Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off

That's such a pity. Building a simple AM radio receiver was a simplest and coolest electronics project to do with kids.

You need two transistors, a ferrite coil and a small set of simpler elements. And it is so simple you can actually explain what every part of the circuit does.

And then the reward... Once built you could listen to BBC regardless of where you are in Europe. My kids just LOVED IT, no Netflix K-Drama replaces this experience. My daughter was listening to BBC on her radio every night going to sleep.

I'm very sad to see this go.

I was listening to DAB in the car, not so far from here last weekend, and it kept cutting out. Whereas you could get LW everywhere!

I developed a love of cricket on Test Match Special from a very young age. A tiny inexpensive radio could get it anywhere. I actually never minded the interruptions from the Shipping Forecast, the real reason they kept this service up for so long. I know there are many ways to get a forecast now, none of which is as reliable as radio 4.

BBC Radio 4 can be streamed here, including internationally: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

    mplayer 'https://a.files.bbci.co.uk/ms6/live/3441A116-B12E-4D2F-ACA8-C1984642FA4B/audio/simulcast/dash/nonuk/pc_hd_abr_v2/aks/bbc_radio_fourfm.mpd'

    vlc 'https://lsn.lv/bbcradio.m3u8?station=bbc_radio_fourfm%22&bitrate=320000%22'

(Links from https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/tables/radio-frequencies/internet... )

IMO, when the last LW transmitter shuts down, the whole band needs to be reallocated to hams. Realistic small-ish antennas are shockingly doable with a capacitance hat, loading coil, and counterpoise.

That station is said to be one of the signals used by the UK’s nuclear subs to assess the state of the country in a war scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#:~:text...

List of longwave radio broadcasters - including those that have shut down. The shutdown list is much longer than those remaining (only 7 remaining).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadca...

No more foxhole radios for the PoW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

There is precisely one thing that keeps 198LW online: economy seven.

I think the reason why its been left on so long is that it took so long to migrate to digital meters https://tradehelp.gdhv.co.uk/support/solutions/articles/7900...

I am also annoyed that I missed the last signal.

Radio Society of Great Britain reaction: https://rsgb.org/main/radio-sport/rsgb-contest-club/bbc-long...

Rather defensive press release thing from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/articles/2026/radio-4-broadc...

It’s funny that at just the phrase ‘Long Wave’ my mind jumps back the “long wave radio Atlantic 252”.

I miss the days of jingles.

LW is still a fallback when internet and mobile go down simultaneously. Quietly important.

Seems like everyone's shutting down radio services. CHU and Weather radio in Canada too :(

They can pry long wave radio from my cold dead hands

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901

One can listen to the live closure broadcast via this WebSDR website, by tuning it to AM 198 kHz.

"You are listening to 198 kHz longwave. BBC Radio 4 is no longer available on this frequency. However, you can find Radio 4 many other ways. You can find BBC Radio 4 online, via BBC Sounds. Radio 4 is available on DAB digital radio and through your digital television, including freely. Radio 4 is also available via FM radio, on 92 to 95 MHz and 103 to 105 MHz. Plus, you can listen via your smart speaker: just say 'play Radio 4'. Information on how to listen can be found on the BBC website, at bbc.co.uk/reception."

The Droitwich transmitter used to transmit on exactly 200 kHz which I always thought was very cool, but it moved to 198 kHz in 1988 to better harmonize with European stations.

The program was mostly the same as BBC Radio 4 but it used to diverge at certain times of day. I used to be woken up at 5am every day by my parents clock radio with the farming news which was very dull, but easy to sleep through.

That's a real shame given the distance LW could travel: I wonder what they're going to use the frequency band for? I've tried using DAB on so many occasions and thrown it out in disgust.

> Given these factors, investing in upgrading the LW equipment is not considered a cost-effective solution for licence fee-funded services

And that's another problem - maybe the Government should step in and set up a proper Civil Defence-style warning/information system - we may well need it in a few years - it's a shame our official National Broadcaster can't fulfill the role.

