content and of course perfectly tracks who is listening to what. Broadcast is ideal for mass market as a surge in listeners has no effect on distribution quality or costs.
In my experience the electrosmog and power consumption arguments are true, but simply because the DAM transmitters are of lower power and because of this have lower coverage compared with FM transmitters in the same sire. Broadcasters and advertisers are more interested to cover big cities rather than small villages in the middle of the mountains.
Transmitter power is usually given as peak radiated power (EIRP). You can't directly compare digital and analogue power levels, since digital transmitters run at 100% output all the time, but analogue ones rarely hit peak power. Most digital transmitters are sized to match the average power of the analogue one, to give the same coverage.
"FM receivers in automobiles are nearly completely gone in Switzerland, with 99 percent [PDF] of vehicles sold in the country shipping with DAB+ radios as of 2019."
So you're saying that 99% of cars in Switzerland are from 2019 or newer?
A 2022 report says that the average age of a car in Switzerland was 10 years old.
That's the first thing that occurs to me when people make the "environmentally friendly" argument: What about the hundreds of thousands of junked FM radios?
P.S. I was curious about your CR-800; what a fabulous looking tuner! I have a 1980s Toshiba radio cassette in the kitchen.
Sweden paused the DAB+ tech indefinately, with all right!
All the claims that it would minimize the electrosmog is BS,
DAB+ technology has such bad coverage you need to place relay senders all over the place.
The technology of multiplexing radio channels makes it so costly that the small local radio stations can´t afford it, diversity is stumped.
It is a technology and product from the previous millenium - before napster, spotify, podcasts and internet radio and flat rate 4G - 5G internet coverage.
Honestly, from which rock pool are the advocates of this moldy technology crawling out from?
They are flogging a dead horse!!
I really wish Digital Radio Mondiale was supported by more widely known manufacturers and broadcasters.
Being AM, it can be long range.
Modern codecs mean that decent quality audio can be achieved over really small bitrates. If using the Opus audio format it's license free.
Being original radio over the airwaves, it cannot be censored like the internet can. Something to consider with current conflicts around the world.
There are some "pirate" radio stations like Radio Caroline that have invested in increasing their coverage over AM: https://www.redtech.pro/radio-caroline-increases-coverage/
Instead I would have thought they should be promoting Digital Radio Mondiale, perhaps a partnership with Raspberry Pi / supporting vendors to provide a DRM HAT module to make the receivers abundantly available.
@therobyouknow: I have a friend who works for the BBC World Service. He told me years ago about a new technology that would digitally encode radio broadcasts on the AM band, combining very distant reception with much better quality. I'd completely forgotten about it until I read your post. Unfortunately, it seems as though it didn't make much of an impact in Europe...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=digital+radio+mondiale
Yes, it DRM hasn't taken off.
Among reasons suggested here, I'd say there's another: commercial incentive/pressure.
Just imagine, a community radio setting up a low power digital AM transmitter (DRM), the range would be much further than they would get with FM (where they are restricted by Ofcom in terms of tranmission power). Shrewd community stations get planning permission to plonk their antennas on top of tall buildings in their community. Shrewd stations, also apply for a license in an area where there is high population density. Both of these maximise audience.
But is over the air still relevant today, with good bandwidth internet on mobile meaning radio has converged with mobile? (another example of convergence of computing with telephony). I'd say it could be relevant today, particularly vast continents in Asia and Africa where internet coverage may not be continuous. Also the censorship reason. But also, unless there's another application for the AM bands (SW, MW, LW) then why not use it for this. DVB/DTV Digital Television over the air will be phased out so I understand, as Freely takes hold. That spectrum is potentially lucrative for mobile network band expansion. AM band? Not aware of other potential uses, so why not modernise with DRM.
They've had decades to try to make something that could receive it reliably and they failed. Any receiver you can buy likely hits at least two of the deathly triad of lasting an hour on battery, costing an order of magnitude more than something else, and not being able to pick up the signal anyway. In theory, it's a great idea, but there's only so long it can be the next new thing with one of the key parts of the system absent and no indication that it will appear any time soon. It has been used for some purposes, for example long-distance communication to a small number of more expensive receiving locations, and it can still be used that way. For the intended use, broadcasting to a large number of people, often people who cannot afford expensive receivers, it's not working. They've had years to turn this around and we're still pretty much in the same place we were in 2020 or 2015 or 2010.
The problem, best I can see with UK DAB and DAB+ broadcasts is that there are too many small transmitters. Based on this website that monitors transmitters.
Largest transmitters with DAB+ are running at 10kW. Largest FM transmitters can go up to 100kW (I don't think they go any higher for technical reasons in Europe).
Bandwidth in Mhz for DAB+ seems to be limited to 1.5Mhz and that is not a lot of bandwidth for high quality music in digital format. FM has maximum bandwidth of 270kHz with RDS.
https://www.ukwtv.de/cms/grossbritannien-dab.html (DAB information)
https://www.ukwtv.de/cms/sender-tabelle/sender-tabelle-ukw.html (The FM transmitter table for UK has been removed)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FM_broadcasting (FM Radio technical stuff)
Time of FM radio broadcast is probably just ending, like analogue phone in homes and other old technology. Its going to take a while to happen in all countries.
Bandwidth in Mhz for DAB+ seems to be limited to 1.5Mhz and that is not a lot of bandwidth for high quality music in digital format. FM has maximum bandwidth of 270kHz with RDS.
That 1.5MHz figure is for a DAB+ multiplex, which carries many stations within it, usually 10-12. The figure you quote for FM is for a single station, and isn't the maximum bandwidth (FM theoretically has infinite bandwidth) but simply a convenient approximation, you can work with less. As for power output, the characteristics are different, you can't assume that 10kW FM and 10kW DAB have the same broadcast characteristics or range.
