Why Isn't Everyone Up In Arms About The End Of Fm Radio By 2015?

[montesquieu]

Six years we've got .. one of the completely undiscussed elements of the 'Digital Britain' bill today.

Apparently FM radio is to be 'upgraded' to Digital by then. Meaning every radio in every house, car, allotment shed and jogger's pocket in britain - god knows how many hundred million - will be thrown in a skip.

DAB is a rubbish technology and without compulsion like this would rapidly fade away in favour of internet streaming once it becomes ubiquitous.

Why aren't we having riots? Who benefits from this apart from the treasury (more radio spectrum to sell) and the retailers? Certainly not the idiots who have to throw away their trannies.

this is about as un-green a measure as you can get (think of all the electronics that will have nowhere to go but landfill - apart from the fact that DAB takes a lot more power than FM as the electronics have a lot more to do.

FM sounds better than digital and its shitty sampling and low bitrates, is greener, and isn't a technology dead end. why on earth are we being forced to abandon it?

[uptherebels]

My OH bought a digital radio last year. She didn't mention anything to me until she already had it, otherwise I would have told her not to bother. It works, but only in one specific spot on the window cill. Move it anywhere else, even a few inches, and it loses signal. Mind you, I do listen to digital radio through a freeview box connected to the hifi, and that works OK. Imagine how many car stereos would need replacing!

[Johnny Storm]

I dont this would be a big loss. I sometimes listen to radio 4 driving home from work. PM I think its called.

If it stopped working id just play cds in both directions. meh

[frozen_out]

One of the worrying things to come out of the proposals is the one that suggests 'sharing' some of the licence fee amongst commercial operators. What a beautiful socialist utopia we will become comrades!

[stevemo]

I would imagine that Hi Fi buffs will be up in arms about the loss of radio 3 and Classic FM, a good FM tuner is far better than the compressed DAB sound. I have a DAB/FM bedside clock radio. When I first had it, I tuned it to a DAB station, the first couple of mornings it was OK, then when making the bed, I must have moved the wire aerial slightly and the following morning, no sound and I was late!. With FM if this happens, you just wake up to an annoying hiss, Digital is all or nothing. I learned my lesson, tuned it to the same station on FM, and have'nt used the DAB side since!. Lets hope this report gets lost in the General Election.

[Guest redwine]

Six years we've got .. one of the completely undiscussed elements of the 'Digital Britain' bill today.

i think that the "music " industry was and still is against new "technology"

they were happy with 33 rpm vinyl they didnt want cassettes because of the "pirates"

then came the CDs again the same problem even "Neil young " the USA artist was against CDs cos of PIRATES

today it is Digital music and now the same problem the so called "sound" not good or rather Pirates free downloading

why dont the people who run this "business" buy a model T Ford instead of a bentley continental ?

[Harbour Lad]

The FM band (and MW too for that matter) wont fall silent in 2015. The BBC national stations will migrate over, but more localised and community radio will stay there for a long time yet. Any space vacated by the BBC will soon be taken advantage of by pirates.....

[quad]

Not impressed with DAB bought a expensive bit of kit good make, had nothing but problems, upgraded the arial, same crap. don't recommend getting one.

[Cinnamon]

If you have a wind-up radio it lasts 5 times longer on FM than on DAB. So if you use the DAB instead of the FM radio on a small walkman, I guess you'll have similiar power issues.

[Blue Warwick]

Yes a good point. I did not know anything about this other arm of didgital changeover ntil I heard about it on Radio 4 FM this evening. They were on about needing to develop the technology to enable receiving it on the move like FM and also devising affordable technology for retro fitting cars.

More waste, more money for big business.

I would suggest getting shares in Amstrad and Halfords. Sir Sugar-Daddy must be in this government for something!

[montesquieu]

I would imagine that Hi Fi buffs will be up in arms about the loss of radio 3 and Classic FM, a good FM tuner is far better than the compressed DAB sound. I have a DAB/FM bedside clock radio. When I first had it, I tuned it to a DAB station, the first couple of mornings it was OK, then when making the bed, I must have moved the wire aerial slightly and the following morning, no sound and I was late!. With FM if this happens, you just wake up to an annoying hiss, Digital is all or nothing. I learned my lesson, tuned it to the same station on FM, and have'nt used the DAB side since!. Lets hope this report gets lost in the General Election.

well I am a hifi buff and still have 3 times as much vinyl as CDs (and still buying more of it). on my kit it certainly sounds better. FM is also far superior to DAB though everywhere but Radio 3 the compression & low sample rates used in recording are making the sound less and less good even on FM (not the medium's fault but shoddy production standards). The iPod generation don't know what they are missing trading compressed sound with the detail squeezed out in exchange for the convenience of menus and portability (I do understand why these things caught on but it threatens to be the death of critical listening as fewer people have access to decent sound and think compressed downloads are acceptable when they even fall well short of the 30-year old CD standard).

