There, I've said it. Compared to digital audio, old-fashioned analogue radio transmissions are at risk of interference and perhaps there would be some fuzziness which you could attempt to tune away. It depends on your tastes; interference isn't much of an issue with dance music, but may ruin the enjoyment of classical soundtracks. In the digital age, whilst the hiss has gone, any transmission issues will cause subliminal blips, or longer gaps of a second or two, to your broadcast.
The UK can still hear all three types of radio - analogue, DAB digital and online streaming. Give me the analogue hiss any day, because I can proceed to feed that audio into my computer and reduce or remove the hiss if I wish. Gaps are much harder to cover, and ironically, editing them out will recreate the effect of vinyl skipping. Once again, dance fans would appreciate the retro angle to it, but no-one else would.
When you "Listen Again" to a repeat of a radio show, you're a slave to the bit rate chosen by someone else to encode the streamed recordings. Thankfully Kiss100 has chosen a nice high rate for its shows from Armin Van Buuren and John Digweed, compared to that of early BBC broadcasts where the bit rate and resulting quality will vary.
At the present time, FM is such high quality if you have a decent hi-fi separate tuner, that you may as well enjoy it before it gets switched off. Preferably in the garden, on the seven days that make up an English summer.
Sunday, 5 August 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
You're right there's nothing wrong with the quality of FM even when compared against the 'perceived' quality of DAB.
I'm a radio nut - I have a total of 9 radios in my home that comprise 2 DAB sets, one Freeplay wind-up, an old battery operated, two freebie portables (absolutely cack when on the move) and the rest are integrated tuners on Walkmans.
DAB *is* susceptible to quality issues, such as the well noted 'boiling mud' distortion, which is quite horrid, even if it is dance music that you're listening to at the time.
When the promoters promised 'interference-free' and 'crystal clear' broadcasts, I should have known that it couldn't be true.
It reminds me of when CDs first came out and the manufacturers claimed that they were pretty much an indestructible replacement to vinyl. A Saturday morning children's programme put this to the test my covering a CD in honey and other mucky food. I think it did play back OK, but I have to say if I find anyone doing that to my small but select CD collection, I'd put their fingers in the CD tray and open and close it repeatedly. The same treatment goes to the marketing monkeys who attempt to deceive the public with unsubtantiate claims of quality.
Post a Comment