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FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital does

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

guenthert 3mo ago
DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.
- hulitu 3mo ago
  > Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate Haha. The DAB+ signals are compressed as much as possible.
  - guenthert 3mo ago
    Some more than others. E.g. Deutschlandfunk Kultur is broadcasted in decent quality, as is NDR3. Klassik Radio fares poorer, but that's due to the bandwidth allocated to them. Comparison here is FM, not FLAC.
- hdgvhicv 3mo ago
  It’s a digital cliff. Analog fades away but is never a true replication digital remains stable for over but then vanishes. At the same quality dab is still perfectly long after fm becomes gabled. It then vanishes. The problem with dab in early days was the lower strength, the poor quality decoding, and the lower bitratr than should be been used for the codec.
  - dotwaffle 3mo ago
    Not entirely true. There's quite a bit of error correction applied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Error-correction_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Err...
    - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
      Which either recovers or doesn’t. The gap between fully recovered and indecodavle is tiny.
dingaling 3mo ago
In my experience DAB goes painfully 'squawky' and squeaky before finally cutting out, it's unbearable in headphones. This video gives a good example of the signal breaking down from 00:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4
gosub100 3mo ago
Especially so with digital public TV. its absolutely unusable. and now they can't stand that people want to share sports broadcasts, so they are updating it again to add encryption. I can't believe anyone watches it.

guenthert 3mo ago

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

hulitu 3mo ago
> Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate Haha. The DAB+ signals are compressed as much as possible.
- guenthert 3mo ago
  Some more than others. E.g. Deutschlandfunk Kultur is broadcasted in decent quality, as is NDR3. Klassik Radio fares poorer, but that's due to the bandwidth allocated to them. Comparison here is FM, not FLAC.
hdgvhicv 3mo ago
It’s a digital cliff. Analog fades away but is never a true replication digital remains stable for over but then vanishes. At the same quality dab is still perfectly long after fm becomes gabled. It then vanishes. The problem with dab in early days was the lower strength, the poor quality decoding, and the lower bitratr than should be been used for the codec.
- dotwaffle 3mo ago
  Not entirely true. There's quite a bit of error correction applied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Error-correction_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#Err...
  - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
    Which either recovers or doesn’t. The gap between fully recovered and indecodavle is tiny.

dingaling 3mo ago

In my experience DAB goes painfully 'squawky' and squeaky before finally cutting out, it's unbearable in headphones. This video gives a good example of the signal breaking down from 00:38 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4

gosub100 3mo ago

Especially so with digital public TV. its absolutely unusable. and now they can't stand that people want to share sports broadcasts, so they are updating it again to add encryption. I can't believe anyone watches it.