DAB Digital Radio On Tomorrow's World

An episode of Tomorrow's World from 1997 featuring DAB digital radios.

Somewhat ironically, the sound is particularly poor for this extract.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• dab
• digital
• radio
• tomorrow's world

[Jerraph]

Ha ha, 'CD-quality sound', not really.

Most of the channels have ridiculously high data compression rates, like low-quality MP3s, and therefore sound nowhere as good as CD at all. I think the BBC kept the higher data rates for Radio 3 and 4, but they still sound lossy.

[joshopsho]

cd quality, pah!

[freddielaker2]

personally I think theres a bit of BS here, when he switches over from FM to DAB there is no delay and we all know there is at least 1 second delay for the receiver to decode the signal...

1:50, digital signals still carry a hiss depending on your receiver. History huh? They still charge ott for one as well...

[AnthonyUK]

@techguruuk The sound is NICAM Digital Stereo. This clip is recorded on a HiFi VHS Stereo VCR fitted with a NICAM Digital Stereo decoder, but if tracking is poor or tape has lots of dropouts the HiFi stereo track goes crackly and it may also drop in and out of HiFi sound.

[AnthonyUK]

@lumabi25 Good DRM when set up and transmitted properly with good bit rates and AAC+ coding via MW/LW/SW bands can produce sound as good as FM quality,and good DRM+ via 87-108Mhz and UHF/VHF bands can produce CD quality sound ie four stations can be carried at CD quality stereo on the same frequency.

[1aaronmay]

CD-quality sound? What a bunch of liars!

CD's are a uncompreesed digital format, whereas DAB started of using MP2 - a codec which is poorer quality than MP3 which it now uses.

Both MP2 & MP3 are compressed to bitrates which go as low as 24kbps, there is no way this can sound the same as 1411kbps used by CD's!

[techguruuk]

it is

[TheEastAnglia]

Shame this video clip is not in digital.

[lumabi25]

Interesting when he switched over to DAB in the car. The song was at exactly the same point, even though there is always latency in the reception of digital broadcasts. So I find it very hard to believe that was a genuine demonstration.

And of course, whilst the quality might potentially be very good, it certainly is not CD quality because compression is employed.

I must admit I've no experience with DAB but I have played a lot with DRM, a system with just as many teething problems I'd say.

[appen1]

True.

But they could reduce the bitrate on talkback stations.

Another option would be to upgrade to DAB+ which uses HE-AAC.

I live in Australia which uses DAB+ and it sounds really good to me. DAB+ uses the same error correction that CDs use so you don't hear the irritating "Bubbling Mud" that you would hear on DAB. The audio just fades away when the errors go above 50.

[AnthonyUK]

@appen1 BUT you can only transmit 6 stations on a DAB multiplex at 192kbps maximum quality;to do lots of stations you have to reduce bitrates to rather worryingly low levels which doesn't do the reception or sound quality any favours.