Side Note - VLF ( Very Low Frequency ) signals (3-30 kHz) propagate via surface wave or skywave, offering stable communication for submarines through saltwater.

Online stream for those without a LW AM receiver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugd8G5w-Sfo

That is too bad, you would think these could be kept active for historical purposes. But seems these services are all being turned off even though I heard a few were very useful in this day and age.

Why would humans need to communicate on channels bots cannot control?

Listened to this in Denmark in the car just yesterday. It usually sounded awful but was the only English language news source in the car, so I’m going to miss it. Since the BBC sold the transmitters and rented them back, let’s hope we don’t get US-style right wing talk radio as a replacement.

At the moment they are running a goodbye loop, so you can still hear something.

At least there’s Radio Caroline still on 648kHz AM, so there will be a British voice still on the air.

As long we still have DCF77…

I wonder how many of the Van Allen radiation belts is held up by this

Radio Society of Great Britain reaction: https://rsgb.org/main/radio-sport/rsgb-contest-club/bbc-long...

Rather defensive press release thing from the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/articles/2026/radio-4-broadc...

That station is said to be one of the signals used by the UK’s nuclear subs to assess the state of the country in a war scenario.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_of_last_resort#:~:text...

List of longwave radio broadcasters - including those that have shut down. The shutdown list is much longer than those remaining (only 7 remaining).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadca...

Online stream for those without a LW AM receiver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugd8G5w-Sfo

As long we still have DCF77…

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons.

At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz).

At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower/middle part of MF/MW.

Seems like everyone's shutting down radio services. CHU and Weather radio in Canada too :(

These transmitters consume insane amounts of power. Per Wikipedia, that's 500 kW of rated transmission power for this one [1], so probably a solid megawatt of grid power input.

At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station

The Droitwich transmitter used to transmit on exactly 200 kHz which I always thought was very cool, but it moved to 198 kHz in 1988 to better harmonize with European stations.

Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.

It was my father's morning alarm, too. But he was a couple of thousand miles away in New York state.

That, and Atlantic 252 (I believe now long gone) were what he woke up to every morning.

That is too bad, you would think these could be kept active for historical purposes. But seems these services are all being turned off even though I heard a few were very useful in this day and age.

I wonder how many of the Van Allen radiation belts is held up by this

At the moment they are running a goodbye loop, so you can still hear something.

At least there’s Radio Caroline still on 648kHz AM, so there will be a British voice still on the air.

These transmitters consume insane amounts of power. Per Wikipedia, that's 500 kW of rated transmission power for this one [1], so probably a solid megawatt of grid power input.

At 30 ct/kWh, that's 300€ per hour, 7200€ per day and about 2.6 million € a year - for a customer base that is only decreasing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Transmitting_Station

Doesn't excuse CHU: two 3kW, one 5kW ERP.

And by the virtue of shortwave propagation, it could be heard across the world. For the past month and a half (from when the news of its impending shutdown was revealed) I was regularly picking it up in Australia right up until the bitter end.

Thanks for mentioning the actual frequency. The article says "long wave" many times without specifying what it actually means.

It was my father's morning alarm, too. But he was a couple of thousand miles away in New York state.

That, and Atlantic 252 (I believe now long gone) were what he woke up to every morning.

IIRC, their operation relies on enormous vacuum tubes that the BBC can’t get replacements for any more.

There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.) and NDB beacons.

At least in VK/Australia, there’s the 2200 meter band, but it’s quite limited (1W power limit, CW/digital only, 135.7–137.8 kHz).

At the same time, as much as I don’t want the AM broadcast band to die, I’d love an amateur band in the lower/middle part of MF/MW.

> There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.)

I meant just the broadcast band 148.5-283.5 kHz. (Though I'd love if 2200m and 630m were just a bit wider.)

> and NDB beacons.

Good point[1]. So 148.5-200 kHz in ITU Region 2 (and keep LowFER allowances on 160-190kHz as a consolation prize.)