Ah pity poor Ireland. Land of 'saints n' skolars'. The Irish tax-funded broadcaster, RTE ('Radio and Television Eireann, be-god!') cancelled DAB here when they were found out for gross corruption, fraud and epic stupidity. Yes. here in Holy Oireland, we have cancelled DAB in favour of 'the olden ways, ooh arrgh!'.
Does it really save power? A typical DAB 'kitchen radio' will consume about 3 times the power that a standard analogue radio uses, so some of the 'savings' are actually being paid for by the user via his energy bill. And what about portables? OK, I know teens no longer walk about with a transistor radio clamped to the side of their head, but they do still exist and are in use by outdoor workers, builders etc. The batteries in these DAB portables don't last very long so they are replaced far more often than those in the old analogue types, leading to more waste and more expense for the user.
When it comes to sound quality, I find the big broadcasters like the BBC are generally OK as they use a fairly high bitrate, but most of the locals are squeezing their output into very low bitrate transmissions and the sound is harsh and unpleasant. After the smoothness of good ol' fashioned analogue FM, it's quite a shock. This is our national default sound broadcasting system and it shouldn't be allowed to abused like this. We deserve better!
I use to work with an elderly man who used to go for walks on the beach in the evening after work to clear his mind about the crap he would have to deal with all day long. And he would listen to a FM radio. Life was great.
Then one birthday his girlfriend bought him a brand new DAB player, which he thought was fantastic, amazing sound quality compared to FM, so after work he would walk along the beach and at the exact same point along his walk his new DAB radio would go silent. He attributed it to the DAB needing crazy amounts of power. So he turned off and the next day he would start his walk with a new set of batteries, and at the exact same spot every single day ths new DAB radio would go silent. So he turned it off and put it away, and finish his walk in silence. He just could not understand how his old FM radio would last for months on a single set of batteries and DAB just drained them so fast.
Of course it is obvious to anybody what was happening. The batteries were fine, but his life experience was that if the radio goes silent the batteries are dead, you need to replace/recharge them. What was in fact happening was he was reaching the outer limit of the DAB transmitter and the DAB radio unable to use the FEC (Forward Error Correction) codes because they were so weak would just go silent. He turned off the radio and would not power it back on again until he had bought replacement batteries, or recharged his batteries! And he replaced them inside an area where the FEC and DAB transmissions were both fine. So in his mind new/recharged batteries always fixed the problem!
About a year later he was explaining how fantastic the sound quality was from his DAB player was but that it really eats through batteries like crazy! And he explained how it would always die at the exact same spot along the beach every single day like clockwork! It was outside of his life experience, and nit his fault. He got real mad when I explained what was happening, and that all those batteries he had recycled/recharged were probably all nearly fully charged.
The absolute best audio quality is useless when the tech doesn't work. It's also more complicated and fewer people have DAB capable receivers. If there isn't the need for the whole of the FM band, I can see it being truncated at one end and licensed for other uses. The simplicity of analog radio at this date makes it worth keeping around since better is the enemy of good enough. I don't need massive fidelity when listening to traffic reports and the news. It's rare that I listen to music on the radio since so many stations in the US are operated by the same parent company with play lists that haven't changed much in 3 or more decades. Gone are the local stations that would play lots of local bands and have late night shows that featured stuff you would never hear anywhere else. Modern pop music has been so homogenized that the same small group of people are doing the recording, producing and mastering of just about everything that goes on the air. Even many of the musicians that are brought in for the recordings are the same.
It's nice I hear your argument quite often.
I'm a big fan of broadcast radio and TV.
However, I've always been dead jealous of you yanks having so much talk radio over there, as using the radio to listen to music seems pointless to my ears.
You hated how you didn’t have local bands etc, well from the perspective of a non-music listener like myself I can relate as I hated the lack of local talk and news stations. All I had was loads of music stations, which I hated due to the fact they played music and a couple of national talk stations one of which was only proper talk around midnight and for the rest of the day spent the whole day talking about another pointless subject to my ears: sport.
As a kid my taste in music was so limited it included just Phil Collins and Roxette with a smattering of acceptable songs from the 80s'. After 1995, till this day, the kind of music I generally get exposed to as well as the charts is basically full of sh*t. I never had the motivation nor time to try and wade through the stuff to find something acceptable, even though I knew it may exist in an obscure corner somewhere. With my adverse reaction to most "popular" music (no, not pop as a genre, rap, r&b, garage grunge or whatever it is called now) I would spend energy trying hard to avoid getting anywhere close to it.
So, I grew up loving the concept and science behind radio and broadcasting. I love it, but till DAB with its newer talk only stations and stations dedicated to music I can normally stomach (Absolute 80's, Heart 80's, only ClassicFM held that banner back in the 90's) I'm pretty annoyed at how it's peddled as a replacement for FM, yet can’t even manage stereo let alone the range.
I’m also deep into computers, have a CS degree, however I know the difference between broadcast radio waves and computer networks and although I like a network, I can’t abide them when forced upon me to deliver what I expect should be broadcast.
The big issue, is the fact the network is a gatekeeper. Broadcast reaches everyone, from the person in a tent well away from decent mobile signals to the poor family who can’t afford much more than the TV license itself. They all can watch and listen, with no gates or paywalls, if just radio no payments at all besides the cost of the radio!
But with DAB not living up to scratch, failing to replace FM, which itself is barely used as most people fall into the streaming trap, I can see those people benefitting from broadcast falling through the cracks of “out of range” or “can’t pay to access the network”.
And the organisation here in the UK peddling the future of TV, delivered via paywalled IP networks, is described as “free”.
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