Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Where's DAB on 800 Series?

I was surprised to see that Onkyo manufacture an upgradable card-based "THX Ultra2 7.1-Channel A/V Home Network Receiver' - model TX-NR5000E - at www.onkyo.co.uk.

I was even more surprised to discover that this particular model also has a DAB card for the princely sum of �230 - see http://www.homecinemachoice.com/cgi-bin/shownews.php?id=8739

The point is, given the card-based nature of the Meridian 800 series, why can't Meridian manufacture a similar DAB module?

How about:

because the sound quality on DAB would make everything else sound dreadful?

Chris

Forget DAB. Where is the 800 AM/FM card? If interference is a problem, where is the standalone tuner?

I do like my Fanfare FTTA100 turner but I'd much rather have a card in the 800 series doing AM/FM and maybe even HD Radio.

Why not have a card that shuts down the RF section when not selected so that it would not interact with other sources when not in use.

Brian

Buy a cheap DAB-radio with SPDIF out (there are several small, goog looking models without speakers - just analogue and digital out) and plug into the 800 digitally. The sound will be truly awful, but so is a the sound of a high end DAB-card, too I suppose. In my world you can't make 128 kbps or even less sound good. If DAB wins and FM is turned off, we have one high end source less.

Here in the USA we have "HD Radio", which transmits inbetween regular FM stations. However, it uses a paltry bit rate of just 96kbps and sucks in comparison to even a decent FM tuner - I have better sound in my Mini Cooper than I heard in the in-store demo of HD. HDTV is fantasic, HD radio blows.

For the home I recently bought a cheap local Arcam T61 RDS tuner on Audiogon. It sounds great.

After seeing this thread I hooked a UK "Pure" DAB radio �200 into my system. It sounds almost passable but I think the bit rates vary per channel some are as low as 64kb/s ranging up to 128kb/s.

To be honest on even my 568 based system with Nautiuls 801's it sounds a bit sub-standard.

Kind of, ok for sunday morning listening whilst doing something else, but not where near "Hi-FI".

I can't see it sounding good enough quality on an even more revealing 800 system, to warrant the R&D of a card.

just my 2 cents, but I'd love to see an HD version of DAB.

Unfortunately, we're stuck with DAB.1 for a while yet (as is Denmark). However, other countries that are only just starting out are offering DAB+ with MPEG-4 AAC+ audio format - such as New Zealand, for example (where a 12 month trial is planned).

In Germany, however, DAB is likely to be replaced with DRM + (Digital Radio Mondial). One of the main advantages of DRM+ is that a 50 kHz channel can carry a radio station at almost CD-quality because it uses the AAC/AAC+ audio codec, and because DRM+ only requires low transmission powers along with the fact that there are large gaps of bandwidth in between existing FM stations (this is true for the UK as well -- think of the fact that Radio 1/2/3/4 use around 2 MHz of spectrum each across the country) then you can add plenty of new stations without interfering with existing FM stations.

For more information, see this BBC presentation on how DRM+ is envisaged to be launched in the FM band - http://www.deutsches-drm-forum.de/IFA_Symp_BBC.pdf - (2.3 MB).

Ofcom said last year that it would be consulting on the use of DRM/DRM+ this year some time, not least because around 90 analogue stations cannot be carried on DAB or they can't afford the carriage charges, so hopefully we will see DRM+ launched in the FM band here as well.