[BC] bit rate and audio

[Goran Tomas]

--- At 16.1.2006 13:05, Mark Humphrey wrote: ---
>By coincidence, I happened to find a paper yesterday entitled "DAB -- Is it
>Already Out of Date?", written by Philip Laven, Technical Director of the
>EBU _eight_ years ago.  It's good reading -- you can't help but ask the same
>questions about our chosen in-band system.   Of course, if the receivers
>were software-defined, that would help to avoid the problem of obsolescence.

Interesting reading indeed, although it was written in 1998. I guess 
every system has it's drawbacks. Neither DAB or IBOC is ideal, but 
life is always a compromise...

FMeXtra seems like a good concept to me, though. Bitrate is a bit too 
low, but other than that I don't see any serious drawbacks. 
Admittedly I don't know much about how good it is at handling 
multipath, mobile reception, etc. and what's expected coverage...

It's interesting that the author concludes early in the article that 
audio quality will not be a driving force for any digital system. I 
guess he didn't expect the envelope will be pushed so far, with 
stations broadcasting as low as 80kbps MP2 audio...

Here's where mono helps too! ;-)


Regards,
Goran Tomas