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Toyota Atara Sl Will Have A Factory Fitted Dab+ Radio


alanh

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All,

The Toyota Australia website is yet to mention this model of car. However since Toyota owns Hino trucks some of which will now come with a DAB+ radio this is not suprising.

Toyota Atara SL

AlanH

That's also in the CRA digital radio plus web site news.

Don't get too excited or carried away though, Toyota was one of a number of car companies, that had AM Stereo radios as standard in most of their Australian cars, including the camry from 1985 through to the late 1990's (I think). That didn't up the listening figure to great heights, & we all know what happened to AM Stereo. It's failure was attributed to the lack of receivers, yet Toyota was even back then the biggest selling car company in Australia, with the Camry in the top 3 cars sold. According to CRA 33% of radio listening is done in cars, but just putting DAB+ radios in cars won't save it, case in point, it didn't save AM Stereo.

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GlennP,

The reason AM stereo failed was that there was 4 competing systems in the USA and the FCC decided to let the market decide. The result was that none of the manufacturers wanted to supply their huge market with a system which could not receive all stations. Multi-standard reception was too expensive and wasteful then so it was a failure.

AM stereo never happened in Europe, who was and is using FM instead due to overcrowding.

Wind forward to now with digital radio. HD radio has only been adopted in the USA with some trialling in Mexico, and its not selling well. It is finally being factory installed in some US cars. Transmission of HD on the AM band is rare due to the interference to other AM broadcasters. The biggest problem is at night. (A HD-AM signal is 40 kHz wide which is why there is interference)

The situation in Europe is quite different where DAB/DAB+/DMB car receivers are required in all new vehicles in France from next year, and the EU is also pushing this requirement to all members. They are already available in cars such as the Ford Focus.

The Netherlands is providing a choice of 40 stations to all residents on DAB+

The Australian broadcasting industry was not really behind AM stereo. For example the ABC replaced their ancient transmitters with new AM stereo ones, then as a cost cutting exercise stopped hiring a stereo pair for program feed and the transmitter was switched to mono. Even now, high powered ABC local radio FM transmitters in the Eastern seaboard (excluding capital cities and Newcastle) are not fed with stereo programs for similar cost cutting reasons.

So the EU with 500 million people and the USA with 300 milliion people ths situation is different to AM stereo.

Alan

Edited by alanh
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Multi-standard reception was too expensive and wasteful then so it was a failure.

So now explain why this won't happen in your projected multi-standard DAB+/DRM world. Not to mention that AM and FM will be around for many years to come, so decoding them will be required in any car radio, too.

Edited by Digital Penetration
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Digital Penetration,

I have not said that car radios will not also receive AM and FM. Note that in the UK there is a large proportion of radios without AM.

So now explain why this won't happen in your projected multi-standard DAB+/DRM world.

The situation is different now because nearly all the radio receiving section is contained in one or two chips with a few extra components. This is called a Software Defined Radio. Essentially the chips are a micro processor, EEPROM to contain the program, RAM for for filtering the signals, analog to digital converter along with a chip which will decompress AAC V2 which is used by DAB+, DMB audio, DRM+, DRM30 and in a slightly modified form HD radio. Analog radio does not use digital compression. If you multiply a carrier with the signal you can demodulate AM and FM.

You will note that I made the comment about the 4 different methods of AM stereo was a long time ago well prior to cheap microprocessors. Also there was the threat that 3 of the methods would not continue. Contrast this with video cassette recorders Phillips 2000, Betamax and VHS. Only one survived until the recordable DVD.

With digital radio there is only one possible looser and that is HD radio. This is because the digital signal has to be much lower power than the analog transmission in the same channel. This does not happen in the other methods. DRM30 can be used with one half of a channel analog and the other half digital but no broadcaster is using this mode. It is much inferior to a whole channel of DRM30 and the power consumption of the transmitter is more than quartered. This does not happen in the analog/digital mode.

The advantage of DAB+/DRM+/DRM and analog AM/FM if you wish is that the lower frequencies can be used for long distance reception and the VHF frequencies for shorter distances particularly in densily populated areas where the noise levels are higher.

So DAB+ is cheap for broadcasters in areas of high population areas where broadcasters can share the transmitter infrastructure.; DRM+ allows single broadcasters to go digital in their local area and DRM30 for remote areas. Just as FM has been used in local areas and AM in both MF and HF have been used in regional and remote areas upto continental size or bigger.

AlanH

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The reason AM stereo failed was because of crappy sound quality, inferior programming compared to FM radio,

and because no one listened to it <_<

I don't expect much difference with bad+*** radio because IMO the variety of music available is.... well bad+ <_<

bad+? I meant dab+, sorry my bad...

Edited by (◣_◢)
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The reason AM stereo failed was because of crappy sound quality, inferior programming compared to FM radio,

and because no one listened to it <_<

I don't expect much difference with bad+*** radio because IMO the variety of music available is.... well bad+ <_<

bad+? I meant dab+, sorry my bad...

Few things with those statements, AM Stereo wasn't crappy sound quality, if you thought it was, you haven't heard it broadcast properly/well. DP can attest to that. Until AM Stereo on 2CA was turned off, it was hard to tell the difference between it & DAB+ broadcast in Canberra for sound quality. AM Stereo done right, isn't that far removed from the sound quality of FM stereo, except for the loss of a few kHz at the top end of human hearing. I would prefer AM Stereo sound to the crap, over compressed, distorted sounds most FM's are pumping out today.