[1]https://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm

> There’s still a lot of utility stations in the LF/longwave band. Particularly time signals (WWVB in the US, ALS162 in France, DCF77 in Germany, JJY in Japan, etc.)

I meant just the broadcast band 148.5-283.5 kHz. (Though I'd love if 2200m and 630m were just a bit wider.)

> and NDB beacons.

Good point[1]. So 148.5-200 kHz in ITU Region 2 (and keep LowFER allowances on 160-190kHz as a consolation prize.)

[1]https://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm

Doesn't excuse CHU: two 3kW, one 5kW ERP.

Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power? Without knowing that, your power calculations have no meaning.

Radio stations are usually measured by the last of those: Effective radiated power.

You can have a radio station with a 50,000 watt ERP, but running only a 2,500 watt transmitter.

For FM radio stations, it's all about the height of the transmitter above average terrain. For AM, it's about the ground conductivity and frequency.

I once worked at a 1,000-watt AM station that had a signal much larger and clearer signal than the 5,000-watt AM station a few miles away.

I'm not a radio engineer, but I'm sure there are plenty on HN who can correct and clarify what I've written.

"Longwave", usually written without a space, is an informal and not well-defined term for radio frequencies lower than the AM broadcast band, which in Europe is known as "medium wave".

In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.

Despite the name I would not have guessed you could pick up Atlantic 252 in the US. The quality of it wasn't great for listening to music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252

"Although the transmitter was in Ireland, the signal's reach meant that it was often looked upon as a "UK national station". Reception reports were received from such locations as Berlin, Finland, Ibiza and Moscow."

IIRC, their operation relies on enormous vacuum tubes that the BBC can’t get replacements for any more.

In some way it is short-sited, as radio is a good backup medium for global communications in case the entire Internet ever goes down.

Vacuum tubes also aren't vulnerable to nuclear weapon electro-magnetic pulses.

However, other than ham radio enthusiasts I guess no one listens to analogue radio anymore.

It's hard to believe that civilisation has lost the ability to build longwave radio transmitters.

We do spend out quite a lot here in the UK for the BBC. They could easily dump a couple of expensive presenters and use the savings for vacuum tubes, if that is what is needed.

No idea where vacuum tubes were invented but I'm sure the BBC could find someone to make them.

"Longwave", usually written without a space, is an informal and not well-defined term for radio frequencies lower than the AM broadcast band, which in Europe is known as "medium wave".

In the USA there have never been commercial longwave stations, though various WWV time signals are broadcast in that band.

Despite the name I would not have guessed you could pick up Atlantic 252 in the US. The quality of it wasn't great for listening to music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_252

It's hard to believe that civilisation has lost the ability to build longwave radio transmitters.

We do spend out quite a lot here in the UK for the BBC. They could easily dump a couple of expensive presenters and use the savings for vacuum tubes, if that is what is needed.

No idea where vacuum tubes were invented but I'm sure the BBC could find someone to make them.

No more foxhole radios for the PoW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxhole_radio

Side Note - VLF ( Very Low Frequency ) signals (3-30 kHz) propagate via surface wave or skywave, offering stable communication for submarines through saltwater.

It’s funny that at just the phrase ‘Long Wave’ my mind jumps back the “long wave radio Atlantic 252”.

I miss the days of jingles.

That's a real shame given the distance LW could travel: I wonder what they're going to use the frequency band for? I've tried using DAB on so many occasions and thrown it out in disgust.

> Given these factors, investing in upgrading the LW equipment is not considered a cost-effective solution for licence fee-funded services

They can pry long wave radio from my cold dead hands

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901

One can listen to the live closure broadcast via this WebSDR website, by tuning it to AM 198 kHz.

Wave skip? (Naieve question)

Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power? Without knowing that, your power calculations have no meaning.

Radio stations are usually measured by the last of those: Effective radiated power.

You can have a radio station with a 50,000 watt ERP, but running only a 2,500 watt transmitter.

