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Atmospheric problems with radio this am – DAB & FM noise

I woke up this morning, my radio sounded bad, oh yea! It’s true. Radio4 DAB sounded very crackly. I switched to FM and it was OK. I tweeted about it.

By return of tweet I found out that others had the same problem. I’ve just slotted in the tweets below. They aren’t necessarily in the correct chronological order because different people were responding to different tweets at different times but it certainly shows that there would appear to be a problem. Radio4 FM was also noisy in the car on the way in to work.

We periodically have problems with DAB which on reflection I would never swap in preference to  FM. It’s only benefit is that you can get more channels. If anyone can explain what is going on in the airwaves then please feel free to comment.

Rural Broadband @RuralBroadband_

Large amount of radio disruption in West Norfolk this morning. Woke to a German radio station rather than the local one! #Funkstörungen

tref @tref

@RuralBroadband_ DAB rubbish here in lincoln. Wonder what’s occurin

Adrian Wooster @awooster

@tref @RuralBroadband_ Oxfordshire also – Radio 4 & 5 impossible to listen to in the car

Rural Broadband @RuralBroadband_

@awooster @tref Time to get radio apply and listen on 3G and mobile phone.

@RuralBroadband_ @tref Except I’m now on a train with no wifi and very limited 3g but the FM in my phone still works

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

2 replies on “Atmospheric problems with radio this am – DAB & FM noise”

Atmospherics should kill a digital signal surely, whereas FM can be distorted or hear “other things” ? Given recent audio quality issues with the BBC it wouldn’t surprise me if it was in the transmitter feed system.

DAB is double the frequency of FM so it’s highly likely that factors affecting one won’t affect the other :-

FM 88 – 108 MHz

DAB Muliplexes, MHz :-
11B 218.640
11C 220.352
11D 222.064
12A 223.936
12B 225.648
12C 227.360
12D 229.072

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