The Underscore Archives

On 23/11/06, Tom Gidden <tom at gidden.net> wrote:
> With regards to quality, I'm not sure it is better than FM even with
> perfect reception.  They went for quantity over quality, AFAICR.
> "Chill Radio" (or "Unknown" as the girl inside my radio calls it) is
> barely LW quality at the moment, which is a shame.  I can't blame
> anyone for bad reception, but when it does happen the noise artifacts
> are really unpleasant on DAB.

And that's the problem the advertisers don't mention when they say
"perfect digital (TM) quality!" - it (whether that's a CD, a DVD or
DAB radio) does in no way degrade gracefully like their analogue
equivalents (vinyl/tape, VHS, FM). When digital goes wrong, it's
usually catastrophic (hey - it's binary!). When analogue goes wrong,
there are usually shades of wrongness before total meltdown.

Tim