Digital Radio Worse Than FM

I see the dirty little secret of Digital Radio has been let out of the box – its quality is usually worse than that of FM Radio. The digital radio industry is hastily backpedalling – "Mandy Green, of the Digital Radio Development Bureau, said the industry no longer promoted digital on sound quality". Hah. The BBC seeks to reassure us: "We believe we are providing good sound quality on all our digital radio networks and recent research bears this out. The majority of people are very satisfied with the sound quality with around 95 per cent of digital radio listeners rating it ‘excellent’, ‘good’ or ‘satisfied’". Well, yes, if you’re listening to a portable radio in the kitchen, then I don’t suppose you’ll notice a thing. But if you’d like to listen to a classical music concert from BBC3 on your hi-fi system, then tough – you’ll often hear the difference, because the BBC will drop the bit rates to below CD quality.

 

As usual, I find myself in the minority, and, as usual, we’re the ones that get screwed via the "9 billion flies can’t be wrong" mode of thinking that is so typical today. Why is it always the lowest common denominator, and never the highest common factor that is pursued?

 

Still, I can indulge in a little bit of schadenfreude here – I’ve never invested in a digital radio set, but kept tight hold of my trusty old FM tuner. So I, at least, can continue to hear music as god intended – via FM.