Hacker News Reader

Comment by ElephantsMyAnus | Hacker News Reader

Digital doesn't imply good. It isn't better than MP3, it's typically 80kbps or less. 48 is not uncommon. It's no better than AM, it's only made sound superficially good with fake high frequencies and often fake stereo. But it's bad. There is just no way to fit that much data into the same channel. You would have to blast it with MW strong transmitters, which would make it much more expensive.

Analog radio is efficient, and there never was such a dearth of channels like with TV. It would be easy to pack in more channels, FM was chosen for quality.

View on HN

Obviously digital compression means more data fits in the same channel, for audio an order of magnitude with transparent quality.

Nobody cares that the stereo is fake, it’s for radio stations playing mp3 files that have ‘fake stereo’ to begin with.

If you really want to believe that there is some conspiracy going in to change from analog to digital radio with worse results, to force people to buy new stuff, or for whatever reason, go ahead. But it’s not true. The reality is that with DAB+ more stations fit with good quality. Perhaps not good enough for ‘discerning ears’ like yours but clearly good enough for the general public.

No you absolutely cannot increase the capacity tenfold. DAB takes ten times the bandwidth (1536kHz vs 150kHz for an FM channel, albeit without gaps).

There is no conspiracy, it is done completely openly, while almost nobody really wants it.

Be aware that DAB+ is not the same as DAB, it uses far better, more modern compression so you get better audio using less bandwidth.

DAB and DAB+ are robust against multipath interference which means that you can have much more frequency reuse.

Wikipedia has a calculation for how much spectrum is used by one channel, comparing a 192 kbit digital stream to a typical analog FM station. The digital stream is about 3 times more efficient.

Of course you can try arguing that a 192kbit stream is worse than FM quality. But really it isn’t.

Yes it’s different, it’s annoying you need a new radio and sure, in 1% of all cases you get no reception where with analog FM you’d get some barely recognizable noise. But 99% of the time you get crystal clear digital audio, exactly as transmitted, of pretty high quality.

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

The problem is that it isn't better. No amount of sweet PR talk, neither any far fetched calcualtion is going to change the very obvious fact it's something that should never be used in practice. It's less reliable, has lower sound quality, uses more energy and is more expensive to both broadcast and receive.

In terms of vinyl is better than cd, yes.

Anyway, whether you want it or not, it’s the future.

No. In terms it's worse as it's worse.

It ends up forgotten once the last patents expire and there is no value to salvage anymore. It's nothing but sunk cost fallacy that should have been stopped back in the 90s before money and careeers were wasted on it.

Too bad. It doesn’t really matter what you or I think about the technology, the people in charge of deciding chose DAB+, for whatever reason you do or do not believe. I’m fine with it, you’re not, it’s irrelevant to anyone but you.

Yes. It's too bad that politicians got corrupted as usual. Not in all countries though, many have shut it down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com