Re: Rant About LPFM

["Dan Strassberg" <Dan.Strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

You left out the most important reason of all: The consumer-electronics
companies see a bonanza in the sale of new radios. CEA (formerly CEMA) is
who's pushing DAB. I doubt if CEA cares whether the radios are for E-147 or
some IBOC scheme, but to obtain the neceesary support from broadcasters, the
organization was willing to back _any_ system that forced the public to buy
new equipment before the existing equipment's useful life ended. I suppose
that CEA sees only good things in a fragmentation of broadcast services.
According to their thinking, everyone will run out and buy new radios for
satellite service and still more new radios for terrestrial DAB. In fact,
CEA may be killing the goose (that is, the consumer) that laid the golden
egg.

As for whether E-147 really _is_ the best,  I think the jury is still out. A
LOT of technology has been developed since E-147 was cast in concrete. In
fact, 96 kbps from an IBOC signal may produce audio that only experts can
discern from 192 kbps from an E-147 signal. And there will always be those
people who claim that neither one approaches analog in quality. I think the
real drawback of FM-band IBOC DAB is likely to be unsatisfacotry coverage in
the digital mode. USA Digital Radio is proposing a system that falls back to
analog when the digital signal becomes inaccessible, thus forcing
analog/digital simulcasts in perpetuity.

--

Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
Phone: 1-617-558-4205, eFax: 1-707-215-6367

-----Original Message-----
From: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
To: umar@nerodia.wcrb.com <umar@nerodia.wcrb.com>
Cc: R.L. Caron <k4gp@peganet.com>; nerw@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu
<nerw@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>; boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org
<boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Date: Sunday, April 02, 2000 10:52 PM
Subject: Re: Rant About LPFM


><<On Sun, 2 Apr 2000 13:11:38 -0400 (EDT), umar@nerodia.wcrb.com said:
>
>> Yet I have heard Eureka-147 receivers in the UK are not selling
>> well.
>
>I think this is a pretty compelling example of ``the good (enough) is
>the enemy of the best''.  For most people, most of the time, the audio
>rendition of standard analog FM broadcast is good enough.  The real
>driver behind DAB in most other countries is to shut down long- and
>medium-wave broadcasting for good, and in this country is the
>perceived (by the suits) marketing advantage of being ``digital''.
>
.