https://www.ftypeforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=91027#p91027...
pirateprentice said:
Technical note on DAB: it was the first commercial system to use the digital encoding scheme that goes by the wonderful name of Orthogonal Frequency Domain Multiplexing (OFDM) which is now pretty much ubiquitous in TV, mobile phones, WiFi, and even your broadband over copper wires. It allowed a radio station to use a smaller slice of radio bandwidth than trad analogue radio. Or, in reality, to squeeze lots more stations into the same bandwidth. The more stations you pack in, the less data is devoted to each, and the nastier the sound becomes (as with MP3 files).
DAB has a more consistent sound quality than FM - without the background hiss, but FM can still sound better than a DAB channel starved of bits.
DAB was enthusiastically taken up by the BBC which is why it is well established in the UK. But in its first-generation guise, it had problems in poor reception areas. Early DAB users will remember the under-water burbling sound when the signal was poor.
I think that has been largely solved these days with better receivers and antennas spread over an area (like your car window) to avoid 'deep fades'.
But it motivated the development of DAB+ which performs better, and which Luxembourg will enjoy.
Of course its a bit late now to retro-fit DAB+ in the UK now, despite efforts. The pendulum has swung from broadcast to streaming over the mobile phone network.
You can argue the merits of that. But DAB is still a great solution for cars now that it has been made to work well, and should be around for some time to come.
I entered ‘
Does the Jaguar F-Type have a DAB+ enabled radio’ into Google and this came up...
"Yes, the Jaguar F-Type has DAB+ digital radio capability. The 'InControl Touch' infotainment system in the F-Type includes DAB digital radio as part of its multimedia features. This means you can listen to digital radio stations with better sound quality and a wider selection of channels."
https://getdigitalradio.com/ways-to-listen/dab-digital-radio/dab-digital-radio/...
“The UK’s first national DAB+ stations launched on 29 February 2016 on the second national DAB commercial multiplex, Sound Digital, and in June 2019, Smooth Extra and Heart Extra switched to DAB+ from DAB to became the first stations to broadcast in DAB+ on the national commercial Digital One multiplex."
"There are now over 180 stations broadcasting on DAB+ in the UK, including 25 national stations – Fun Kids, JazzFM, Forces BFBS, Virgin Radio Anthems, Virgin Radio Chilled, Smooth, Smooth Chilled, Heart, Heart Dance, Heart 90s, Heart 80s, Heart 70s, Capital, Capital XTRA, Capital XTRA Reloaded, Capital Dance, Boom Radio, talkSPORT2, talkRADIO, Radio X, LBC News, Gold, GB News Radio, UCB1, UCB2 - and a number of local commercial stations, plus around 150 ultra-local community and commercial stations on small-scale DAB.”
My current favourite is 'Smooth Chilled'....very relaxing!