Don't forget outside the capital cities, there was no FM radio (commercial) until the 90's, so that superior FM programming (if you were lucky) was broadcast on AM in AM Stereo. Plenty of people listened to AM Stereo, but the lack of available receivers meant large masses couldn't.

Radio was a lot different in the '80's, everyone didn't sound the same, there were different formats & target demographics for each station, no one want's to risk being different today, so all stations sound roughly the same. A variety of good different programming won't sell DAB+, cause no one want's to be different, if they did, we'd have a wider variety of programming on AM & FM.

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Actually, I thought AM Stereo had crappy sound quality for the same reasons you've detailed in regards to the FM stations. It was the over compressed, distorted sounds, the static and the interference at night on AM radio that kept me on the FM stations which, until the late 80's, were using very little compression and had far superior music programming.

I agree if AM Stereo was done right it wouldn't be an issue - but it wasn't done right with the stations I was listening to. It didn't matter if it was 2SM, 2WS, 2UW, 2CC, 2WL or 2OO they were all over compressed and sounding the same - they all played the same boring songs on high rotation whilst the FMers were playing album tracks, extended mixes, long commercial free music sweeps, less talk... all the things that could be used by stations on dab+ to give listeners a reason to make the switch; if it's more of the same I can't see the point - particularly if dab+ isn't available outside metro areas.

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Actually, I thought AM Stereo had crappy sound quality for the same reasons you've detailed in regards to the FM stations. It was the over compressed, distorted sounds, the static and the interference at night on AM radio that kept me on the FM stations which, until the late 80's, were using very little compression and had far superior music programming.

I agree if AM Stereo was done right it wouldn't be an issue - but it wasn't done right with the stations I was listening to. It didn't matter if it was 2SM, 2WS, 2UW, 2CC, 2WL or 2OO they were all over compressed and sounding the same - they all played the same boring songs on high rotation whilst the FMers were playing album tracks, extended mixes, long commercial free music sweeps, less talk... all the things that could be used by stations on dab+ to give listeners a reason to make the switch; if it's more of the same I can't see the point - particularly if dab+ isn't available outside metro areas.

There is definitely a reason to listen if you are after diversity. If you live in Melbourne and like to listen to C&W then before DAB+ you were out of luck. Now there are 2 stations devoted to it. So not more of the same there. If you like to hear Australian music played on the radio, then there is a station which plays only Australian music. Not more of the same there! I could go on and give more examples but maybe you could look it up yourself if you are interested! Another reason to listen to DAB+ is that it craps all over AM for sound quality so even if you like AM only you would benefit by listening to it on DAB+

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It's not what I'm after although I take your point. However I can receive a fair bit of C&W and the OZ music station which I assume is radar radio is often relayed through Triple M so nothing spectacular there.

I'm an old fart who likes his 60's and 70's and everything in between :D

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Actually, I thought AM Stereo had crappy sound quality for the same reasons you've detailed in regards to the FM stations. It was the over compressed, distorted sounds, the static and the interference at night on AM radio that kept me on the FM stations which, until the late 80's, were using very little compression and had far superior music programming.

I agree if AM Stereo was done right it wouldn't be an issue - but it wasn't done right with the stations I was listening to. It didn't matter if it was 2SM, 2WS, 2UW, 2CC, 2WL or 2OO they were all over compressed and sounding the same - they all played the same boring songs on high rotation whilst the FMers were playing album tracks, extended mixes, long commercial free music sweeps, less talk... all the things that could be used by stations on dab+ to give listeners a reason to make the switch; if it's more of the same I can't see the point - particularly if dab+ isn't available outside metro areas.

No mention of 2GB? I well recollect John Tingle banging on and on about how great 2GB's AM Stereo broadcast was sounding.

To the thirteen people in Sydney who had an AM Stereo receiver at the time.

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  • 2 weeks later...
No mention of 2GB? I well recollect John Tingle banging on and on about how great 2GB's AM Stereo broadcast was sounding.

To the thirteen people in Sydney who had an AM Stereo receiver at the time.

Yeah that accounted for the majority of 2GB's audience at the time :D

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Few things with those statements, AM Stereo wasn't crappy sound quality, if you thought it was, you haven't heard it broadcast properly/well. DP can attest to that. Until AM Stereo on 2CA was turned off, it was hard to tell the difference between it & DAB+ broadcast in Canberra for sound quality. AM Stereo done right, isn't that far removed from the sound quality of FM stereo, except for the loss of a few kHz at the top end of human hearing. I would prefer AM Stereo sound to the crap, over compressed, distorted sounds most FM's are pumping out today.

Don't forget outside the capital cities, there was no FM radio (commercial) until the 90's, so that superior FM programming (if you were lucky) was broadcast on AM in AM Stereo. Plenty of people listened to AM Stereo, but the lack of available receivers meant large masses couldn't.

Radio was a lot different in the '80's, everyone didn't sound the same, there were different formats & target demographics for each station, no one want's to risk being different today, so all stations sound roughly the same. A variety of good different programming won't sell DAB+, cause no one want's to be different, if they did, we'd have a wider variety of programming on AM & FM.

Back in the day I bought a Holden Astra (rebadged Nissan Pulsar) that had an AM stereo radio. It was great, it sounded better. In the coutry we had little FM, and after the sun went down I used to listen to better quality stereo than ordinarary AM. It had its good points.

Stew

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