But that's not the point - yes the sound is a big issue but the biggest one is the waste and inconvenience. count the radios in the house, multiply by number of households and you have 200+ million useless lumps of plastic, silicone and metals heading for landfill sites, all at once. This hasn't been thought through.

[TTD]

Point 1 - DAB don't sound as good as FM

Point 2 - DAB is affected by weather conditions more than FM. It's more picky about reception. When reception does drop off, the digital noise is far more irritating than FM hiss and burble.

Setting these aside, the accepted wisdom in Govt circles is that householders would 'replace' their analogue radio with a digital one. How many households have just one 'radio' to replace? I've got a personal stereo/radio combo, a couple of Hi-Fi separates, a mains portable in the garage, a Mini HiFi in the study, and the two cars both have FM radio/cassette or FM/CD combos.

WHY SHOULD I BE FORCED INTO REPLACING THE WHOLE OF A COMBINATION UNIT BECAUSE THE RADIO WON'T WORK ANYMORE? Why do I have to throw away a perfectly good, working CD player because it shares the same box as an FM radio which has gone silent?

In the case of the car units, I'll have a functional CD or cassette player with a dead radio, and I won't be able to take the radio out and replace it.

In the case of the mini HiFi, I'll have a perfectly functional cassette deck and CD player, but a dead radio. Likewise with the personal stereo.

I can, however, merely pick up the HiFi separates, or the mains portable, chuck them out and replace them, but to be honest, I don't really want to.

I can think of better ways to spend my hard-earned cash, and I really don't want to even consider the landfill implications with all the toxic bits in the circuit boards and electronic components.......

[voidal]

Six years we've got .. one of the completely undiscussed elements of the 'Digital Britain' bill today.

Apparently FM radio is to be 'upgraded' to Digital by then. Meaning every radio in every house, car, allotment shed and jogger's pocket in britain - god knows how many hundred million - will be thrown in a skip.

DAB is a rubbish technology and without compulsion like this would rapidly fade away in favour of internet streaming once it becomes ubiquitous.

Why aren't we having riots? Who benefits from this apart from the treasury (more radio spectrum to sell) and the retailers? Certainly not the idiots who have to throw away their trannies.

this is about as un-green a measure as you can get (think of all the electronics that will have nowhere to go but landfill - apart from the fact that DAB takes a lot more power than FM as the electronics have a lot more to do.

FM sounds better than digital and its shitty sampling and low bitrates, is greener, and isn't a technology dead end. why on earth are we being forced to abandon it?

Agree with everything you say, a lot of it is commercial money grabbing, nowt wrong with technological concept, (remember first CD players sounded awful, fitted with substandard converters, drew lots of power, lack of high frequecies in music).

Cant stand the way digital TV pixellates on moving images into lumpy blocks, or the stupid way the sound fails before the picture goes (daft considering the sound needs low bitrate and should break up LAST - You can still foillow a TV, sort of, with sound only)

One minor disagreement. Digital technology is superior if you have a decent bitrate (not cost contrained). Also, the current power consumption is high, but will reduce significantly as chip size features and power consumption reduce ... but whose betting someone will introduce digitalv2 by then... ;-) (with a heap load of new issues and upgrades)

[Y-QUERK]

I welcome this move. FM interferes with the V chip in my head.

[uptherebels]

well I am a hifi buff

You don't have "Dream System 3" from this list do you?

http://grahams.co.uk/index.php/hifi/suggested_systems/

[voidal]

well I am a hifi buff and still have 3 times as much vinyl as CDs (and still buying more of it). on my kit it certainly sounds better. FM is also far superior to DAB though everywhere but Radio 3 the compression & low sample rates used in recording are making the sound less and less good even on FM (not the medium's fault but shoddy production standards). The iPod generation don't know what they are missing trading compressed sound with the detail squeezed out in exchange for the convenience of menus and portability (I do understand why these things caught on but it threatens to be the death of critical listening as fewer people have access to decent sound and think compressed downloads are acceptable when they even fall well short of the 30-year old CD standard).

But that's not the point - yes the sound is a big issue but the biggest one is the waste and inconvenience. count the radios in the house, multiply by number of households and you have 200+ million useless lumps of plastic, silicone and metals heading for landfill sites, all at once. This hasn't been thought through.

Anyone listening at less than 192KBps should expect terrible sound quality. Use that for the radio in the toilet.

The generation listening to compressed sound is no different to anything before.

FM radio has to die, it is too inefficient and wasteful, but it should be replaced by something a LOT BETTER!