For FM radio stations, it's all about the height of the transmitter above average terrain. For AM, it's about the ground conductivity and frequency.

I once worked at a 1,000-watt AM station that had a signal much larger and clearer signal than the 5,000-watt AM station a few miles away.

I'm not a radio engineer, but I'm sure there are plenty on HN who can correct and clarify what I've written.

Also bear in mind that Droitwitch is radiating 3 different services. Talk Sport (1053 kHz), Radio 4 (198 kHz) and Radio Five Live (693 kHz).

My suspicion is that this means an exciter and a stack of amps per service, which then go through a two stage combiner and out to the antenna. There might even be a pair of exciters and amps per service depending on redundancy.

The combiners (certainly for FM/DAB/TV services) also cause cumulative attenuation as the signal gets combined each time, so even if all 3 are radiating at the same power, the first in the chain might need twice as much amplification to make up for losses.

edit: MB21 (of course) has some fantastic technical info about Droitwitch: https://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=1454&page... and there's some great pics here, too: https://www.radiorewind.co.uk/radio1/droitwich.htm

I believe they're still using a pair of Marconi B6042 transmitters (250kW each, in parallel) to provide at least one of the services.

> Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power?

Going by [1], emitted power.

[1] https://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminisce...

In some way it is short-sited, as radio is a good backup medium for global communications in case the entire Internet ever goes down.

Vacuum tubes also aren't vulnerable to nuclear weapon electro-magnetic pulses.

However, other than ham radio enthusiasts I guess no one listens to analogue radio anymore.

I got my RTL-SDR to see what I could listen to, and by the time I tuned in, nearly all the short wave stations I could tune to were just broadcasting evangelical religious stuff, or other crazy conspiracy stuff. It's remarkable that these powerful stations spend most of their broadcast day transmitting that content.

They still broadcast on FM.

There is precisely one thing that keeps 198LW online: economy seven.

I think the reason why its been left on so long is that it took so long to migrate to digital meters https://tradehelp.gdhv.co.uk/support/solutions/articles/7900...

I am also annoyed that I missed the last signal.

BBC Radio 4 can be streamed here, including internationally: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

    mplayer 'https://a.files.bbci.co.uk/ms6/live/3441A116-B12E-4D2F-ACA8-C1984642FA4B/audio/simulcast/dash/nonuk/pc_hd_abr_v2/aks/bbc_radio_fourfm.mpd'

    vlc 'https://lsn.lv/bbcradio.m3u8?station=bbc_radio_fourfm%22&bitrate=320000%22'

(Links from https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/tables/radio-frequencies/internet... )

Why would humans need to communicate on channels bots cannot control?

I'm very sad to see this go.

I was listening to DAB in the car, not so far from here last weekend, and it kept cutting out. Whereas you could get LW everywhere!

LW is still a fallback when internet and mobile go down simultaneously. Quietly important.

Also bear in mind that Droitwitch is radiating 3 different services. Talk Sport (1053 kHz), Radio 4 (198 kHz) and Radio Five Live (693 kHz).

I believe they're still using a pair of Marconi B6042 transmitters (250kW each, in parallel) to provide at least one of the services.

> Is that emitted power, consumed power, or effective radiated power?

Going by [1], emitted power.

[1] https://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminisce...

They still broadcast on FM.

The last signal will be on 30 June. It's (apparently) broadcasting a loop listing alternative ways to listen to Radio 4 now.

Not quite the same as hearing it live, but the final programme transmission has been recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlflWWZpb30

For other readers, please be aware that only BBC World & BBC Radio 4 can be streamed outside of the UK.

For about a year now, BBC has been aggressively geoblocking other radios.

Why do you think bots don't control the mass media, of which longwave is just one outlet? Go to the website of any outlet that has longwave, read the AI nonsense there, realize they're transmitting the same on longwave.

