[UK-CONTEST] important Ham Radio News

[G3SJJ]

Taken from RSGB Website Headline News. So what is the connection with 
amateur radio? Is RSGB suggesting we scrap our FT1kMPs etc and go digital?
Chris G3SJJ


      Digital sound inferior to FM

Music connoisseurs have slammed the quality of digital radio broadcasts 
in the UK . They claim that the BBC <http://www.bbc.co.uk> and 
commercial broadcasters are packing too many stations into their digital 
transmissions and as a result the sound quality is suffering.

Digital radio is touted as offering better sound quality than analogue 
radio. It suffers none of the hissing and crackle that blights analogue 
broadcasts. Digital radios are also easier to tune than analogue sets.

However, owners of high end hi-fi systems claim the sound quality from 
digital radio is worse than the traditional FM broadcasts that digital 
radio is intended to replace. As one music buff said: “On a small 
portable it is not an issue, but if you have very good FM reception on a 
hi-fi system, digital radio is nasty.”

The problem is that broadcasters can only transmit a set amount of 
information within their allocated digital frequencies and this has to 
be shared between their stations. As a result, BBC Radio 1, 2, 4 and 6 
are broadcast at 128 kilo-bits per second and Radio 5 Live is 
transmitted at 80 kilo-bits per second. This compares with the 256,000 
kilo-bits per second of sound quality offered by a typical Compact Disc.

Responding to criticisms of the quality of BBC digital broadcasts, a BBC 
spokesman said: “We believe that we are providing good sound quality on 
all our digital networks and recent research bears this out. Around 95% 
of digital radio listeners rate its sound quality as excellent, good or 
satisfactory.”