LW & AM

[Mike Watterson]

RTE to scrap plans to close 252kHz LW

Apparently they thought it was "out dated".

They have wasted millions on DAB. The roll-out stalled about five years ago with about 45% coverage. It has too low a bit rate and the "extra" stations are worthless semi-automated.

They previously closed all their MW transmitters (6 I think, for RTE1 and 2FM) with no real consultation or publicity "to save money" as allegedly "no-one was listening to them". By this logic they should close DAB.

UK research has showed that DAB planning was very optimistic. After 60 years VHF-FM Radio doesn't have the coverage of AM. It was estimated that DAB needs very many fill-in transmitters, six times as many as the current number to give genuine coverage the same as FM as there is no graceful degradation.
Other issues are:

• Ergonomics, the channel changing is very slow to flick through stations while driving.
  
• Bit rate is too low, for the number of stations, 2x to 3x as many frequencies (Approx 2MHz channels inc guard / Multiplexes) needed.
  
• Cost of receivers are x10 an AM/FM set.
  
• Very few decent portables.
  
• Practically only car models are decent
  
• Many phones have FM radios better than any high street FM portable, how many phones have DAB?
  
• Battery life / Power consumption.
  
• Use when travelling abroad.
  
• DAB sets are cultural Ghettos, no AM (MW. LW or SW)
  
• DAB SFN and technology suits national channels, FM is more cost effective than DAB for local radio.
  
• There is no other use for Band II.
  
• They have used GPS for SFN syn to save money compared to atomic clocks etc, one good Solar flare knocking out GPS and there will be no DAB (or in many cases Mobile Phones!).
  
• DAB+ where implemented has only been used to double number of channels, no extra quality.
  
• Rarely any marking to indicate if a set in the shop does DAB+
  
• Too few FM presets and awkward to tune FM on most FM sets. 
  

Does DAB really save the country money? Compare cost for true FM or AM quality of coverage, cost of radios and cost of listeners electricity vs AM/FM.

UK has 279KHz on LW, I think. Why not put Five Live and the huge number of Cricket interuptions of BBC R4 LW on that?

What is BBC excuse for having "Yesterday in Parliament" and "Daily Service" on R4 LW, but not on R4 VHF?


In a national disaster, Power generation strike (I remember the UWC strikes in 1970s in NI) etc what use will a DAB radio be?

Is it Accountants or logic that's killing AM? Is it Politics that favours DAB over FM in some countries?

The number of stations argument doesn't wash with 32G byte storage on phones and MP3s and also streaming for very niche stations. Besides FM could have been extended down to 76MHz (Japan) or even 64MHz (Eastern Europe) or 175MHz to 195MHz added after Band III closed (DAB is in Band III).  Some radio even from late 1960s get those bands. Many FM chips in cars and phones do 76MHz to 108MHz.

[pwdrive]

I don't listen to broadcast radio much these days, when I do I listen to it on the internet, my main radio interest is SWL but I don't have any receivers at the moment.

Lawrence.

[Mark Hennessy]

Just a "heads-up":

These threads often end up going one way, so before that happens, I'd just like to say that rabid anti-DAB rants are not welcome here - it's been done to death across many forums. We all know the problems and limitations of DAB and DAB+, but we are where we are, and there's nothing we can do to change that.

However, if we wish to discuss DAB and/or DAB+ in a constructive way that brings new information to the table, then great! That's certainly how I engage in these conversations.

[Mike Watterson]

No, I'd like to highlight how shops are killing radio generally, and FM/AM particularly by mostly having junk and how policy about AM & FM by National broadcasters, Regulators (failure to enforce CE marks and testing on EMI) and Governments is failing the consumer.

The main point of the post was to highlight RTE 1 LW being "saved". Yet RTE has a cash crises. Unlike UK DAB, the RTE DAB could easily be closed.

I used to be a huge advocate of Digital Radio. The issue isn't DAB, though it could be MUCH better with more transmitters, x2 bit rate and better designed sets. The problem seems to be the entire idea of Digital Radio. I can't see how it can be made to work as well as Analogue.

Digital TV vs Analogue TV has no issues, only very portable analogue  TVs had radio style tuning. People only used preset stations.  My car radio with 24 Presets doesn't have enough presets (it's Analogue only), there is no sensible manual tuning. Only 6 presets for all of MW + LW is too little. Unless you only listen to national stations and one or two on your own local area, the ergonomics are rubbish.
I can get 22 decent reception stations on my Sony phone FM radio. Amazingly it has favourites AND and easy to scrollable tuning scale that shows  about 2MHz at once with frequency,  favorite status, last signal level and RDS derived station name. It could only be better with addition of direct frequency keypad too and manual edit of station name, and choice of scale per location.

The Sony ICF2001D is pretty good, but only has digital readout, it lacks a traditional scale. One Degen model has both (and the scale pointer is actually an LCD bar).

It seems apart from the DAB / Digital radio issue we have gone backwards on radio quality and Ergonomics since the 1990s.



Listening to Extra Digital Stations:
Carrying radio stations on DTT and Satellite makes sense, but in practice for most people that only suits listening to radio on the TV. I solve the issue of that with the CE legal "FM microtransmitters" and very cheap satellite  & DTT boxes. So I have up to four FM channels for phone, portable FM sets and desktop FM sets in the house. An HD Sat box or HD DTT box (for Ireland, only SD in UK) with LED channel display is cheaper than a DAB radio, so I can use remote to select BBC Scotland, Four Extra, RTE Gold etc without a TV set. Sadly the RTE channels on Irish DTT are poor quality due to low bit rate (same to be same the same data as on DAB). I have two DAB sets I no longer use. One has no physical volume knob, just up / down arrows and is impossible to set up without the manual.