..THEORETICALLY with modern technology, there is no reason whatsoever we should ever put up with compressed music. We have AD converters capable of 24bit at 192KHz, FAR FAR beyond the human hearing range.

I reckon, 48KHz (ie 92Khz sampling rate) bandwith at 24bit should do the lot for anyone in the human race, even the ultra HIFI buffs? Anyone want to disagree?. Obviously less for 'compressed' sampling streams.

On the radio front, well, you will have to accept some restrictions, but DAB smacks of channel cramming.

[Habeas Domus]

It's typical they force us all to change light bulbs "to save energy" and then also force us all to buy new radios which use up 10X more power (and are so complicated they will probably break after six months)

Whats the common factor here - industry lobbyists keen to sell more product.

Will we ever get a government who listen to what the people want rather than just pander to big business?

The only advantage of shutting down FM is that the government are keen to sell off the bandwidth to the highest bidder, as they did for mobile phones. Lets say it sells for 3 billion divided by 60 million population thats £50 each, it would actually pay them to bribe us all with a free £30 DAB radio just to get everyone to switch.

Its likely to be sold in narrow digital bands so unlikely any radio stations would be able to buy enough consecutive bands to be able to still broadcast in analogue.

Thinking about it now is probably a good time to write a letter to a few MPs/prospective MPs about this - in the run up to the election they just might notice if enough people were to write in about it.

[voidal]

It's typical they force us all to change light bulbs "to save energy" and then also force us all to buy new radios which use up 10X more power (and are so complicated they will probably break after six months)

Whats the common factor here - industry lobbyists keen to sell more product.

Will we ever get a government who listen to what the people want rather than just pander to big business?

The only advantage of shutting down FM is that the government are keen to sell off the bandwidth to the highest bidder, as they did for mobile phones. Lets say it sells for 3 billion divided by 60 million population thats £50 each, it would actually pay them to bribe us all with a free £30 DAB radio just to get everyone to switch.

Its likely to be sold in narrow digital bands so unlikely any radio stations would be able to buy enough consecutive bands to be able to still broadcast in analogue.

Thinking about it now is probably a good time to write a letter to a few MPs/prospective MPs about this - in the run up to the election they just might notice if enough people were to write in about it.

Last stand at the internet O.K. Corral - yeehhaaah, Is excessively controlling the airwaves a good idea?

They cannot keep pulling the wool over our eyes, bandwidth and computational power, well exceed the human senses in most areas. Why should we accept ropey quality. I know of lots of ordinary people (not hifi gurus) who dont like DAB etc

Look, it IS easy to make us all happy and provide the audio, and then the video quality, why upgrade then (loss of market) ?

Could you seriously ever consider upgrading from this-

AUDIO : 24bit - 192KHz - its pretty damn perfect, depends what amp and speakers you have, nothing else

Video : 1920 x 1200 or something like that

WE are there already

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

I would imagine that Hi Fi buffs will be up in arms about the loss of radio 3 and Classic FM, a good FM tuner is far better than the compressed DAB sound.

Classic FM is for blue rinsies with attention deficit disorder (can't cope with a whole symphony; one movement is as much as they can manage), but +1 as far as R3 is concerned. Furthermore about a year after I bought a DAB tuner (in '03 or '04 IIRC), they reduced the bitrate on R3 from 196kbps to 128, with the result that I've reverted to listening to the Proms on my 1970s Quad valve tuner.

At high bitrates and with good reception DAB is as good as FM unless you're listening on seriously high end kit, but any lower than that and you don't need to be that much of a hifi buff to be able to hear that it lacks high end response and generally sounds shite (exactly the same syndrome with a CD versus a well mastered and pressed LP played on a decent turntable, and yes, I'm rapidly collecting second-hand vinyl, too).

Why is no-one starting a riot about it? Probably because it's six years away and the sheeple generally don't think that far ahead.

[montesquieu]

Last stand at the internet O.K. Corral - yeehhaaah, Is excessively controlling the airwaves a good idea?

They cannot keep pulling the wool over our eyes, bandwidth and computational power, well exceed the human senses in most areas. Why should we accept ropey quality. I know of lots of ordinary people (not hifi gurus) who dont like DAB etc

Look, it IS easy to make us all happy and provide the audio, and then the video quality, why upgrade then (loss of market) ?

Could you seriously ever consider upgrading from this-

AUDIO : 24bit - 192KHz - its pretty damn perfect, depends what amp and speakers you have, nothing else

Video : 1920 x 1200 or something like that

WE are there already

Well ... I have a vinyl front end that still trumphs any digital system I've heard including hi-res streamed systems. They do get close though.

