Author: steve

Or so it seems……

Popped in to the Apple store at Touchwood early on Sunday, not expecting to find them. But I did 🙂

The thought of spending £54 on headphones does bother me, however compared to other comparable brands they are in a similar price region. Plus these phones have a remote, which is handy (only for 4th Gen Nano, 120gb Classic and my new iPod Touch), however sound wise they are fine on my old nano. Odd thing is, although it has a microphone it doesn’t work on the iPhone. Not that it bothers me at present.

They take a while to get used to, I guess for years I’ve been used to external noise. I’m sure these wont block all external noises, but at least the train journeys may be better and I might be able to listen fully to a podcast without hearing the day’s excuse for non/late running trains.

A test listen to an acoustic classic guitar album gets a thumbs up from me. Also listening to Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas looks to be possible now. Which is a bigger thumbs up for me. I might even boost my classic collection now 🙂

One possible downside is I can now hear how bad compilation CDs are. With regards to the classical especially.

Though if they turn out shit I’ll let you know…..

btw I am an Applewhore now

…is usually where I end up when bored. I could be productive, I could do some photographic processing even at a push I could get round to working on updating my websites.

But no, I usually find myself lost in pointless forum debates. More recently I have rediscovered Last.fm (used it a few years back and didn’t think much of it). I never normally let a track finish, the temptation of the Related Tracks feature is too much. Though often I end up going backwards as some related tracks end up being ‘Best of A-ha’.

It’s not just last.fm, I’m often lost in Youtube. But that’s for my aircraft take off/landing/crashing fetish I have (mmmm, glorious metal flying things).

Though what tend to spoil last.fm is the comment. Always on every track someone posts ‘ooooooh it’s my favourite’ Oh really? if it your favourite you’d own the fucking thing rather than listen to it streamed on the net.

As you can probably tell, this evening is another lost moment. I don’t think ‘I just can’t get Enough’ is doing much for me at the moment. Hold on lets hit related tracks. Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams, which is quite nice. So lets take a look at feedback……

Some Internet random quoted bloke said:
sweet dreams keeps us alive…

Later he said:
I´m still looking for someone..but I love these synths

Well, there you have it. No matter where you go on the net there’s always some bloke who wants love.

Moved on to Blondie now, is it wrong to think of Debbie Harry in the 80’s when she’s probably close to the 60’s now?

…inspired from Chris’ (Trav28) blog.

Which in turn is inspired by someone else (check out Travs blog).

So, most of my blogging is done here…….

(Excuse the cable, I was tethering to my Mac)

Alternatively, when I’m not at home I blog on this…….

(with the help of my 3G card).

And in the future I’ll probably blog on my iPod Touch 🙂

Well I am, so you all going to suffer. For some unknown reason I went to bed at 21:30 last night, probably explains the early start. Still suffering from bloke flu, however I may decide to go into work as I’m not in after today until the 8th Jan. Got a few things to fix out there so may go. Anyway, got to spread the cold love around. Afterall it’s work that I got the bleeding cold from. I think the ‘fresh’ air will probably do me good 🙂

I have a DAB radio, well two actually – but as one is an Alarm clock it doesn’t count.

We are constantly bombarded with BBC adverts for DAB radio. It’s sold on the promise of more radio stations. So lets have a look at Birmingham’s local DAB Ensemble.


BBC Radio WM 128 kbit/s
brmb 128 kbit/s
Chill 128 kbit/s
Gold -Birmingham 128 kbit/s
heat radio 112 kbit/s
Magic 112 kbit/s
RADIO XL 128 kbit/s
Sunrise Radio 64 kbit/s (Mono)
Traffic Radio 48 kbit/s (Mono)
XFM 128 kbit/s

Quite a selection isn’t it. Seems fine until you look at the bit rates for each station. 128k is awful quality, so I dread to think what 112 & 64k are like.

