The ones that stand out to me for long term listening would be Mojo 640, Q107, CHFI when they're not clipping and 680NEWS. CFRB is OK too. The rest, well..... :-)

The out of phase and missing audio still continue to amaze me. There's absolutely no reason for that whatsoever.

Not to mention the hum....

Nothing like digitally replicating Hum....

Cotton swabs must have been on sale at a dollar store a lot over the last year or so... :-)

Cameron

A few changes in the last couple of days:

Channel's 3 & 4 (LC, LD) seem to gone off-air

CBC has changed it's stream settings:

CBC Radio One
Mono stream
96KB/s

CBC Radio Two
Stereo stream & content
192KB/s

Premier chaine
Mono stream
96KB/s

Espace Musique
192KB/s

Ensemble label new reads:
CBC DAB

Cameron

Sounds like the beginning of what happened in the U.K. where quality(bit rate) was sacrificed for quantity.

Sounds like the beginning of what happened in the U.K. where quality(bit rate) was sacrificed for quantity.
They were smart to at least switch the Radio One Feeds for English and French to mono. It would have been brutel had they kept a stereo stream and had it at 96KB/s. As it is, 96KB/s in mono can be quite acceptable for Radio One.

Now... Radio Two I'd bump up to 256KB/s. Now, if they switched to AAC+, then yes, lower bitrates would suffice as AAC is a much more efficient.

To experiment, take some good sounding material and plow it onto an iPod at 112KB/s AAC and you'll be surprised. I was. I got 1,341 songs onto a Mini 4GB model. Sure, it's not the same as Apple's "Lossless" codec, but it's great for travel etc. :)

And I see the Channel 3 and 4 transmitters are still off. I kind of wonder if the recent sale of Standard had anything to do with that... Hmmm...

Cameron

Channel's 3 & 4 (LC, LD) are back on after a hiatus of not quite a week.

Somethings gone awry over on Channel 8 (LH)

CHIN, no change
CHIN-FM, no change
Mojo 640 has a silent stream @ 224KB/s
Q107 has a silent stream @ 224KB/s
Jack92.5 has a choppy audio audio stream of 224KB/s in stereo, but here's the odd part, It 's the audio of Q107!!!!

Ummm.... I think something needs a reset button pressed or something... :)

Are channel's 3&4 any better since they came back?

Are channel's 3&4 any better since they came back?
No substantive changes, but CHUM-FM's audio has been slowly coming up, but has that analogue compression (but not as compressed as the FM feed).

And yes, :) EZ Rock still is 5000dB below everything else... Well, I'm slightly stretching that but it's still eons below what it should be.

Channel 8 is specializing in digital silence now...

CHIN and CHIN-FM are OK
Mojo 640 and Q107 are silent bitstreams (tagged as stereo)
and now 92.5JACK that was having a choppy feed of Q107's audio now just goes "blip" every few seconds with silence in between all at an amazing 224KB/s audio bitrate.

Yup, Toronto DAB is alive, and kicking and reaching for the de-fib unit. :)

Cameron

L8, or LH on a Perstel has been somewhat fixed:

CHIN OK
CHIN-FM OK (both slightly low, but fine)
Mojo 640 has been fixed, no problems now.
Q107 - no audio but a stereo bitstream or 224KB/s
92.5JACK - silence with a "blurp" of audio from Q107 every 3-4 minutes.

Cameron

Hi Folks,

There some changes, improvements and definite repairs needed...

Just to refresh:

L# refers to the Canadian L-Band plan number
(Lx) refers to the same plan number but using the Perstel receiver's international designation followed by the Ensemble Label
Station name (often referred to as Component Label)
Stream content: Stereo, Mono, or DATA
DataRate as reported by the Perstel receiver
Actual feed content
Remarks

L3 (LC) CHANNEL3
680NEWS - Mono 128KB/s Sound OK
CHFI - Stereo 192KB/s / Stereo feed Sound has random clipping, otherwise OK
1050CHUM - Stereo 192KB/s / Mono feed Sound very good
104.5 CHUM.FM - Stereo 192KB/s / Stereo feed Massive improvement, excellent
EDGE 102 - Stereo 192KB/s / Stereo feed, right louder with frequent clipping

L4 (LD) CHANNEL 4
CFRB - Mono 128KB/s Sound OK
MIX 99.9 - Stereo 224KB/s / Stereo feed Small hum left channel otherwise OK
THE FAN - Mono 128KB/s Sound OK but slightly low
EZ Rock - Stereo 224KB/s / Stereo feed Sound OK but extremely low
JAZZ FM - Stereo 224KB/s / Stereo feed Massive hum on top of left channel audio, OK on right

L6 (LF) CBC DAB
CBC Radio 1 - Mono 096KB/s - Sound OK
CBC Radio 2 - Stereo 160KB/s / Stereo feed Sound OK (224KB/s was slightly cleaner)
Premier chaine - Mono 096KB/s - Sound OK
Espace Musique - Stereo 160KB/s / Stereo feed Sound OK (same for Radio 2)
CBLT DATA 000KB/s
RDI DATA 000KB/s
Comment: Why the two data services are reporting 000KB/s is unknown

