Digital Radio on Medium Wave

Trials resuming of DRM from France on 1071 Khz Medium Wave.

As more and more European stations close for DAB which provides much poorer coverage it seems to be the way the powers that be want. In the USA it's quiet the opposite. In some countries it's proved to be a headache loosing MW.

Anyway here's a screenshot I took of TDF Smartcasts trial on Medium Wave, the first time I saw digital on this band was yesterday to my surprise.



There's also more DRM stations testing on Shortwave and it's quiet amazing to hear a station in the middle east in Stereo on Shortwave !

I think MW/SW/LW offers a serious alternative to the internet and DAB and we should not eliminate them just because they're old. I think to rely on one or two platforms is a huge mistake.

Here's a link to my Web Sdr http://emeraldsdr.ddns.net:8073/ and the frequency is 1071 Khz in the Medium Wave band. The station does not carry Audio at the moment, sometimes it has audio.

You can also tune around and explore the LW/MW and Shortwave bands, evening and night is the best time but several stations can be picked up during the day too.

To decode DRM you need to switch the radio to "IQ" mode from AM and follow this guide and you will need to install a virtual audio cable to route the browser audio through the Dream application. https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tutorial-drm-radio-using-rtl-sdr/

If My SDR is in use try again later. Have fun.

By the way this station only transmits at 8 Kw which is amazing however as with most MW stations the signal is a lot stronger in the evening and night.

RTE's Longwave 252 transmitter is also DRM capable but this will be shut down soon and seems a big waste.

If you tune a MW radio you might just about hear the digital signal on 1071 Khs MW, my antenna is outside so this will make a big difference to reception. You may or may not hear it but during the night it should be clear enough, you will notice the digital noise.

radioguru02

They’re still not giving up, are they?

pirateradiohed

pirateradiohed wrote: »

They’re still not giving up, are they?

What ?

L1011

Deleted User wrote: »

What ?

DRM has been trialled on and off for over a decade. Its an utter, utter failure and only of interest to a few anoraks at this stage. There will never be widespread deployment.

They even tried with consumer accessible, purchasable-in-shops radios and they failed. A decade ago, when radio was far more relevant. No consumer will ever own a DRM radio (unless they already do and haven't thrown it out from last time)

Its not even cheap enough from a transmission side to become a useful digital ham technology.

Oh yeah it has been on the go a while but it's gaining momentum particularly in India where receivers can and are bought and even some car radios have DRM capable receivers and India has quiet a large population.

RRI have good transmissions several times a day on SW and the BBC as well as others and RFI have a 24x7 transmission on SW.

I believe the LW/MW/SW spectrum should be used as it frees up FM space and DAB has proved a failure also , we shouldn't allow the internet to be the only means of communication.

Besides anyway DRM can be received with a cheap dongle and computer so many people already have the capability to receive it but more receivers would be good. I have a DRM capable radio and it works quiet well. I am sure we will see more receivers come to market eventually.

marno21

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Besides anyway DRM can be received with a cheap dongle and computer so many people already have the capability to receive it but more receivers would be good. I have a DRM capable radio and it works quiet well. I am sure we will see more receivers come to market eventually.

This is the main issue. Anyone with a computer who will even bother to listen to the radio will listen online rather than getting a DRM dongle, in higher quality with no dropouts.

DRM in 2018 is a solution looking for a problem rather than having any meaningful purpose. It'll never be viable with the Internet and the general decline in radio

Technocentral

marno21 wrote:

This is the main issue. Anyone with a computer who will even bother to listen to the radio will listen online rather than getting a DRM dongle, in higher quality with no dropouts.

Absolutely! Complete waste of time and money, in the West anyways.

marno21

marno21 wrote: »

This is the main issue. Anyone with a computer who will even bother to listen to the radio will listen online rather than getting a DRM dongle, in higher quality with no dropouts.

DRM in 2018 is a solution looking for a problem rather than having any meaningful purpose. It'll never be viable with the Internet and the general decline in radio

Technocentral wrote: »

Absolutely! Complete waste of time and money, in the West anyways.

Not in areas where the content is not online, don't forget there is substantial populations in India alone who will have no internet access so this technology , i.e radio is still very much important and relevant and radio needs to cover long distance.

And as I said even in the West where internet provides much more coverage radio is still very popular even in Ireland where the push to DAB failed because no one particularly wants it , FM works so if it's not broke don't fix it.

The same could be said for DRM however the difference is that at we have little content on MW and FM is crowded so MW opens up a lot of spectrum that can be used.

And people should not need to have an internet subscription to listen to the most basic form of communication.

It is really fascinating though listening to radio from the middle east in stereo in pretty amazing quality for Shortwave. However most content is in Lower bitrate Mono which is fine for speech.

I feel we should have a lot of content from RTE on MW particularly Joe Duffy and other talk radio which would open up FM be it digital or Analogue.

And I strongly feel it's a bad idea or mistake to bring more and more contact forcibly onto the internet with no backup and forcing everyone to have an internet subscription as hard as that might mean for those addicted to the internet to understand there are people with no desire to have the internet to listen to radio and I know such people.

And by the way , in the likes of Asia and most other parts of the World including the USA there is no desire to change everything to digital , in the USA people get what they want but in Europe people are being more and more forced to change to a platform they do not want or desire it's just lucky in Ireland there's no push to force DAB which which has not been to popular in other countries and in the likes of Sweden the national broadcaster has suffered badly because there are a lot of people who can not pick up the DAB signal after the FM switch off.