'Trade off is just about right' - Ford Ennals defends mono Absolute Radio
By James Cridland for media.info
Posted 8 January 2015, 3.34pm est
Ford Ennals, the CEO of Digital Radio UK, has weighed in to the debate within media.info's discussion area about mono stations on DAB.
Absolute Radio is now a mono station nationally on DAB Digital Radio, so that its owners Bauer could reuse some of this bandwidth space to add Magic as a national service. Some listeners and discussion commentators are outraged: but, writing in the discussion area, Ford is clear that this isn't an issue with DAB itself:
In truth this has little to [do with] DAB as a transmission technology. DAB can deliver excellent sound quality when you dedicate sufficient capacity.
Ford says it is a pragmatic decision from Bauer:
I believe that Bauer faced with limited DAB capacity made the decision to offer the widest possible choice of their stations nationally by sharing the available DAB bandwidth between them . The upside for listeners is they can now listen to Magic nationally on DAB - good news - but one of the consequences is a reduction in kbps for Absolute Radio. For the vast majority of listeners the addition of services outweighs the benefit of sustaining a potential higher sound quality on an existing station.
He points out that Digital One, the national digital radio transmission network, is full, and notes Bauer's interest in the forthcoming second digital multiplex, commonly referred to as D2.
sound quality [is] really important and DAB can support extremely high quality - it's just at this point broadcasters are having to make a choice / quality trade off . The continued growth in DAB listening and ownership would suggest that for the vast majority of listeners at the moment they are getting that trade off just about right.
You can read his full comments as well as a longer, separate, discussion about the larger amount of mono stations on DAB.
Separately, the BBC's Rupert Brun has given an interview to the Radio Today Programme about DAB's bitrates: this weeks edition is available on Audioboom.