Funny you mention the cricket

In the HBO miniseries Generation Kill the marines are tuned into the beeb long wave to get news updates, and there's a cricket score read out in the first episode

https://www.reddit.com/r/generationkill/comments/6o2w2s/epis...

Some things in life happen for the very last time and we never realize it. Where were you when Jim Maxwell interrupted the test match coverage, for the final time, to declare that “listeners on long wave will now hear the shipp-ing four-cairst”? :)

With apologies to Affabeck Lauder

Digital radio was always going to be crap, it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse They should have just put all the money into a better 4G network and ran radio through that.

A/The real reason was that electricity meters were built around a part of the signal being used to switch between price tiers but recently phased out.

That's such a pity. Building a simple AM radio receiver was a simplest and coolest electronics project to do with kids.

You need two transistors, a ferrite coil and a small set of simpler elements. And it is so simple you can actually explain what every part of the circuit does.

We did that in my physics high school class.

Then we took away components until we had virtually nothing left, a diode I think(?), and still we had some signal.

Turns out there was a transmitter on the top of the hill the school was also on.

Fun times.

Hmmm, fancy indeed. With 150kW feeding a dipole at 700 feet, I imagine that a cat's-whisker [0] would have done well-enough in London...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector

Look at this fancy pants needing a transistor for that /s

(but yes I do miss those simpler days - but I guess the basics now is making an Arduino flash an LED)

Wave skip? (Naieve question)

HF propagates through skywave (most reliably from 5-30MHz), which is where the signal bounces off the ionosphere.

In the MF (AM broadcast) band, you can observe this at night - in Australia I can pick up the 50kW Melbourne ABC station (public broadcaster) at 774kHz with a good radio, just about across the entire country.

In the LF (longwave) band, the earth’s surface and the ionosphere start to behave more like a waveguide than skywave. This is actually more reliable/consistent than even HF, but you need massive transmitting antennas due to the large wavelengths involved.

HF also generally wins for distance covered per watt - despite the massive power of Radio 4 longwave, I’d have no chance of hearing it reach Australia.

HF propagates through skywave (most reliably from 5-30MHz), which is where the signal bounces off the ionosphere.

HF also generally wins for distance covered per watt - despite the massive power of Radio 4 longwave, I’d have no chance of hearing it reach Australia.

We did that in my physics high school class.

Then we took away components until we had virtually nothing left, a diode I think(?), and still we had some signal.

Turns out there was a transmitter on the top of the hill the school was also on.

Fun times.

Look at this fancy pants needing a transistor for that /s

(but yes I do miss those simpler days - but I guess the basics now is making an Arduino flash an LED)

Hmmm, fancy indeed. With 150kW feeding a dipole at 700 feet, I imagine that a cat's-whisker [0] would have done well-enough in London...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_detector

Yes, I did exactly this in England 30 or so years ago. It was one of the suggestions in an electronics kit for children, the one with springs to connect the components together.

Funny you mention the cricket

In the HBO miniseries Generation Kill the marines are tuned into the beeb long wave to get news updates, and there's a cricket score read out in the first episode

https://www.reddit.com/r/generationkill/comments/6o2w2s/epis...

For other readers, please be aware that only BBC World & BBC Radio 4 can be streamed outside of the UK.

For about a year now, BBC has been aggressively geoblocking other radios.

The last signal will be on 30 June. It's (apparently) broadcasting a loop listing alternative ways to listen to Radio 4 now.

With apologies to Affabeck Lauder

A/The real reason was that electricity meters were built around a part of the signal being used to switch between price tiers but recently phased out.

Not quite the same as hearing it live, but the final programme transmission has been recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlflWWZpb30

I'm sad to hear the service has gone off the air. I was a constant listener to BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz growing up in Dublin. It was a valuable window onto the world.

Listening to the last transmission there, I note that the continuity announcer, (the Irish) Al Ryan, signed off with 'oíche mhaith', i.e. 'goodnight' in Irish. A nice nod, I think, to all the former LW listeners in Ireland.

