Of course satellite radio requires an ongoing subscription whereas HD radio does not.

I'm a little late but I didn't receive anything. I haven't given up though. Probably contact the CRTC and see iff they want to purchase my equipment :)

^^^^ The CRTC would probably send you in an infinite loop between them and Industry Canada trying to figure out what DAB is..... :-)

For those commenting: Satellite radio isn't an option, I live in an apartment facing east, and I don't drive, and not near a terrestrial repeater of said services.

Some of the backlog of stations wanting "air time" in the GTA (Toronto) area could have been reduced a bit by both HD Radio and DAB+. I'm thinking of the huge whack of stations wanting 88.1 MHz, as listed in a recent CRTC hearing notice....

I've recently installed a number of apps on my ipod touch from the major Canadian radio conglomerates, and I'm not impressed with the sound. CBC and Zoomer Radio are bright spots, but the others.... Mono and low bitrate... sigh....

I still preferred DAB.... :-)

Cameron

For those commenting: Satellite radio isn't an option, I live in an apartment facing east, and I don't drive, and not near a terrestrial repeater of said services.

Besides, you shouldn't have to pay for radio, just like you shouldn't have to pay for TV.

CamDAB: Try the TuneIn app rather than the broadcasters' own. It uses their web feeds, not their mobile feeds. Still not great, but a step up.

^^^^Yeah, I'll try that. One of the apps, during install, made some bizarre reference to altering it's settings from "mobile" to wifi in "settings"... There was NO place to change that under settings... either in the app or the ipod settings.... Go figure...

This part of the conversation should really be moved to the portable devices area...

I've listened to AM, AM Stereo, FM, SW, HD Radio, and DAB. Of all of them, I still prefer DAB, even when riding either the bus to Toronto or in a personal vehicle. Pity it is all gone now. We won't get into the lunacy of the license extensions granted to the various broadcasters, who's infrastructure for DAB was dismantled eons ago...

The only radio methodology I've not listened to is DRM (Digital Radio Mondiale) used primarily on SW, and satellite radio.

Cameron

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/2012-234.htm

A lot of these broadcasters haven't been heard on DAB for ages...

Maybe the CRTC has just figured that out... :-)

Cameron

They're taking an additional 3 months to find out that there's nobody home... :rolleyes:

^^^ That's at lightning bolt speed considered how glacial things move in regulatory circles. :-)

If I read it correctly, it does sound like IC isn't going to issue any more broadcasting certificates without one heck of a good reason...

Time to scour the used goods websites and see if any "gently used" DAB exciters are on offer..........................:rolleyes:

Does anyone know if DAB has been "officially" declared dead in Canada?

Not that I'm aware of.

CBC handed back all of their DAB licenses a couple of years ago.

I think the other commercial broadcasters will probably let 'em lapse, and when that happens, I don't think anything gets noted on the CRTC site, but I could stand corrected on that... :-)

Shame, as I enjoyed that when it was on, at least the ones that got it right.

But a notice will have to come out either from Industry Canada or the CRTC if a spectrum auction or re-use takes place.

Cameron

Does anyone know if DAB has been "officially" declared dead in Canada?
more or less.
See http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2012/2012-234.htm

Anybody want to draw some conclusions from the DAB experience... which I think can be fairly called a significant regulatory failure?

Was it handled badly by CRTC or stations, had "enemies," over-taken by more successful technologies, American influence, etc?

Ben

My perception of the DAB debacle:

ALL parties dropped the ball technically, including Industry Canada, CRTC, broadcasters and suppliers of radio gear.

The Americans went with a different system entirely. There were parties that had a vested interest in the spectrum used by DAB L Band in North America and this made frequency assignments and co-ordination a problem.

The one receiver that did get distributed to markets where "test" DAB transmitters were operational had major technical deficiencies itself, mainly massive power drain from it's batteries and a very unfriendly user interface. I went through 2 units to get a half decent working unit, and even then it had a number of radio faults that should never have occurred.

Similar to the digital TV OTA power issue, many transmitters ran at considerably lower power than what was really needed in "real world" conditions. Combine that with a deficient consumer product and failure was imminent.

