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Comment by voltagex_ | Hacker News Reader

DAB+ sounds terrible to me compared to a (tuned) FM station - AFAICT it's 48kbit AAC.

The worst thing about DAB for me is that any signal interruption causes complete lack of sound, and then my car takes at least 5 seconds to tune back in. It's extremely infuriating - I much prefer FM radio which gets noisy, but at least you can continue listening, even when driving through poor signal area.

Only with cheap radios.

Any advanced receiver will be constantly hunting for the best backup channel so the change over is undetectable.

I have a top of the line, 2016 Mercedes-AMG - you'd think that would have the best DAB receiver you can have,no? I mean, obviously it doesn't because it does this, but as a consumer I have no control over the type of DAB receiver in my car. So saying that oh it's fine, because only cheap receivers do that does not help - especially since FM behaves consistently, no matter how expensive receiver you are using.

It can be set independently per station. As an example, in Norway the NRK Jazz channel transmits at 64 kbit/s, while NRK Klassisk (classical music) transmits at 96 kbit/s.

96 kbit/s AAC still isn't enough IMHO. 128 kbit/s OPUS would be awesome :)

DAB mandated the use of MP2, which pre-dated MP3. DAB+ uses MP4 aacPlus(HE-AAC v2).

Unfortunately this doesn't improve sound quality because stations use the extra efficiency to switch to lower bit-rates.

Some countries have stations at 48kbps. The UK is leading the drive to lower sound quality with DAB+ stations on the SDL multiplex at 32kbps.

Note that DAB+ also hides a cost increase because stations have to pay Fraunhofer for its patents. Fun, isn't it? ;-)

> because stations have to pay Fraunhofer for its patents. Fun, isn't it? ;-)

Fun it is, considering that money goes all back to Germany! insert evil German laugh here

I believe it. That's not nearly enough bits.

It seems that to achieve the same perceived quality as FM you need about 160kbit/s (when using DAB).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_audio_broadcasting

The bitrate requirement should be lower for DAB+, although this article seems to contradict that: http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2013/11/what-bitrate-is-...

If you live next to the radio tower, perhaps. I prefer to have more sound in my noise than FM can offer.

What sort of aerial are you using?

I ask because FM waves are 2.8 to 3.4 metres long, so a quarter-wave FM aerial should be 70-86cm (28-33 inches) long....

No idea. Car radios etc. They work amazingly well in Oslo, but they're useless out in the bushes. Radio isn't fun when you only hear half the conversation. Give me error correction and lossy codecs any time.

Well, if there's no signal you won't get a result whether it's analogue or digital, In fact, digital works less well at low signal strengths: instead of a noisy, hissy FM radio you usually get nothing ;-)

AM goes further, of course, if AM is available...

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