Free DAB radio

I actually use fmscan.org a lot. I think the problem is as long as the choice is so limited in Ireland, DAB+ won't catch any interest.

The signal of this mux in Dublin is actually very weak and barely makes it out into the countryside. And what people are used to like the RTE or major commercial stations are missing. That's not the best situation if one wants to introduce a new technology.

he's just a hurler on the ditch as they say.

not just a pirate, a special pirate.

set up by an Entrepreneur!

DAB+ will never be really dead, as long as there is an EU law that every new car will have to come with a DAB+ radio. This also applies to Ireland. So the radios are there, there is just no or not much boradcasting going on in Ireland. Also other EU countries have gone very far by now so there won't be any turning back from DAB+.

What I've noticed is that at least in Dublin, some popular FM stations are back on DAB, like Radio Nova, Today FM, Newstalk, Q102 and Spin 103.8, also Radio Sunshine and LMFM I was able to log on DAB.

However the transmitter is only very weak, the signal doesn't travel much outside of Dublin.

What frequency is the mux on that's carrying these stations?

I don't know the frequency, but it seems it's the Mux 5B.

However I don't know how accurate the information is. I've read it on the FMSCAN.org website.

Evidently not enough given that a fair section of Dublin can't even get a whisper of it

There is no such thing as "late to the party" as an excuse not to introduce DAB / DAB+ in Ireland.

Remember, many EU countries are just starting their role out. Countries like France for instance, are only gradually planning to role out their Metropolitain 1 and 2 Muxes across the country. Currently only in Paris a few other places, and in the Autoroute down to Marseille, but by 2030 all across France.

The thing is, DAB+ will be the standard in the EU, the endless Irish "too late to the party lamenting" or "internet is the better choice" simply won't work in the long run.

Analogue radio won't survive in the digital world, the cost of transmission is higher, also the customer will expect more and more choice in the future, plus financial pressure on public broadcasters will be part of life for the next 5 to 10 years. RTE is probably worse of financially than the BBC, but overall the situation is similar in many countries.

I've found RTÉ Radio 1 to be unlistenable on my evening commute in the last few weeks due to constant rebuffering. So I'm back to a good old FM radio instead, incidentally the same one I used to use for DAB.

It's called resistance to change. In all fairness, in Dublin there is quite a bit of choice on FM, way more than similar size UK cities, however, in the Irish countryside FM radio offers very little choice.

It might take a few years longer but I think at some point Ireland will have DAB / DAB+ as well. Things just take longer.

Ireland is not alone at this point. Finland has absolutely no DAB, there was only a trial about 10 years ago, and Austria is the "home of the dark ages of the radio" as the national broadcaster called the ORF is strongly opposed to DAB or DAB+ out of fear of losing market share and audience.

It has been gone for some time now.

Just wait for BBC Radio 4 on LW and Talksport and Radio 5 on MW to be gone, and the requirement for more choice on the radio will come up again. DAB will be the answer.

Its quite possible that there will be a Talksport-Ireland at some time in the future.

It is very very simple and has been pointed out many times already, the independent licenced stations don't want it - more specifically - they don't want the competition that it would bring.

The BAI are acutely aware of what DAB is and made a conscious choice not to pursue licencing of multiplex operators. Among the reasons given for the decision are disingenuous at best, so I expect nothing to change; however, streaming online bypasses them and is (I suspect) tolerated because of it's relative obscurity (even today) though that is changing.

It is trivially easy to setup a DAB multiplex, while the costs for equipment are about 1/3 higher than for FM broadcasting, it's prettymuch swings and roundabouts and not even remotely unaffordable. However, doing it right and not pissing all over sensitive bands requires more attention and care.

You're entitled to you're opinion and, you're technically correct in regards to "smartspeakers and smartphones" but, unfortunately you're not seeing the forest for the trees.

Broadcasting is a one-to-many medium meaning that a transmitter at a good site (say Three Rock) can reach everyone in view of it and there's no difference in cost if only one person tunes in, or a million tune in. This fact makes FM pretty cheap to reach a wide audience.

Internet Streaming is a one-to-one medium where each listener gets a feed, streaming servers have finite bandwidth and thus have a fixed listener cap depending on what codec you choose to use, and what bitrate you allow, and bandwidth is not free; most streaming services are still using Shoutcast/Icecast and those don't scale.

Smartspeakers rely on a third party directory and the most popular of those has not accepted new stations in years, smartphones give you a few more options.

Broadcasting on FM (or DAB) because it is broadcasting, is still the cheapest option available to reach a large number of listeners. The risk is that if you're a community station or other small-scale operator, streaming becomes unaffordable for you past a certain point that you'd never hit were you transmitting on FM/DAB. A situation where only he who has the deepest of pockets has a voice is unacceptable to me.

Lastly, if you live out of reach of a good mobile data signal (nevermind DSL), then no smartspeaker or smartphone will replace your FM or DAB radio

The problem for all the DAB deniers in Ireland that DAB is very much an EU decision. Every new car sold in the EU has it, also in Brexit UK. The only thing you would get is that the radio on DAB stays silent once one is in Ireland. But why not make use of the options DAB poses? At least RTE understood that their LW transmitter would no longer have any real numbers of listeners. However that one took an awful long time to get into the minds of RTE decision makers.