The broadcaster's effort was abysmal. Although there was an occasional bright spot of great sound, many stations suffered from being "out of phase", having audio that was extremely low, audio on one channel only, muffled audio, and in one case, a great audio sound but the station ID on the radio didn't match the audio heard, and the station didn't have authorization to be broadcasting on DAB, and finally, one station had audio that routinely went into severe distortion due to levels set eons too high.

Combine all the above with the systemic view of broadcasters that "their spot on the dial is theirs" made for difficult promotion since broadcasting on DAB means several "stations" share a "channel". In many ways, the concept was a forerunner of today's "streaming" via the internet, but doing that via radio just wasn't "there" yet.

Cameron

Many thanks for that detailed post mortem.

From my distance, it looks like several of those issues could have been anticipated, even if not combated fully. One fix (for some obstacles in THIS situation) would have been mandating DAB exclusively (like HD TV); obviously many reasons not to take that route.

For today, I continue to believe tolerating or even mild regulatory support for Ibiquity HD-FM is right because of all the favourable compatibilities.

But CamDAB, is it also true that expectation of superior transmission features of DAB in the Canadian context "seduced" naive engineers (are there other kinds?) into recommending DAB to the CRTC when they should have worried about more "social engineering" questions?

Ben

I'm not quite clear on "social engineering" aspects of the discussion unless your referring to radio design and the human interaction.

From what I've sort of got the gist from some engineering types who work in the broadcast field is they prefer DAB from a technical standpoint.

Cameron

CamDAB -

EVERY single roadblock and challenge you mentioned above has a social/business aspect, groups pushing and shoving, or stupid grasp of end-user issues.

Nowhere did you say, "Gosh, DAB proved to be lousy engineering."

Good engineering, lousy change management. Pity.

Now do you see what I mean?

Ben

Gotcha... :-)

You got it... No one said it was bad....

And I have my suspicions that lobbyists could have been at work as well...

Not all engineers are totally thrilled with the Ibiquity system either.

It all reminds me of the AM Stereo fiasco a couple of decades ago. When you don't take an objective look at the technology before you and are afraid to set a standard and "let the marketplace decide", any large company with enough marketing muscle can push through an idea. Without a clear mandate, multiple manufacturers will not design receivers as it's not cost effective. To me, I see a direct relationship in what's happening with FM radio as happened with AM Stereo: One manufacturer want's to do everything... And not accept other ways of implementation.

Case in point: AM Stereo had it's own decoder chip (Motorola). Yeah, some others "mimicked" the concept, but not good enough. Seems to be the same with Ibiquity. And you've hit on exactly the user problem with Ibiquity: the FM / HD Radio switching and it's implementation and not being able to defeat it one way or the other...

DAB and it's newer varient, DAB+ are making inroads in Europe and Australia, and dates are being set for analogue switch off. Limited testing has popped up in the U.K. of testing DAB+, even though they've committed to the original DAB configuration, but obviously the benefits are there to test and further development.

Cameron

Thanks for further illuminations.

Funny, I feel like I've come into the story in the middle. I don't know what the problems are/were with radio. For somebody in Toronto, not clear what my issues are.

Not saying there are none, just I don't know them. I bet some issues have nothing to do with broadcasting to retail end-users.

Old FM-stereo is vastly better than the garbage one hears on MP3. (My ears were recently exposed to a filthy system called Pandora, connected to home-theatres. Yeccccch.) So that actually gives it more value, in a relative sense.

I wouldn't want to spend money on anything that didn't make my music sound discriminably better. And I am naturally skeptical.

Having said that, I've recently spent hundreds of dollars to get PBS-FM-Ibiquity from Buffalo to Toronto. On a rare good day, it is better and I am momentarily glad I spent the money.

In Florida, my wonderful Sony brings in superior Ibigity music from 40 miles away. The bass is clearly better and the background is silent. Yes, wonderful.

Now I await the same enhanced music quality emanating from the CN Tower - esp. if the rarely-wise leaders at CBC-Radio decide to present classical music regularly again. Multi-channel Ibiqity will make that easier to do, eh.

Ben

http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/sf10520.html#sec3.1

The above link on Industry Canada's web site takes you to a decision on what to do with the L-Band, as that what was used in Canada for DAB.

The meat of the decision starts after the heading "Broadcasting"

The use of L-Band for Broadcasting might be revisited in 5 or more years time.

From my vantage point, it's now "2" strikes out for the concept "let the marketplace decide..."

Cameron