Experts give digital radio poor reception

It was meant to revolutionise radio with crystal-clear sound. But digital broadcasting has left listeners with worse audio quality than they had before, it was claimed today.

An analysis of broadcasts has found that rather than go digital, listeners are often better off tuning into their FM - or even AM - counterparts. Scientists have labelled the muddy sound: "mush".

The study was carried out by Dr David Robinson at the University of Essex, as a response to media regulator-Ofcom's proposal to expand digital-radio services.

He found that, of the 50 stations Londoners can receive, half broadcast at a level far worse than FM. The stations include Radio 1, home to Chris Moyles; rock station Virgin; and indie broadcaster XFM, whose DJ roster includes Zoe Ball.

Several stations, including comedy broadcaster BBC7, were found to

operate at AM quality. The technology was today dubbed an example of "rip-off Britain".

Digital radio transmits information over the airwaves in the form of coded computer data. The system filters out interference that plagues FM and AM broadcasts with static and blurry sound. But

it now appears digital broadcasters are compressing the size of the data stream to let them put more stations into the limited frequencies available - and this cuts out chunks of the signal, damaging sound quality.

Dr Robinson called for Ofcom to insist on higher standards. "In all areas of life and art, it is useful to have a high-quality marker," he said.

"If the nation's ears can be trained to accept the dull mush of current digital sound, high-quality audio broadcasting will be killed for a generation."

Stephen Green, who runs website www.digitalradiotech.co.uk, went further, claiming the vast majority of Britain's digital stations compared badly with their FM counterparts. With customers paying more than £100 for digital radios, he said: "We've got the lowest quality service in the world. It's an example of rip-off Britain."

The BBC said it could do little to compress signals less, as all its digital capacity was used up.

The digital industry claimed only "hi-fi geeks" would notice a difference. "We're talking maybe 0.4 per cent of the market," said Mandy Green, of the Digital Radio Development Board. "We have never heard of a unit being sent back because of poor sound quality."

David Harold, spokesman for Pure, which has sold more than 250,000 digital radios in Britain, said: "People are using these as portables in the kitchen or bedroom.

"They are not looking for CD quality, and that's something we never claimed. They want choice, and sales figures show they are very happy."