Digital radio: a stepping stone to something better?
Digital radio is just a stepping stone to something even better - devices like Pure Evoke Flow and the Tivoli Audio Networks. Nathan Taylor explains how free music networks are about to change.
A while back I wrote a column asking if digital radio would be worth waiting for. I’ve recently had the chance to look at quite a number of the digital radios scheduled for the official launch of commercial DAB+ radio on May 1, and while many are pretty underwhelming, overall, I’d say yes – they’re worth getting, though you might want to wait until the price goes down.
These “first generation” products we’ll see aren’t really first generation. By and large we’re getting imports from the UK with updated software to support DAB+. Vendors like Pure, Roberts Radio, Grundig, Sangean, Tivoli Audio, Arcam and Bush will have products ready to go out of the gate .
The Digital Radio Plus site has a pretty good list of the products that are coming.
The most disappointing thing is how few of these devices are really taking advantage of digital radio's features. The only radio I’ve seen that supports PVR-like time shifting, for example, is Pure’s One Elite, and that only supports up to 15 minutes. Most also only have a single line in the display devoted to radiotext (also known as DLS) – that is, the text that is broadcast along with digital radio, which often includes things like dial-in numbers, Web addresses and details about the song currently playing. Having a single line means that radiotext often takes forever to scroll through.
But while many of the initial offerings are a little underwhelming in terms of features, I’m still in favour of digital radio overall, and that’s because it delivers in terms of sound quality and clarity.
Although it took us a long time to get digital radio, the good news is that the delay allowed Australian Digital radio to see the experience in the UK and elsewhere and not make the mistakes they did. For a start, we’re using DAB+, not DAB like the UK. DAB+ uses AAC+ compression on audio; DAB uses the much older MP2 system, which worse than MP3.
Right now, a number of test stations in Sydney are broadcasting using DAB/MP2 at between 64kbps and 192kbps – including the digital versions of Nova 969, 2UE, 2GB and several others. They sound worse than they do on FM – lifeless and dull, like an MP3 track encoded at a very low bit rate. Even the 192kbps stations sound bad.
Switching over to the few DAB+ test stations makes all the difference. Even though they were only broadcasting at 64kbps when I listened, they sound much, much better than the DAB stations. I hope that when DAB+ officially starts broadcasting, stations will go with 128kbits instead (at least music stations should), which should deliver near CD-audio quality, but even at 64kbps it’s an improvement over FM.
The Australian regulatory framework, which is much better than the UK system where channels are often broadcast at low bitrates to save on spectrum licensing costs, should give them the opportunity to deliver that higher quality audio.
Internet radio
In a way, however, digital radio almost seems like a stepping stone to something even better.
Of the initial batch of digital radios, the products that are the most interesting are the Pure Evoke Flow and the Tivoli Audio Networks, both of which are networkable and support Internet radio and network media streaming from PCs.
The Evoke Flow is probably the slicker of the two, and it works with a Web site from which you can choose favourites from something like 9000 digital radio channels as well and several thousand more ambient sound channels and podcasts.
The favourites will be uploaded to your Evoke Flow (you can also browse them on your radio, but as you can imagine, going through so many channels unsorted and uncategorised takes an age).
The Networks is more powerful, supporting both wired and wireless networking, connection of USB storage devices and a great deal more user configuration, but the interface could use a lot of work. It also virtually forces you to use a crummy remote control, which is a major pain.
For me, these two devices are really the future of radio. They support terrestrial broadcasting, yes, but it’s their Internet radio features that make them fun.
Unfortunately, they’re also very expensive to start off – the Evoke Flow is expected to set you back $700; the Networks $1000.
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