So ergonomics of receiver design is a HUGE issue. One otherwise interesting AM/FM Degen radio shares the same knob between volume and fine tun tuning. Bonkers.

So forgetting about DAB ...
What would people like on the Unused UK LW frequency?
Should Ireland have more AM on MW (one low power station in Cavan, "Spirit Radio" is the total).
Should UK MW radio continue?
Does local FM relays, Satellite and Internet really replace SW for BBC World Service etc, or does that only suit open wealthy societies and the poor and oppressed need Shortwave?
What is your ideal portable radio design?  -- I'd vote for a minimum 4" speaker and the approximate 4.5" type that used to be common in car doors, size in  larger valve portables.   Too many portable sets are only any use on earphones.

Note that people with poorer hearing need less distorted audio, with less artefacts.

Is turning down the excessive processing on FM a lost cause? My son, in the car, remarked that the song on Clare FM wasn't a bad cover version.  I suggested it was the original and just didn't sound the same as the old CD or LP due to processing. It was the original Meat Loaf "two out of three ain't bad" from "Bat out of hell"

Anyway I'm glad RTE1 LW has a stay of execution. Even in Ireland there are FM blackspots and handy when visiting N.I. now that MW RTE is long gone.

A separate issue is number of AM/FM sets for USA market, no LW and some can't even tune EU channel steps!

[pwdrive]

As I see it at the moment anything sub VHF spectrum wise seems to have little future use for consumers except possibly RFID cards but that's not broadcasting as such.

The bands will stay quite until something else comes along, as to what that might be who knows, what can you fit a lot of in such a narrow spectrum that you can make a lot of dosh with....

Lawrence.

[Paul_RK]

Some of Mike's objections were valid in the past but have a diminished force, if any, now. Battery life has improved greatly - I think Roberts' first sets offered around 8 houirs from a set of four D cells, now it's 120. There's not much of a receiver cost differential any more except at the very cheapest end of the market - no £3 DAB sets yet that I'm aware of - and anyone looking for a new radio will have a harder job finding a decent analogue-only portable than a decent DAB one. That's hardly an argument for digital radio as such, of course, just a consequence that in the face of relentless promotion the market has shifted that way, however sluggishly. Then, portable radios of quality were hardly very prominent before the first self-contained DAB sets arrived at the back end of 2001.

I actually rather welcomed DAB at the time, not just for ready access to the BBC World Service, still a favourite station here, and the now defunct Radio 7, but because it introduced a little life into a dreary domestic radio market where the vast majority of consumers were settling for very cheap and very poor portables. Then, with the maturing of the DAB market, most folk looking to buy a standalone radio at all today are probably settling for very cheap and very poor DAB portables...

Paul

[Mike Watterson]

I actually rather welcomed DAB at the time, not just for ready access to the BBC World Service, still a favourite station here, and the now defunct Radio 7, but because it introduced a little life into a dreary domestic radio market where the vast majority of consumers were settling for very cheap and very poor portables. Then, with the maturing of the DAB market, most folk looking to buy a standalone radio at all today are probably settling for very cheap and very poor DAB portables...

Paul

Yes, agree entirely.

The biggest issue is the race to the bottom on price driven by big retail chains etc and falling quality of all consumer electronics and electrical goods, partially fuelled by marketing companies buying up well known brands.

Bush, Philips, RCA, Akai, Alba, Grundig and Roberts etc on radios, TV,  so called HiFi are merely labels on cheapest to source electronics now.

Tesco has a "Goodmans" and own brand mini "HiFi" here, that doesn't appear to even meet 1970s definition of HiFi.

They do have a €9 "World Band" LW/MW/SW/VHF radio, but you might have to take it back and swap to get one that works properly. Ergonomics are excellent. It's let down by a too small loudspeaker driven by a low power stereo headphone amp (in mono bridge). It's a simple  superhet with two ceramic filters (10.7MHz and 460KHz).

I did get an early version of the Tesco Kitchen radio, again speaker too small compared to possible for case. A second sample had to be taken back. I opened it to see why it was full of whistles on MW & LW. The 10.7 and 455 or 460 IF gone. The 4 gang tuning capacitor replaced by a plastic pot (what will life of that be?). Only visible RF parts were LW & MW ferrite coil and one VHF coil. Performance on VHF poor too compared with original. A small watch style crystal on the IC. I've no idea how it works. An Asian Kit using CD9088 (=7088T)  and TRF 3 pin IC like MK484 works better than the Tesco AM/FM pocket sports radio (which is a real superhet).

Anyone interested in a thread reviewing eBay radio kits? Perhaps in a "private" section? Very many from £4 to £12. Good practice for beginners to solder and a cheap source of ferrite rods, polycons, IFTs and even audio transformers!

[pwdrive]

I wonder how many of these were used:

https://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documen...25-A10.pdf

Lawrence.

[Mike Watterson]

Thanks Lawrence. This is certainly what is in the CURRENT Tesco Kitchen Radio!

So obviously very cheap, but not much good!

The example circuit is identical to what I found!
   

Except single coil and telescopic rod for VHF rather than a loop.

If it's not this chip, then it's a bad copy of it!

[pwdrive]

I started a thread on that particular IC a while ago on UKVRR, one of the forum members then bought a couple to try out....Mixed reaction:

http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showt...p?t=124051

Lawrence.