UK DAB Radio

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when DAB radio skips like a broken CD/record (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz to c/dabradio

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Sometimes DAB radio stations are playing music that skips like a CD, repeating a short segment like a broken record. It often goes on for quite some time, which is a bit puzzling because surely there is nothing about digital radio tech that would cause this. The skipping never happens during talk radio, only with music.

Are radio stations actually playing CDs? If yes, are these CDs also playing on autopilot with no one at the helm to quickly swap out the disc? Or is it just bad timing.. the CD happened to go to shit while the DJ is literally taking a shit and away from the controls?

The skipping was extremely rare, if ever, on analog radio. So I wonder if DAB has also somehow open things up to very low budget stations with robotic DJs, perhaps due to increased sharable bandwidth or something. Switching from analog FM to DAB tripled the number of stations I can receive.

Why don’t they rip their CDs to FLAC files, then listen to the FLAC files for defects to ensure skipping never happens?

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[–] Mex 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The skipping is signal quality. In DAB each successful audio packet is either fully received or not at all, when you have marginal signal some packets will be OK and some skipped.

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

When you explain it that way, it reveals ambiguity in what “skipping” means. You mean packets get skipped. I get that too, which results in silence, thus choppiness. But that’s not what I was referring to.

When I say “skips like a CD/record”, it’s a different kind of skipping. With a record, it means the stylus/needle would jump grooves and repeat what was on the previous groove. On a CD, it’s when the laser would jump to the wrong groove, and repeat in a loop for a bit. That’s the skipping I’m talking about coming from DAB stations in Brussels, which I doubt could be signal quality related on a one-way signal. That is, if a DAB receiver were to play a stream of questionable packets then ask the transmitter to resend it, then try again, that would result in CD-like skipping, but surely DAB would not have the two-way comms that that kind of error correction would call for.

[–] Mex 3 points 5 months ago

Ah ok, that doesn't sound like it's due to DAB itself then. DAB has a lot of redundancy in the signal but I doubt it could cause it to repeat packets.

[–] i_am_not_a_robot 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's a bit of an odd one. I've not encountered this in the UK. Is it just a particular station doing it?

[–] freedomPusher@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I’ve not kept notes on it but there are a few stations doing it. I think it’s often the same few stations.

(edit) fwiw, I just heard BX1 do it (222.064 MHz in Brussels)

[–] i_am_not_a_robot 3 points 5 months ago

Must be something to do with their playout I guess. I doubt they are actually playing CDs, and as explained DAB shouldn't inherently cause this.