DAB radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting) simply speaking is a digital radio technology used by radio broadcasting stations, with the intention of providing improved sound quality. Initially started in the 80s in Europe, it has now spread thoughout more than 20 countries worldwide with thousands of stations using the technology.
One of the benefits of dab radio is that it can fit more music streams in a narrower band than am and fm stations can, thus giving more choice within a smaller radio band. Unfortunately by putting more streams into the smaller bands it is necessary to increase the compresion ratios which degrade the quality of the sound. In fact many stations broadcasting using dab technology are broadcasting at a lower quality than the fm transmissions.
Ideally the stations should be broadcasting at a rate of at least 192 kbits/s to provide the best quality sound, with the optimal level at approximately 256 kbits/s. The truth though is that most stations are broadcasting at a rate of less than 192 kbits/s, quite often as low as 160 kbits/s, and sometimes even at 128 kbits/s. This results in audio quality of a lower level, although without the noise, of traditional fm radio.
Some of the other benefits assoicated with dab radio include improved end user features, such as automatically finding all available stations and providing a list of all the stations that you can listen to at a glance. This is one (but not the only) of the reasons I prefer the double din car stereo, as it can show a larger list of stations on the screen at one time without having to page through a number of screens to find the station you want to listen to. It also allows for the brodcast of information such as song title, news, weather, traffic information and so on which can be written on the screen of your radio.
Dab technology also does a good job of reducing interference from other sources that are close in frequency, thus reducing the noise and cross talk that is a common problem with other transmission standards.
Hopefully the above has done a little to answer the question “What is DAB Radio?”. But if not, then let me know what info you want and I’ll see about adding more in the future.