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Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

economist.com

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Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#91

Post by dingaling »

mybrowsercache wrote: post #59
fredoralive wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit of hindsight bias there, DAB was first developed in the mid 1990s, ubiquitous fast wireless IP in everyone’s pockets is at least a decade, perhaps nearer to 20 years in the future. There are quite a few transitionary technologies that we needn’t have developed had we just waited for something better to come along (but without the R&D into some of them…). (Also doesn’t analogue FM also kinda cut off fairly abruptl…

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

In my experience DAB goes painfully 'squawky' and squeaky before finally cutting out, it's unbearable in headphones.

This video gives a good example of the signal breaking down from 00:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#92

Post by pfdietz »

yakkers wrote: post #31
bilegeek wrote: post #29

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons. At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz). At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower…

> Particularly time signals

Doesn't GPS utterly replace this?

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#93

Post by rafski123 »

pfdietz wrote: post #92
yakkers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons. At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz). At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower…

> Particularly time signals Doesn't GPS utterly replace this?

Many wall clocks and wrist watches (Casio WaveCeptors) plus cars set their times from radio.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#94

Post by mrob »

pfdietz wrote: post #92
yakkers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons. At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz). At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower…

> Particularly time signals Doesn't GPS utterly replace this?

Longwave penetrates buildings better than GPS and is harder to jam.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#95

Post by hulitu »

guenthert wrote: post #68
mybrowsercache wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

> Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate

Haha. The DAB+ signals are compressed as much as possible.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#96

Post by hdgvhicv »

guenthert wrote: post #68
mybrowsercache wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

It’s a digital cliff. Analog fades away but is never a true replication digital remains stable for over but then vanishes.

At the same quality dab is still perfectly long after fm becomes gabled. It then vanishes.

The problem with dab in early days was the lower strength, the poor quality decoding, and the lower bitratr than should be been used for the codec.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#97

Post by mpweiher »

alentred wrote: post #41

That's such a pity. Building a simple AM radio receiver was a simplest and coolest electronics project to do with kids. You need two transistors, a ferrite coil and a small set of simpler elements. And it is so simple you can actually explain what every part of the circuit does. And then the reward... Once built you could listen to BBC regardless of where you are in Europe. My kids just LOVED IT, no Netflix K-Drama r…

We did that in my physics high school class.

Then we took away components until we had virtually nothing left, a diode I think(?), and still we had some signal.

Turns out there was a transmitter on the top of the hill the school was also on.

Fun times.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#98

Post by hdgvhicv »

K0balt wrote: post #86
KaiserPro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and DAB also still works.

Umm mostly. IMHO DAB is a failure, at least for vehicles.

I listen almost exclusively on dab in the car. It auto fails to FM but it’s rare I go somewhere where that happens.

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#99

Post by cogman10 »

Peanuts99 wrote: post #37
jimnotgym wrote: post #33

I'm very sad to see this go. I was listening to DAB in the car, not so far from here last weekend, and it kept cutting out. Whereas you could get LW everywhere! I developed a love of cricket on Test Match Special from a very young age. A tiny inexpensive radio could get it anywhere. I actually never minded the interruptions from the Shipping Forecast, the real reason they kept this service up for so long. I know ther…

Digital radio was always going to be crap, it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse They should have just put all the money into a better 4G network and ran radio through that.

> it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse

That has a lot more to do with the dated implementation and less to do with digital radio. There are a number of digital broadcasting techniques which can minimize and compensate for noise, including a slight delay with a signal correction and fault tolerant codecs.

DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. DAB+ uses the now 15 year old codec HE-AAC which isn't really designed to handle corruption. Opus handles loss a lot better (see their examples https://opus-codec.org/examples/ )

Re: Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

#100

Post by guenthert »

hulitu wrote: post #95
guenthert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

> Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate Haha. The DAB+ signals are compressed as much as possible.

Some more than others. E.g. Deutschlandfunk Kultur is broadcasted in decent quality, as is NDR3. Klassik Radio fares poorer, but that's due to the bandwidth allocated to them.

Comparison here is FM, not FLAC.

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