UK government goes back on AM/FM radio plans

19 July 2020 · blog · Weird Wonderful World of Radio

The UK government has cancelled its initial plan of completely discontinuing the use of FM and AM radio stations and replacing them strictly with DAB digital radio...

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Comments

StJohnMonday 11th October 2021
UK government goes back on AM/FM radio plans
For Australian readers, it should be noted that much of the UK digital radio is the old DAB. When the signal is poor, it sounds like bubbling mud, where as DAB+ which we use would keep producing good sound, this is because of DAB+'s better error correction. Both systems will suddenly mute when the error correction is not capable of correcting all errors.

Poor quality sound is also a problem with DAB and to fit in as many programs per transmitter it is common for music programs to be mono and poor quality sound. For us even the extensive use of DAB+ at the very low data rate of 32 kbit/s by Southern Cross Austereo sounds better.

Some of the newer programs are DAB+, as is many of their local radio transmissions. All other countries using DAB have converted to DAB+, so when is the UK going to do the same?

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