Oh and the Naim link .. well I haven't heard the £142k system but I bet my recently rebuilt 50-year old valve amp and electrostatic speakers give it a good run. never heard a naim system I liked (to clinical for the classical stuff I listen to).

DAB should be left to die a natural death and be replaced by ubiquitous broadband streamed radio at high bit rates, as you suggest. It's only a few years away, in a few years all cars will be broadband enabled anyway, but six years is not long enough for that process to be carried out properly. DAB is a dead end and only a pack of idiots (or people in the pockets of vested interests) could have made this decision.

Unfortunately the Tory spokesman Jeremy Hunt has 'welcomed the decision' but no detail given on the reasoning behind this.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches...Government.aspx

[voidal]

Well ... I have a vinyl front end that still trumphs any digital system I've heard including hi-res streamed systems. They do get close though.

Oh and the Naim link .. well I haven't heard the £142k system but I bet my recently rebuilt 50-year old valve amp and electrostatic speakers give it a good run. never heard a naim system I liked (to clinical for the classical stuff I listen to).

DAB should be left to die a natural death and be replaced by ubiquitous broadband streamed radio at high bit rates, as you suggest. It's only a few years away, in a few years all cars will be broadband enabled anyway, but six years is not long enough for that process to be carried out properly. DAB is a dead end and only a pack of idiots (or people in the pockets of vested interests) could have made this decision.

Unfortunately the Tory spokesman Jeremy Hunt has 'welcomed the decision' but no detail given on the reasoning behind this.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches...Government.aspx

Not impressed by DAB myself.

I have a very large neodymium ribbon flat panel true ribbon loudspeaker I built myself ..and....vs your electrostatics. I think we would agree DAB would sound rubbish on both my and your systems! .....Game over DAB.

Never owned a pair of electrostatic loudspeakers, just the stax lambda pro headphones from years ago... Showing my age here...

[voidal]

Classic FM is for blue rinsies with attention deficit disorder (can't cope with a whole symphony; one movement is as much as they can manage), but +1 as far as R3 is concerned. Furthermore about a year after I bought a DAB tuner (in '03 or '04 IIRC), they reduced the bitrate on R3 from 196kbps to 128, with the result that I've reverted to listening to the Proms on my 1970s Quad valve tuner.

At high bitrates and with good reception DAB is as good as FM unless you're listening on seriously high end kit, but any lower than that and you don't need to be that much of a hifi buff to be able to hear that it lacks high end response and generally sounds shite (exactly the same syndrome with a CD versus a well mastered and pressed LP played on a decent turntable, and yes, I'm rapidly collecting second-hand vinyl, too).

Why is no-one starting a riot about it? Probably because it's six years away and the sheeple generally don't think that far ahead.

Didnt know that?

128kbps is pretty poor.

Most electronic music, which I like, completely loses the treble nuances if encoded at below 192kbps.

Dont listen to classical music myself, surely 128kbps destroys it completely?

[mkil]

I hope you all realise that DAB isn't MP3... it's MP2 and is based on 80s technology/standards. So the bitrate needs to be higher than MP3 for the same quality.

Also, DAB+ is expected to come along within the next few years (2010-13 according to wiki), guess what, not backwards compatible either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting

[Habeas Domus]

On radio 4 today some 'industry analyst' was back-pedalling on this

- FM will still be available for local radio and new 'super-local' stations

- If enough people buy DAB radios then they may 'eventually' ditch FM

- They have sold 10 Million DAB capable radios in 10 years, but what proportion are actually in use is unclear, the advertisers are seeing far fewer listeners on DAB than they hoped for. (or it could just be that with 10,000 stations people just change channel when the ads come on. did they think of that?)

- If no-one buys or uses DAB radios the existing DAB stations are at risk of going bust

So basically you all need to rush out and buy DAB otherwise it will fail and the stations will disappear, but if you do all suddenly rush to take up DAB then they will take away FM instead.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

Dont listen to classical music myself, surely 128kbps destroys it completely?

...and utterly. Makes the Wagner tuba in a Bruckner symphony sound like the piezo-electric speaker in a ZX Spectrum. OK, that's a tinsy bit of an exaggeration, but R3 at 128 is unlistenable for me.

Didn't know that DAB was based on an obsolete lossy compression codec and that the receivers now in circulation can't be firmware upgraded to DAB+. Yet another reason why it's a shite system.

Just bought a 1960s RCA Living Stereo LP (Decca-pressed wideband, not the Dynagroove crap) of Byron Janis playing Rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto at the Headingley Oxfam shop for a fiver. On my Goldring GL78 turntable, Quad valve amp and Wharfedale speakers (all 1970s technology), it'll make DAB sound anodyne and horrid. Progress, eh?