Free DAB radio

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118549702#Comment_118549702

It is very very simple and has been pointed out many times already, the independent licenced stations don't want it - more specifically - they don't want the competition that it would bring.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118553848#Comment_118553848

The BAI are acutely aware of what DAB is and made a conscious choice not to pursue licencing of multiplex operators. Among the reasons given for the decision are disingenuous at best, so I expect nothing to change; however, streaming online bypasses them and is (I suspect) tolerated because of it's relative obscurity (even today) though that is changing.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118561130#Comment_118561130

It is trivially easy to setup a DAB multiplex, while the costs for equipment are about 1/3 higher than for FM broadcasting, it's prettymuch swings and roundabouts and not even remotely unaffordable. However, doing it right and not pissing all over sensitive bands requires more attention and care.

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593380#Comment_118593380

RTE were involved in an early trial in the 2000s if my memory serves, and on the conclusion of it, with a staunch no from the ILRs, they repurposed the extra transmitters and extended their multiplex. Unfortunately, it was still hamstrung by the trial condition that prevented them running any forms of advertising or allowing other broadcasters onto their multiplex.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118579396#Comment_118579396

Streaming is a dead end, the cost-per-listener just doesn't come close to what a broadcast achieves; aside from that, promoting it will ultimately exacerbate the current situation because no station with constrained funding could ever hope to grow and as a final nail in the coffin, once regulation starts to take hold you can expect the Copyright Police to start pressing stations to georestrict access at which point we'll be right back to square one.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118593413#Comment_118593413

There are at least three individuals on this site alone (including myself) who have interest in running DAB (or DTT) multiplexes on a full-time basis, we're just not allowed to do so legally

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120469600#Comment_120469600

For God sake man you are stuck in the 00s. It's smartspeakers and smartphones your average Joes are using nowadays for their audio content, not DAB radio sets.

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119035036#Comment_119035036

As you said, the commercials have no interest. The smaller stations? I could see a few of them, particularly, folks feel they fill a niche that's unserved by the larger stations as no doubt demonstrated by ~20 stations on a pirate DAB mux operating in pockets of the country.

We both know the regulatory framework will be submitted, sent back, lost, found again, subjected to public inquiry, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

I'm also honestly amazed that DAB is even thriving in the UK as the UK is itself an absolute fantastic exercise in how not to run a DAB ecosystem, which regrettably is likely to happen here if it ever gets official sanction - what do I mean exactly? - the licences being to public auction so only those who can stump up the price of a house in Shrewsbury will get a licence and to recover the cost they'll squeeze as many stations in as they can - MP2, at 64kbps in mono, yuck (and for a few thousand per month).

My prediction here is that we're more likely to see something like HD Radio or possibly DRM+ materialise instead, the former has the advantage of backwards compatibility but essentially both would allow the licenced stations to add secondary stations on their existing frequency and thus retain absolute control. If DAB does materialise I could see it being verymuch the same as DTT, with just one monopoly operator and everyone else having to pay the price that comes with that for the privilege (note: this is why streaming is a bad idea in the long run)

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120469656#Comment_120469656

You're entitled to you're opinion and, you're technically correct in regards to "smartspeakers and smartphones" but, unfortunately you're not seeing the forest for the trees.

Broadcasting is a one-to-many medium meaning that a transmitter at a good site (say Three Rock) can reach everyone in view of it and there's no difference in cost if only one person tunes in, or a million tune in. This fact makes FM pretty cheap to reach a wide audience.

Internet Streaming is a one-to-one medium where each listener gets a feed, streaming servers have finite bandwidth and thus have a fixed listener cap depending on what codec you choose to use, and what bitrate you allow, and bandwidth is not free; most streaming services are still using Shoutcast/Icecast and those don't scale.

Smartspeakers rely on a third party directory and the most popular of those has not accepted new stations in years, smartphones give you a few more options.

Broadcasting on FM (or DAB) because it is broadcasting, is still the cheapest option available to reach a large number of listeners. The risk is that if you're a community station or other small-scale operator, streaming becomes unaffordable for you past a certain point that you'd never hit were you transmitting on FM/DAB. A situation where only he who has the deepest of pockets has a voice is unacceptable to me.

Lastly, if you live out of reach of a good mobile data signal (nevermind DSL), then no smartspeaker or smartphone will replace your FM or DAB radio

Declan A Walsh

@rogue-entity - What I find interesting is that you are replying to a tonne of posts from last year with the majority over a year!

tinytobe

The problem for all the DAB deniers in Ireland that DAB is very much an EU decision. Every new car sold in the EU has it, also in Brexit UK. The only thing you would get is that the radio on DAB stays silent once one is in Ireland. But why not make use of the options DAB poses? At least RTE understood that their LW transmitter would no longer have any real numbers of listeners. However that one took an awful long time to get into the minds of RTE decision makers.

ITV2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120491650#Comment_120491650

Not in west Dublin tonight.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120493028#Comment_120493028

It’s a waste of time, who listens to it?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120470650#Comment_120470650

What's this "DAB deniers" nonsense? Car radios with DAB also receive FM. Your average punter in Ireland doesn't know/care what bands of the radio spectrum their radio can receive as long as they can hear the death notices at 1pm.

JDxtra

If FreeDAB was to reappear in Dublin it would be great. I'd like to see some improvements as I found they had some stability and availability issues before.

With FM pirates, the signal can fade in & out when driving around (but you put it with it). With DAB, once the signal drops to a certain level it cuts out (such is the nature of DAB). So a strong DAB signal is needed to reduce the likelihood of this happening.

When stationary, I found a few times that the signal strength would go from over 90% signal to 0% - just for a second. This was enough to drop the audio, so was a little annoying.

Anyways, I think the service would be very visible if they ever reappeared. All new cars now have DAB, and some will automatically combine DAB and FM stations into a single list by default.

Lord Nelson

As far as I’m aware, the guys from Free DAB are involved in the recently licenced Ulster Mux. I’d imagine that’s where their priorities now lie? With no pathway to a licence in the Republic, a “pirate” setup is essentially a waste of time and money as the content providers will be predominately foreign stations or low grade pirates hauled in to make up the numbers.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120497556#Comment_120497556

An old chestnut on this forum is that the 5k fee the Bai charge for a section 41? licence prevented any new start up going on any of the previous DAB trial tests here. I'd say that any business that can't cough up 5k isn't going to be any viable business.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120497918#Comment_120497918

not necessarily true, it would depend on what business model the operator goes for, whether it's one decided by them or by civil servants.

remember 5k is horrifically expensive for what is really some admin work.