No Static At All

I bought a DAB radio recently. I didn't intend to, it came with the new car I bought. And I'd not previously considered buying a DAB radio for use in the house because there has never been an incentive to do so.  I'm not alone in that it seems, because while the UK currently has the world's biggest digital radio network, less than half the UK's adult population owned a DAD radio in 2013 (the last year I can find figures for). In fact, in 2013 sales of DAB radios were lower than they had been in 2009. Indications are that, unlike television, which went digital in the UK in October 2012, a complete switch to digital radio in this country is unlikely before 2020.

DAB Radio

 

New car

Despite the anecdotal belief that DAB radio has better sound quality, the fact is that in the UK the majority of radio stations broadcasting digitally do so using a bit rate level of 128 kbps with the MP2 audio codec, which provides poorer sound quality than FM[1].  The techradar website says that "many DAB radio stations in the UK are broadcast at just 64kbps mono using the MP2 codec. That really is mono not stereo. That really is MP2 and not MP3."[2] Not, I'll be honest, that that means much to me in terms of what I'm listening to in the car. Since my stations of choice for listening while driving are generally talk stations like BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5, the difference I am enjoying is that the latter station, which is only otherwise broadcast on Medium Wave, has lost the "snap, crackle and pop" that you associate with MW. I cannot detect any discernible difference in sound quality between FM and DAB, however, except that DAB has a tendency to break up when I drive into a multi-storey car park and the signal disappears for a split second or so every now and then. But then listening while driving is perhaps not the best time to compare audio fidelity.

What I do like about DAB is the choice. Scrolling through the list of available stations I have found a few that speak to me as a man of my age, principally Absolute Radio 80's, which, as the name suggests, plays music from the 1980's. We all probably have a decade that we remember with more affection than any other, a decade we would happily travel back to and experience again, given the chance, and for me that decade would be the 1980's, for a whole host of reasons. And it's the music that evokes such memories and transported me back thirty odd years, music from Prefab Sprout and Aztec Camera, Culture Club and Queen, The Rolling Stones and The Cure; a sound track to years when I was in my 20's.

There was some great music produced in the 1980's with Thompson Twins and Steve Winwood just two of the acts that would get in my all time Top Ten, but surpassing them all, the album that for me is the 1980's, would have to be The Lexicon of Love, by ABC. In fact I would go further than to say this is the album of the 1980's, it has to be in my personal top five; if I ever had to compile a list of Desert Island Discs, this would be the first one on the list, which may come as a surprise to those who know me and my particular taste for prog, from Genesis to Big Big Train, from Yes to Porcupine Tree.

What is it about The Lexicon of Love that is so special? Firstly it is the medium it was initially released in, that is to say, vinyl. The norm for a vinyl LP being around twenty minutes per side, ABC's album comes in at 37 minutes 25 seconds. Concise, lean and without a wasted second or any padding, this album is an exemplar of how to make a pop record. The tendency today to pad a CD out to over an hour with superfluous remixes and demos of dubious merit did not apply in 1982 when this was released, because although the first commercial CD was released that same year[3] it wasn't until 1985 when Dire Straits released Brothers In Arms that the UK CD market took off.

Secondly there's the sound. The lush strings and sax combine with the more typical pop sound of guitars and keyboards in a way that no other album before or since has achieved in my opinion. And it's infectious, the sort of album that you want to sing along to (in my case, in the car, alone, as my singing is terrible). I'll admit that the lyrics aren't especially deep, although they are at least better than on a subsequent ABC album, Beauty Stab, where "mustn't grumble" is rhymed with "apple crumble" (the song is That Was Then But This Is Now), however this album is testament to the saying, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts," and the parts are pretty damned good anyway. After the austerity of the 1970's, aka the decade that style forgot, the 1980's bands like ABC and Duran Duran were at the forefront of the fashion parade and the whole package of The Lexicon of Love, including the album sleeve screams "style!"

In 1978, Steely Dan promised "FM (No Static at All)" and despite the claims made by DAB's supporters, I repeat that I haven't detected any real difference in sound quality between the formats. Whether the future is FM, or DAB, or internet radio however, there are two elements of music radio that tend to have me reaching for the off button; adverts and DJs. Television adverts are bad enough but there must be a special place in Hell reserved for those who write or produce radio ads, although given the fact that by the sound of most of them they are done on a budget of a couple of quid, it should come as little surprise that they are so dreadful. As for DJs, even the best of them spout such inane drivel and give the impression that needletime[4] is still in place (or more probably they just like the sound of their own voices). I once heard a critic (it may even have been an actual DJ) state that ultimately all DJs chatter is as interesting as the temperature of their coffee and it is difficult to argue with that.

If nothing else, DAB radio, or more specifically Absolute Radio '80s has taken me on a nostalgic trip down memory lane and made me dig out some CDs that hadn't seen the light of day for a while, but The Lexicon of Love is the one playing in my head.

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[1] Source: Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio_in_the_United_Kingdom#Criticisms_of_DAB_in_the_UK)

[2] http://www.techradar.com/news/car-tech/why-dab-radio-in-the-uk-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it-1217586

[3] Billy Joel: "52nd Street" was released in Japan in 1982.

[4] Needletime was the restriction that existed limiting the amount of recorded music UK radio stations could play in a 24 hour period. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Needle_time