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by hulitu 1286 days ago
> and lower bit rate codec to handle larger broadcast areas

That's why DAB is crap. Because people are greedy and don't care about quality.

1 comments

Agreed, but the alternative here is AM which has never been good quality. DAB was a big step down from FM quality because the choice of codec / bandwidth assigned to stations was pretty bad (and bandwidth == $$!)
Are you referring to the original DAB (using MP2) or the upgraded DAB+ standard (using HE-AACv2)? I think most, if not all, stations have switched to DAB+. I'm told the quality is better than FM and based on my experience it's certainly not worse as far as I can hear. Of course, since FM is analog it degrades linearly whereas DAB+ is digital: it either works or it doesn't. This might skew the perception of quality.
You're probably right. I was put off by early DAB deployments, and haven't tried with DAB+. I would be interested to try again with the new standard.