Digital radio was always going to be crap, it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse They should have just put all the money into a better 4G network and ran radio through that.

> it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse

That has a lot more to do with the dated implementation and less to do with digital radio. There are a number of digital broadcasting techniques which can minimize and compensate for noise, including a slight delay with a signal correction and fault tolerant codecs.

DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. DAB+ uses the now 15 year old codec HE-AAC which isn't really designed to handle corruption. Opus handles loss a lot better (see their examples https://opus-codec.org/examples/ )

Bit of hindsight bias there, DAB was first developed in the mid 1990s, ubiquitous fast wireless IP in everyone’s pockets is at least a decade, perhaps nearer to 20 years in the future. There are quite a few transitionary technologies that we needn’t have developed had we just waited for something better to come along (but without the R&D into some of them…).

(Also doesn’t analogue FM also kinda cut off fairly abruptly?)

One-to-one communications and broadcast communications are different. Perhaps every 4G tower could broadcast the news on a special data channel, but it would be a separate system from the main 4G data channel.

Yes, I did exactly this in England 30 or so years ago. It was one of the suggestions in an electronics kit for children, the one with springs to connect the components together.

I'm sad to hear the service has gone off the air. I was a constant listener to BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz growing up in Dublin. It was a valuable window onto the world.

(Also doesn’t analogue FM also kinda cut off fairly abruptly?)

FM stays listenable even with heavy distortions when you drive out of range and you can decide for yourself when you no longer tolerate the signal. Digital doesn’t give you warnings and just goes silent

I have a DAB radio and it gets constant interference. Meanwhile FM is stable. In the same set up.

Really soured me on this digital radio technology.

> it doesn't degrade gradually as signal gets worse

> DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. No, it was MPEG 1 layer 2 often at 192 kbps. Later they switched to HE-AAC with DAB+.

Britain | The long-wave goodbye

Long-wave radio’s time is up. Terrestrial television will surely follow

Jun 25th 2026|3 min read

BERLIN, LONDON, Paris, Droitwich. In the 1930s a Midlands town of barely 5,000 people stood out on the dials of British wireless sets, which used the places from which stations were transmitted to denote their frequencies. In 1934 the BBC switched on the corporation’s most powerful radio transmitter, near Droitwich. Two 700ft-high (213-metre) steel masts, at the time the tallest structures in the country, still send “long wave” broadcasts across Britain and deep into Europe. During the second world war they transmitted nonsense messages (“The rabbit is going down his hole”) that were decoded by the French resistance. More recently they have carried baffling phrases understood only by cricket fans tuning into “Test Match Special”.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The long-wave goodbye”

From the June 27th 2026 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

⇒Explore the edition

I have a DAB radio and it gets constant interference. Meanwhile FM is stable. In the same set up.

Really soured me on this digital radio technology.

> DAB was implemented using the old MPEG2 audio codec. No, it was MPEG 1 layer 2 often at 192 kbps. Later they switched to HE-AAC with DAB+.

In my experience DAB goes painfully 'squawky' and squeaky before finally cutting out, it's unbearable in headphones.

This video gives a good example of the signal breaking down from 00:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

Especially so with digital public TV. its absolutely unusable. and now they can't stand that people want to share sports broadcasts, so they are updating it again to add encryption. I can't believe anyone watches it.

In my experience DAB goes painfully 'squawky' and squeaky before finally cutting out, it's unbearable in headphones.

This video gives a good example of the signal breaking down from 00:38

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-ihmXOy1h4

DAB+ receivers can (and many do) display signal quality. Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate.

It’s a digital cliff. Analog fades away but is never a true replication digital remains stable for over but then vanishes.

At the same quality dab is still perfectly long after fm becomes gabled. It then vanishes.

The problem with dab in early days was the lower strength, the poor quality decoding, and the lower bitratr than should be been used for the codec.

> Not playing distorted, noisy signals is a feature I greatly appreciate

Haha. The DAB+ signals are compressed as much as possible.