The BBC has their own National Ensemble……

BBC Radio 1 128 kbit/s
BBC Radio 1Xtra 128 kbit/s
BBC Radio 2 128 kbit/s
BBC Radio 3 192 kbit/s
BBC Radio 4 80 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC Radio 5live 64 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC R5LiveSportX 64 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC Radio 6Music 128 kbit/s
BBC Radio 7 80 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC AsianNetwork 64 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC WorldService 64 kbit/s (Mono)
BBC Guide 32 kbit/s Packet Data
BBC Travel 32 kbit/s Packet Data

Again the BBC are guilty of poor quality, apart from Radio 3. Does anyone ever listen to 1Xtra? A station that plays mainly black culture music – which normally would be fairly bass driven so must sound awful at compressed 128k.

The regional DAB Ensemble is much of the same bland network radio rubbish….

Asian FX 64 kbit/s (Mono)
Choice FM 64 kbit/s (Mono)
Galaxy 128 kbit/s
Heart 128 kbit/s
Jazz FM 128 kbit/s
Kerrang! 64 kbit/s (Mono)
LBC 48 kbit/s (Mono)
Panjab Radio 64 kbit/s (Mono)
SMOOTH Radio 128 kbit/s
The Arrow - Rock 128 kbit/s
UCB UK 64 kbit/s (Mono)
UCBInspirational 64 kbit/s (Mono)
DAB Guide 8 kbit/s Packet Data
UBC Digital 48 kbit/s Packet Data

Take Kerrang, ‘rock’ music played down 64bit sounds nasty, can’t quite be sure if it’s as bad as AM or LW.

A (slight) breath of fresh air comes from the National Ensemble….

Absolute Radio 160 kbit/s
Birdsong 160 kbit/s
Classic FM 160 kbit/s
D1 Test A 80 kbit/s
D1 Test B 128 kbit/s
D1 Test C 112 kbit/s
Planet Rock 128 kbit/s
talkSPORT 64 kbit/s (Mono)
What's On 8 kbit/s

Now we have 3 stations at 160kbit/s, whilst 192k is better it is still miles better than the rather compressed 128k. On the horizon we have a new National Ensemble coming. I would get excited, but I know who’s involved…..

Operator: 4 Digital Group Limited (Channel 4 Radio, Sky News Radio, Emap Digital Radio, UTV Radio (GB), The Carphone Warehouse Group and UBC Media Group) The UK regulator Ofcom has awarded the second national commercial DAB franchise to 4 Digital Group Limited (Channel 4 Radio, Sky News Radio, Emap Digital Radio, UTV Radio (GB), The Carphone Warehouse Group and UBC Media Group). The licence is designed to cover the whole of the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, subject to international frequency coordination.

On-Air: 4 Digital Group proposes to begin broadcasting with 8 national services and at least 9 podcast providers within 12 months using a network of 174 transmitters covering 86.6% of the adult population. Two further audio services would launch at the as soon as possible thereafter and within the following 11 months.

4 Digital Group proposes to broadcast ten audio services:-

3 audio services from Channel 4 Radio

E4 Radio
Channel 4 Radio
Pure4

Talk Radio [News, views, entertainment] (UTV Radio)
Closer [Female AC, celebrity and lifestyle] (Emap)
Sky News Radio [Rolling News] (Sky News Radio)
Sunrise Radio [Asian] (Sunrise Radio Group)
Virgin Radio Viva [Female-friendly pop with attitude] (SMG)
Original [Adult album alternative] (CanWest MediaWorks)
Radio Disney [Children’s service] (Walt Disney)

So there we have it, another 8 or so poor quality stations.

Maybe they’ll cull a few stations per Ensemble, I doubt it. Though one thing for the future is DAB+, though whether Ofcom allow the use of this (apparent) better technology (AAC & DRM?) is another thing. No doubt Ofcom will see that many have DAB sets and decide to keep the UK using the poorer quality. One possible future for me is the current DAB (MPEG2) stations will shrink, allowing for better quality transmissions of the remaining stations.

Ensemble information gathered from the very useful resource Wohnort.org. Take a look 🙂