L8 (LH) CH___8
CHIN - Stereo 224KB/s / Garbled audio - sounds like a stuck CD spinning very fast.
CHIN.FM - Stereo 224KB/s / Garbled audio - same as CHIN but different pitch
Mojo 640 - Stereo 224KB/s / Garbled audio - same as CHIN but different yet
Q107 - Stereo 224KB/s / Silent
92.5JACK - Stereo 224KB/s / Silent
Comment: Either fix it or take it down... The time increments so my feeling is that there's some kind of data transfer problem into this ensemble

L9 (LI) CHANNEL 9
CJYE - Mono 096KB/s / Silent
CJMR - Mono 096KB/s / Silent
CIRV - Stereo 224KB/s / Audio out of phase
CIAO - Stereo 224KB/s / Audio on left only, right silent
CFMX - Stereo 224KB/s / Audio out of phase but sounds great otherwise
Comment: CJYE and CJMR have been silent now for several months. Why the other stereo feeds are out of phase is unknown.

L2 (LB) and L15 (LO) have never been heard, although both approved by the CRTC.

Remarks: The bright spot here is CHUM-FM. Really good audio, and kudos to those responsible. CHFI clips once in a while, but is also good. As to the CBC, this is interesting. CBLT of course is the call sign of the English Toronto TV CBC station, and RDI the French cable news channel. Why the 000KB/s is unclear, either it's out of spec with the Perstel or there is no data flowing yet. As to L8 & L9, L8 needs a reboot I think... :) and L9 needs work. If CFMX wasn't out of phase, it would be a real joy to listen too.

Will report when things either significantly change or next month.

Cameron

It's a shame we have stations putting out a signals that almost
No one can hear. Makes you wonder why they bother almost 10 years later.
Too bad you can't get a cheap receiver anywhere. I'd try it just out of curiosity.

And as of today, L8 no longer buzzes.

All 5 stations now are silent, same datarates but no audio.

Now to get audio back... :)

Cameron

And an update...

As of this morning, May 27th, L8 all 5 stations not only silent, but the indicator that shows Stereo, Mono and or DATA, now shows nothing, it's blank!

There's still the DataRate showing as 224KB/s for each stream though...

Cameron

Update to the update :) : Now the stereo indicator is back. Working on it?

Channel L8 on DAB in Toronto that saw all services go silent, is now back (almost) to normal.

I notice that CHIN has audio on the left channel only, this may be a content situation, not sure yet. But more listening must be done.

Nice to have Q107 back too... Will also have to check if the feed via DAB still has it's Left and Right channels reversed. They were like that from the beginning.

92.5JACK sounds slightly low in level, but clearer than before, but at this time, the best two are CHFI (still occasional clipping) and 104.5 CHUM, both on the Channel 3 ensemble.

Now... Back to more listening... :)

Cameron

On the Channel 9 L9 (LI on a Perstel radio) CJYE and CJMR now have their audio back after being silent for several months.

The other oddities happening on this DAB ensemble continue though.

How can someone now not notice audio being out of phase still baffles me...

Cameron

Sorry Cam, I haven't checked this thread in a long time.

Are you the only Listener?

Yes, back in May, the encoder on Q107 died. If that wasn't bad enough, the replacement encoder caused a conflict in addressing, so took all the stations off on ch 8. It was pumping out rf but no content.
Finally got that fixed in June.

CJYE & CJMR comes in via ISDN and their reciever keeps dropping the line with every little power glitch. Bell swears all the lines are backed up by UPS's but any power glitch drops the line and it won't auto re-connect. They're planning on putting their own UPS on the circuit. I'll call and have them re-establish the link on Tuesday.

Audio levels and phase problems are each stations responsibility. I know one station on 9 is missing a channel, but I don't even know if it should be stereo or mono. And I don't know who you're talking about with a phase reversal. I don't have a DAB radio and the only radio I have access to doesn't indicate phase.

If you could send me a list of the audio problems you know about, please send it to me and I'll see if I can address any of them.

Thanx,

Tom

P.S. Found your May report further down the thread.
Although there were additional stations approved, nobody bought them a transmitter.

Normally license extensions from the CRTC would not be of interest to me. You probably see 50 a week. What did interest me about this is that for the first time in my memory the CRTC is actually getting serious about taking away licences for stations that never bothered to get on the air. The usual scenario in Canada is you apply for a license for some thing then renew it until hell freezes over. This keeps your competitors from being able to apply for a licence. We refer to that as a blocker application.

Now these are all DAB licences so I am sure there will be some that will say so what. But I still found it interesting.

http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2007/db2007-302.htm

Why even bother with trying to maintain the DAB infrastructure? It's gone nowhere, and has no vendor support. It's time for all the local stations to adopt HD radio.

Why even bother with trying to maintain the DAB infrastructure? It's gone nowhere, and has no vendor support. It's time for all the local stations to adopt HD radio.
Can you say that last part louder, to a lot more people ina lot more places?

The CRTC ruled a while ago that radio stations were free to switch to HD Radio if they want to so they can use either HD Radio or the old system now.

Won't solve anything for me.... Just make things worse(er). :)

Seeing as all (except 1) stations are on the opposite side of the apartment building (Hamilton ones), the multipath now is horrendous. I doubt ANY digital system based on the FM band could survive that.

One possible side benefit though might be that some engineering folk for once might rediscover what a half decent signal sounds like... 100% compression (slight exaggeration) just doesn't cut it.

Cameron