Copyright © Commercial Radio Australia Ltd 2006 Digital Radio New Audio Coding RadComms 2006 Joan Warner Chief Executive Officer Commercial Radio Australia

2006 National Radio Conference Making the DAB standard more efficient  The Australian Bandwidth Problem  The aacPlus Solution  Creating a World Standard  Audio coding Task Force

2006 National Radio Conference Australian Bandwidth Scarcity  Digital Radio to launch before 2009 (State Capitals)  The best spectrum is Band III  Currently likely to be a maximum of three Digital Radio RF Channels in each state capital.  The Minister has stated that Commercial, National and Wide Area Community broadcasters need to be accommodated – up to 27 in largest markets.  This means 1/9 of a mux per station.

2006 National Radio Conference What does 1/9 of a multiplex mean?

2006 National Radio Conference Traditional Eureka Capability  Audio codec is Mpeg 1 Layer II.  “Better Than FM quality” needs Kb/s  “Similar to FM quality” needs Kb/s  “Acceptable, worse than FM” needs Kb/s

2006 National Radio Conference If each station gets 1/9 of a mux:-  1/9 is equivalent to about 128 Kb/s per service.  Just enough space to simulcast an existing channel at worse than FM quality.  Hardly any capacity for data.  Not a compelling consumer proposition. Current Eureka - 1/9 of a mux

2006 National Radio Conference Solution  Use a better audio codec

2006 National Radio Conference Eureka With aacPlus  Audio codec is aacPlus v2.  “Better Than FM quality” needs Kb/s  “Similar to FM quality” needs Kb/s  “Acceptable, worse than FM” needs Kb/s  Perceived quality will vary enormously with listener, receiver, audio content and reception environment.

2006 National Radio Conference Eureka - aacPlus - 1/9 of a mux  If each station gets 1/9 of a mux:-  1/9 is equivalent to about 128 Kb/s per station.  Enough space to broadcast two FM quality sub channels with small amounts of data.  Or one very high quality channel with a data channel.  A more compelling consumer proposition

2006 National Radio Conference Why Create a Standard?  Need a multi-national standard to enable manufacturers to build products.  DAB standards are published by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)  DAB standards are written by WorldDMB (Global forum of broadcasters and manufacturers)  WorldDMB has created a task force of experts to create and test the proposed new standard.  Commercial Radio Australia, Broadcast Australia and the ABC are members of that task force.

2006 National Radio Conference WorldDMB Task force  WorldDMB Task force formed - Dec  Approx 30 members – broadcasters, manufacturers, research institutes. ( 4 from Australia)  Monthly meetings to develop proposals.  Formal proposals finalised - June 2006  Computer simulated tests – August 2006  Developing Test Equipment – Sept  Field Trials – Oct  Standard to be published by end 1 st quarter 2007.

2006 National Radio Conference Field Trials of DAB with aacPlus  Happening in Sydney (Now!)  Parallel trials in the UK  Australian trials a collaboration of :- CRA – Transmission BA – Data acquisition – (drive tests) ABC – Analysis and Reporting

2006 National Radio Conference CRA’s Involvement  Commercial Radio Australia has actively promoted the launch of this technology  Two representatives participated in Task force meetings in Europe and Asia.  We are currently participating in field trials.  Establishing contacts with broadcasters and regulators in other countries to promote aacPlus.  Liaising with receiver manufacturers.

2006 National Radio Conference New audio coding  More spectrum efficiency means broadcasters can do more with their block of spectrum  For example in existing coding we could just do an FM equivalent service  New coding would allow one FM equivalent, a second audio service and space for some data.

2006 National Radio Conference Conclusion – work to be done  Australian broadcasters are confident of a successful launch  There is much work to be done to finalise the spectrum we will use – we are in talks with Govt on access to spectrum that would allow SFN’s  We need to get AAC+ into receivers – and into stores.  We are encouraging other countries to follow our lead: China, France, India, even a relaunch in Germany.  The industry is in control of its future

2006 National Radio Conference Thank you for listening